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Survivor of Titanic dies aged 92
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MICHEL NAVRATIL, a Frenchman who survived the sinking of the transatlantic liner Titanic in 1912, died on Wednesday at his home in southern France aged 92, his daughter said.
His death leaves just four remaining survivors, all women, according to the Titanic Historical Society.
Navratil was not quite four when he was bundled into a lifeboat in the north Atlantic on April 15, 1912.
Born in the Mediterranean city of Nice on June 12, 1908, he had boarded the ill-fated liner with his brother Edmond and his Czech-born father, who registered them under an assumed name because he was separating from his French wife, and did not have her permission to leave with them.
The father was taking his sons to join other members of the Czech family in the United States, but was one of the 1,480 people who died in the disaster.
The two children were taken care of by a young woman who found herself in the same lifeboat as them.
When they arrived in the United States she looked after the boys until they could finally be sent back to their mother in France.
The process took some time as the mother had a hard time proving that they were her sons, and in the meantime the pictures of the two stranded French children made it into the newspapers after the sinking.
Navratil went on to make a career for himself as a philosopher, and maintained that his brush with death at a tender age, along with the loss of his father and the strange experience in a foreign country, influenced his thinking throughout his life.
His daughter Elisabeth Navratil, who is a theatre director, fictionalized his story in a children's book entitled "Les enfants du Titanic," to be published in English as "Survivors."
Of the actual sinking, Navratil said he remembered how his father came to get him and his brother in their cabin.
"He handed us over to a pretty American, Miss Heyes," he said.
"I remember the 'plop' the lifeboat made as it hit the water.
"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."
Like the other survivors, Navratil and his brother were picked up by the Carpathia, a ship that had picked up the Titanic's distress signals, but had been too far away to get there in time to save most of the passengers.
A total of 706 people survived the disaster. (SD-Agencies)
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