Barbara W. Dainton, 96; one of two remaining survivors of Titanic

Barbara West Dainton, 96, one of the last two known survivors in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, died Oct. 16 at a nursing home in Camborne, England, according to Peter Visick, a distant relative.

Dainton, born in Bournemouth in southern England on May 24, 1911, was too young to remember the night when the huge liner, on its maiden voyage from England to New York, hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic in April 1912, killing about 1,500 people, including her father, Edwy Arthur West.

He waved farewell as the lifeboat carrying Barbara; her mother, Ada; and her sister, Constance, was lowered into the ocean, according to Karen Kamuda of the Titanic Historical Society in Indian Orchard, Mass. His body was never recovered.

Dainton returned to England after the accident. She married in 1952.

She avoided publicity associated with the Titanic and insisted that her funeral take place before any public announcement of her death, Kamuda said. Dainton’s funeral was Monday.

“We respected her privacy,” Kamuda said. “We’re so open with everything and our emotions nowadays, but people at that time, they just didn’t talk about it.”

The last American survivor, Lillian Gertrud Asplund, died last year in Massachusetts. She was 99.

Elizabeth Gladys “Millvina” Dean of Southampton, England, who was 2 months old at the time of the Titanic sinking, is now the disaster’s only remaining survivor, according to the Titanic Historical Society.