Violet Madeline Mellinger was born in Surrey, England, but her father left for Australia when she was a child, leaving the family reportedly destitute.
When her mother found a job as a housekeeper on the Colgate family estate in Bennington, Vermont, she booked two second-class tickets on the Titanic for herself and 13-year-old Madeline.
During the trip, the superintendent of the estate, Fillmore Farms, visited them from first class to show them a photo of where they would soon by living. They were full of excitement ahead of their adventure.
In an interview with the Toronto Star on April 15, 1974, Madeline recalled: "We were asleep in our berths when a man banged on our door and told us to put on warm clothes and lifebelts and to get on deck."
They were thrown into a half-full lifeboat, and the young girl listened in horror to the cries of those dying in the cold water around her. "I could see the lights of the ship starting to go under water, then soundlessly, perhaps a mile away, it just went down," she said.
"It was gone. Oh yes, the sky was very black and the stars were very bright. They told me the people in the water were singing, but I knew they were screaming."
After arriving in New York, she and her mother Elizabeth went to Bennington to see the widow of the superintendent, Charles Cresson Jones, who died in the sinking.
They then returned to England, but emigrated to Toronto about 1915.
RACE AND THE TITANIC
Joseph Laroche is believed to have been the only black person on board the Titanic, after he moved to France from Haiti to study engineering at the age of 15.
Joseph married Juliette and they had two daughters, Simonne and Louise, the latter born premature and suffering ongoing health problems.
Despite his degree, Joseph struggled to find work in Paris because of racism, and the couple decided to return to Haiti, where he would be better able to afford Louise's medical bills.
When Juliette discovered she was pregnant for a third time, they brought the trip forward.
Joseph's mother, back in Haiti, bought them a ticket on steamship La France, as a present.
But the vessel had strict rules around children and the family made the fateful decision to take the Titanic instead.
Joseph was unable to socialise with others on the ship because of his colour and that discrimination ensured he was never going to be among the first-class male passengers who made it into lifeboats.
Juliette and the children found their way to safety. But Joseph died with the ship.
WAIFS OF THE DEEP
The photo showed two adorable young French children, and was marked "Louis and Lola? — Titanic survivors".
Handed half-naked into a lifeboat, the children spoke no English and no one knew where they came from. They were taken in by a French-speaking woman in New York City and their story made headlines across the world.
"Who are the two little French boys that were dropped, almost naked, from the deck of the sinking Titanic into the arms of survivors in a lifeboat?" asked the now-defunct New York newspaper The Evening World on April 20, 1912. "From which place in France did they come and to which place in the new world were they bound? There is not one iota of information to be had as to the identity of the waifs of the deep — the orphans of the Titanic."
Word of the "Titanic orphans" reached Marcelle Navratil in Nice, France. The 22-year-old sent details about her sons and it was confirmed — these were her missing children, Michel (or "Lolo"), 4, and Edmonde ("Momo"), 2.
She had just been given custody in a divorce battle from husband Michel and he had vanished with the boys over the Easter weekend, borrowing the passport of his friend Louis Hoffman, and caught a train to Southampton via Calais to secretly board the Titanic. His wild plan was dashed when the ship hit the iceberg, and he perished.
Michel Jr, who became a philosopher, later recalled his father and another man waking him and his brother, dressing them in warm clothes and carrying them to the lifeboats. "When I think of it now, I am very moved," he said. "They knew they were going to die."
Michel was the last male survivor from the Titanic disaster, dying in January 2001, aged 92. He said his father's last words and he handed him into the lifeboat were: "My child, when your mother comes for you, as she surely will, tell her that I loved her dearly and still do.
"Tell her I expected her to follow us, so that we might all live happily together in the peace and freedom of the New World."
THE CLUTCHES OF FATE
Robert Douglas Spedden, of New York City, was one of the youngest Titanic passengers. The six-year-old had been on holiday in Algiers, Monte Carlo and Paris with his parents when they boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg to return home.
When the ship hit the iceberg, Douglas was woken by his nurse, Elizabeth Burns, who he called Muddie Boons because he couldn't pronounce her name. She said they were going on "a trip to see the stars" and the family climbed into a lifeboat.
Douglas slept until dawn, when he woke to see icebergs and said: "Oh, Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it."
As the family fled the sinking ship, Douglas dropped his stuffed bear, Polar, and almost lost it. His mother Daisy wrote a book for him the following year about the incident, told from the perspective of the toy.
But the family had narrowly escaped the clutches of fate only to face their tragedy three years later, in August 1915.
Douglas, now 9, was hit by a car near the family summer camp in Maine, in one of the state's first recorded car accidents, and died from concussion two days later.
