A HAMPSHIRE survivor of the Titanic disaster has slammed American manufacturers who have made a novelty inflatable slide based on the liner.

Millvina Dean, 90, was just nine weeks old when the liner struck an iceberg in 1912, claiming the lives of more than 1,500 people.

She has branded the inflatable funfair attraction, which is based on the ship's stern rearing into the air, as "disgusting".

The slide's manufacturers, Cutting Edge Creations, boasts that it 'captures all the excitement of the famed ocean liner on its maiden voyage'.

It offers a bouncy iceberg as an optional extra.

Miss Dean, from Woodlands, near Totton, who lost her father in the tragedy, said: "This is very distressing.

"The people who thought this up - what can they be like?

"I suppose that as long as they make money out of it they don't care about offending the memory of people who came through that terrible night and of the descendants of those who didn't."

Operators are taking the tasteless attraction around fairs in England and it was America's number one amusement ride last year.

International sales director Robert Field said 475 of the £10,000 slides had been sold in the last four years.

"When it first came out a few people were critical but you're never going to make everyone happy," he said.

Miss Dean was travelling with her family on Titanic's maiden voyage from Southampton to New York to begin a new life in America when the ship sank.

Her 23-month-old brother Bertram and mother Georgetta, 32, escaped in a lifeboat.

In April this year, Millvina unveiled a plaque in Canute Road, Southampton, to mark the 90th anniversary of the disaster.

- Originally published August 2002.