Shipmate Passed Away in the Night

Perception is everything. While the passing of Milvina Dean, the last living passenger of the Titanic, was splashed across the headlines, the passing of the last survivor from the Lusitania barely raised a ripple. Audrey-Johnston (née Pearl) was just 3 months old on May 7, 1915 when the British passenger ship was torpedoed by a German submarine. Her nursemaid saved her and her brother, and her parents survived, but two sisters were lost, along with 1,196 of the 1,959 people aboard. The US did not respond well to Germany’s approach to naval traffic control, and in its typical approach to foreign policy, entered World War I two years later.