“Miss Unsinkable” Violet Jessop
Wikimedia CommonsViolet Jessop, Titanic survivor.
The sinking of the Titanic was a disaster of such massive proportions that it tends to eclipse the tales of two other luxury liners: its sister ships.
When the Titanic was built, it was one of a set of three massive, celebrated passenger ships — all of which encountered disaster on the high seas.
One, the Britannic, suffered an explosion and sank in 1916. The other, the Olympic, was involved in two devastating collisions but managed to stay afloat.
And one woman, Violet Jessop, was unlucky enough to have been aboard all three ships as they met with disaster.
Violet Jessop was an ocean-liner stewardess, and by the time the Titanic struck the iceberg on April 14, 1912, Jessop had already survived one near-fatal accident at sea.
Less than a year earlier, she had been aboard the RMS Olympic when it collided with the HMS Hawke, a British warship that tore a massive hole in the luxury liner’s side. The watertight compartments the White Star ships were famous for held, and the ship made it to port.
But the Titanic wasn’t so lucky. As the ship went down, Jessop, now a veteran of calamity, was ordered to the top deck to help non-English speaking passengers. According to her memoirs, she loaded the lifeboats and modeled calm, orderly behavior until she was eventually commanded to board Lifeboat 16.
As the boat was being lowered into the water, one of the officers gave Jessop a baby to look after. After a long night on the ocean, both she and the baby made it to the rescue ship, where a woman, presumably the baby’s mother, grabbed the child and ran off without saying a word.
Jessop retired from her maritime career in 1950 with the nickname “Miss Unsinkable.” She died in 1971 at age 83.
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