Nomadic group buys Titanic relic

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One of the mementos auctioned by the last surviving passenger on the Titanic has been bought by a group of Belfast enthusiasts.

The group which is restoring the last White Star Line vessel, the Nomadic, paid £3,500 for a letter from the Titanic Relief Fund to Millvina Dean.

Now 96, Miss Dean was nine weeks old when the liner sank in 1912.

It is one of a number of letters outlining how much compensation she would get because her father drowned.

They explained that she would be awarded one pound, seven shillings and six pence per week.

Miss Dean decided to sell her Titanic relics at the auction in Devizes, Wiltshire on Saturday to help to pay her nursing home fees.

The Dean family were emigrating to Kansas when the Titanic went down.

Miss Dean was placed in a sack and carried to safety along with her mother and brother, but her father Bertram was one of more than 1,500 people who died.

Both the Titanic and the Nomadic were built in Belfast - the smaller ship was used to ferry first-class passengers to the doomed liner.

The SS Nomadic saw out the end of the last century as a floating restaurant beside the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

It was bought by the government and transported to Belfast in 2006 to eventually be restored to its former glory.