Violet Jessop: Miss Unsinkable

Over the spam of just 5 year Violet Jessop survived the collisions of three ships: RMS Olympic colliding with HMS Hawke, the sinking of the Titanic, and the sinking of the Britannic. Because of this she has been nicknamed miss unsinkable.

Early Life

Violet Jessop was born October 2nd 1887 near Blanca, Argentina. She was born to Irish Immigrants, William and Katharine Jessop, the first of 9 children, 6 of who survived. She spent much of her childhood caring for her younger siblings. As a child, she was very ill with tuberculosis, doctors gave her months to live but she managed to recover. Her father died, when she was 16 years old, due to complications from surgery. After this, her family moved to England, where she attended a convent school and her mother worked as a stewardess at sea.

When her mother fell ill, she left school and applied to become a stewardess on a ship. In order to get the job, Violet had to dress down to make herself less attracted. Her first stewardess position was on the Royal Mail Line aboard the Orinocoin in 1908, when she was 21. She worked for 17 hours a day and was paid £2.10 per month.

RMS Olympic

In 1911, she began working as a stewardess for the White Star Line on RMS Olympic. Olympic was a luxury ship that was the largest civilian liner at the time. Jessop was on board on September 20th 1911, when the Olympic left from Southampton and collided with the British warship, HMS Hawke. Luckily, there were no fatalities and despite the damage, the ship was able to make it back to port without sinking. Jessop decided not to discuss the RMS Olympic in her memoirs.

RMS Titanic

She boarded RMS Titanic as a stewardess on April 10th 1912, at age 24. Four days later it was struck by an iceberg in the North Atlantic. In her memoirs, she described how she was ordered up on deck because she was to function as an example of how to behave for non-English speakers who could not follow instructions given to them.

She was later ordered into lifeboat 16. As the lifeboat was being lowered one of the Titanic's officers gave her a baby to look after. The next morning Jessop and the rest of the survivors were rescued by RMS Carpathia. While onboard the Carpathia, a woman, presumably the baby's mother, grabbed the baby she was holding and ran off with it without saying a word.

HMHS Britannic

During the first world war, she served as a stewardess for the British Red Cross. On the morning of November 21st 1916, she was on board HMHS Britannic, a white star liner that had been converted into a hospital ship, when it sank in the Aegean Sea due to an unexplained explosion. During a major diving expedition on the wreck in 2016, it was determined that the ship had hit a deep-sea mine. Britannic sank within 55 minutes, killing 30 of the 1,066 people on boared.

While Britannic was sinking, Jessop and other passengers were nearly killed by the boat's propellers that were sucking lifeboats under the stern. Jessop had to jump out of the boat which resulted in a traumatic head injury, which she survived.

In her memoirs, she described the scene she witnessed as Britannic went under: "The white pride of the ocean's medical world... dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths."

Jessop returned to work for the White Star Line in 1920.

Later Life

After the war, Jessop continued to work for the White Star Line, before joining the Red Star Line and then the Royal Mail Line again. During her tenure with Red Star, Jessop went on two around the world cruises on the company's largest ship, Belgenland.

In her late 30s, she had a "brief and disastrous" marriage, they had no children. In 1950 Jessop retired to a sixteenth-century thatched cottage in Great Ashfield, Suffolk. She filled her home with mementoes of her forty-two years at sea.

Years after her retirement, Jessop claimed to have received a telephone call, on a story night, from a woman who asked Jessop if she saved a baby on the night that Titanic sank. "Yes," Jessop replied. The voice then said "I was that baby," laughed, and hung up. Records indicate that the only baby on lifeboat 16 was Assad Thomas, who was handed to Edwina Troutt and later reunited with his mother on Carpathia.

Jessop died of congestive heart failure in 1971 at the age of 83.

Legacy

Jessop inspired many scenes in popular films, such as the 1958 film A Night To Remember and the 1997 film Titanic.

The main character in the TV show Britannic is partly based on Jessop.

The character of Jessop is also featured in the stage play 'Iceberg - Right Ahead'.