Beatrice Muller

In 1630, her ancestors, who were Huguenots, fled France for America.

She grew up in Somerville, New Jersey, during the Great Depression.

Beatrice DuMont Muller (1919–2013) was an American author and long-term passenger on cruise ships.

Muller was born in 1919 and raised in Somerville, New Jersey, during the Great Depression.

Muller was born in 1919.

Muller was a passenger saved from the SS Morro Castle when it burned and sank in 1934.

In 1940 or 1941, she married Robert Arthur Muller, a chemical engineer, and they raised two sons in a house in Bound Brook, New Jersey.

In 1941 or 1942, she married Robert Arthur Muller, who worked as a chemical engineer.

They had two sons, Allan (born in 1949 or 1950) and Geoffrey (born in 1955 or 1956).

During the summer, the family traveled to the Maine coast or South Carolina coast to board boats and spend time at sea.

For around 40 years, the Mullers lived in a Bound Brook, New Jersey, house, where their sons grew up.

In total, they owned three houses, including a beach vacation home at Briarcliffe Acres, South Carolina, near Myrtle Beach.

A huge follower of the philosopher Meher Baba, she joined some friends who were traveling to Pune, India, at the end of the 1960s to create a Baba biographical movie, which took two years to make.

In 1961, she and her husband founded a Myrtle Beach–based engineering consulting company, and in 1964, they returned to New Jersey.

Muller began an around 10-year undertaking of putting together an archive about Baba following his 1971 death.

Other philosophers she followed enthusiastically were Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, George Gurdjieff, and P. D. Ouspensky.

The couple went on a world cruise on the Cunard Line ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1995, the year Robert retired.

As they enjoyed the experience, they returned every subsequent year for the ship's world cruise.

In 1995, the year her husband retired, Muller grudgingly joined him on a world cruise on the Cunard Line cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2.

Her mother-in-law, who loved going on cruises, had previously shared her experiences with Muller who expected that she would dislike cruises, saying the atmosphere sounded "snobbish and pushy, with lots of furs and fancy jewellery".

But after one week on board the ship, Muller and her husband really enjoyed the experience.

They boarded the ship together every subsequent year for its four-month world cruises.

At each port, they would visit the city to "keep [their] land legs".

During the 1999 world cruise, Robert died on the ship.

In 10 months, Muller sold all her possessions and relocated to the Queen Elizabeth 2 to be a full-time passenger.

The Mullers were married for 57 years until Robert's death at 85 years old on March 25, 1999, during that year's world cruise on Queen Elizabeth 2.

The couple had been on their fifth world cruise on the ship, which had recently departed from Mumbai, India, when Robert was infected with a virus.

Robert had smoked three cigarette packs every day for half a century.

Owing to his serious emphysema, the infection was not able to be mitigated.

Although Robert could have been transported from the ship to a hospital, he preferred to stay on the ship.

Beatrice remembered him saying, "No, I don't want to get off. It's my time."

In his final days, Robert was accompanied by Beatrice, the ship's doctor, an Anglican priest, and the captain.

While receiving care in the ship's hospital, he died, having been rescued by the ship's physician in two earlier incidents.

Allan, the couple's older son, arranged to have Robert cremated when the ship docked in Southampton in England.

The New York Times reported that Beatrice ended the world cruise early to return to her Bound Brook, New Jersey, house, while the Tampa Bay Times reported that in the following weeks after her husband's death, Beatrice stayed on the ship and disembarked at the world cruise's completion.

Her sons suggested that she stay on the Queen Elizabeth 2 because her friends were there.

Muller lived on the Queen Elizabeth 2 between January 2000 and November 2008, the month the ship was moved to Dubai to become a floating hotel.

She expressed interest in living on the Queen Mary 2 next, and she continued living on cruise ships until 2009.

In 2010, she was living in New Jersey, where she was working on Queen Elizabeth 2: My Home In Paradise, a book she published in 2011 that described her experiences on the ship.

Muller died in 2013 at age 94.