The ashes of the child conceived aboard the Titanic by a runaway couple, whose romance inspired the blockbuster film, have been scattered on to the Atlantic.

Yesterday the crew of a new Tamar Class lifeboat off Padstow, Cornwall, scattered the remains of Ellen Walker, who died, aged 92, in October last year.

The tragic story of the love affair between her parents, Henry Morley, 37, a married Worcester shopkeeper, and Katy Phillips, a 19-year-old shop assistant, is thought to have inspired the characters of Jack and Rose, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the Hollywood film.

The young Katy Phillips was given a sapphire necklace by her lover, which has featured in various Titanic exhibitions and is thought to be the inspiration behind the “Heart of the Ocean” necklace featured heavily in the film.

The couple had booked a second-class crossing to begin a new life in America under the assumed names of Mr and Mrs Marshall. Miss Phillips, one of the last passengers to get into a lifeboat, survived and eventually returned to England. Her lover did not.

In her will, Mrs Walker left the majority of her estate to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and said that she wanted her ashes to be scattered at sea. After a service on the RNLI lifeboat The Spirit of Padstow, her ashes were scattered off Cataclew Point, near Padstow. Mrs Walker’s son, Robert Farmer, 70, said: “I think that she wanted to be in the same place as her father because she had never been close to him or known him. All I knew as a child was her father died on the Titanic.”

Ten years ago, Mrs Walker told how her mother had escaped the Titanic after the ship hit an iceberg in April 1912.

She said: “My father didn’t want her to go, and tried to cling on to her, but the sailors threw her in the boat. My father couldn’t swim. His body was never found. My mother was in the lifeboat for eight hours. All she had on was a nightgown, but one of the sailors wrapped his jumper round her.”

Among those who went to scatter her ashes was auxiliary coastguard Ian Fuller, who befriended Mrs Walker when she lived next door to his father.

He said: “She kept all the cuttings about the Titanic and I believe that she had a cabin key from the ship. She fought hard to get her father’s name put on her birth certificate but sadly never won her battle. Ellen was passionate about the work of the RNLI because her life and that of her mother were saved by a lifeboat. She left money to the charity and it seemed fitting that her ashes should be scattered in this way.”

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