Michel Navratil; ‘Orphan of Titanic’ Was Last Male Survivor

Michel Navratil, the last male survivor of the April 15, 1912, sinking of the Titanic and the last of the two “orphans of the Titanic,” has died. He was 92.

Navratil, who became a French philosopher and said the disaster influenced his thinking throughout his life, died Wednesday in his home in Montpellier, near Nice, France.

Only 3 when he boarded the ill-fated luxury ship, Navratil had been invited, along with the four remaining women survivors--Barbara Dainton and Eliza Millvena Dean of England and Lillian Asplund and Winnifred Van Tongerloo of the United States--on an 89th anniversary crossing this April that is to follow the Titanic’s route.

Sponsored by the Falkirk Titanic Society, the cruise is to carry the remaining survivors and relatives of others from Southampton, England, to New York City, pausing for them to toss wreaths into the North Atlantic waters where the ship went down. The sailing will be on the Queen Elizabeth II, owned by Cunard, which purchased the Titanic’s owner--White Star Line--in 1934.

Navratil and his late brother Edmond were among the 535 passengers, 96 stewards, 71 firemen, 39 seamen and four officers who were saved, while 1,513 died.

The two little boys had boarded the Titanic with their Czech-born father, Michel Navratil, under the assumed surname of Hoffman. The subterfuge was designed to cover up his spiriting them away from their French mother, Marcelle, and led to their publicized plight as unclaimed “orphans.”

The father bundled the boys into the last lifeboat to leave the sinking ship and perished after staying behind. His body was recovered and, because of the assumed name, he was buried in a Jewish cemetery, although his son later said he was a life-long Catholic.

Cared for by a young woman who also escaped and with them was rescued by the Carpathia, the boys where the only unclaimed children from the Titanic to arrive in New York. Their false name and their inability to speak English delayed their return to France.

Newspapers circulated their picture as “the orphans of the Titanic,” eventually alerting their mother to their plight. The White Star Line brought her to New York to claim them.

“I remember the plop the lifeboat made as it hit the water,” Navratil said decades after the disaster. “I went to sleep in the boat. Then when I woke up at dawn, our lifeboat was moving away from the icebergs, and I didn’t see them.”

Navratil’s daughter, Elizabeth, fictionalized her father’s story in a French children’s book titled “Les Enfants du Titanic.” It will be published in English under the title “Survivors.”