Eleanor Schuman; Titanic Survivor

Eleanor Schuman, a Titanic survivor who described the current movie about the luxury liner’s sinking as painful but thrilling, has died at age 87, a hospital spokesman said.

Schuman, a native of the northwestern Chicago suburb of Elgin, died Saturday from an undisclosed illness, a spokesman at Sherman Hospital said.

She was 16 months old at the time of the Titanic’s 1912 voyage and she, her mother and brother were among the more than 700 survivors of the disaster, which took more than 1,500 lives.

Recently, Schuman said that though she enjoyed the film, its realism brought back haunting memories of people screaming and of drowning victims reaching out to her.