Violet Jessop

Day 1,632, 03:37 • Published in USA USA • by TooTall
was an ocean liner stewardess and nurse who achieved fame by surviving the disastrous sinkings of sister ships RMS Titanic and HMHS Britannic in 1912 and 1916 respectively. In addition, she had been on board Titanic and Britannic′s other sister ship, RMS Olympic, when it collided with the protected cruiser HMS Hawke in 1911.




At age 22, Violet Jessop boarded the RMS Olympic on October 20, 1910 to work as a stewardess. The Olympic was a luxury ship that was the largest civilian liner at that time, being nearly 100 ft (30 m) longer than any other ship. Olympic′s first major mishap occurred on September 20, 1911, when she collided with the old protected cruiser HMS Hawke off the Isle of Wight. Although the incident resulted in the flooding of two of her compartments and a twisted propeller shaft,

Violet boarded the RMS Titanic as a stewardess on April 10, 1912, at noon and four days later on April 14, at around 11:40 PM the Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink. The iceberg ripped through the hull, causing the first five watertight compartments to flood and the ship to start sinking. At 2:20am, bow-down, the ship broke in two and sank almost immediately. Violet described in her memoirs that she was ordered up on deck, because she was to set a good example to the foreign-speaking people (they did not speak English), where she watched as the crew loaded the lifeboats.





During the First World War, Violet served as a nurse for the British Red Cross. In 1916, she was on board His Majesty's Hospital Ship Britannic when the ship apparently struck a mine and, with all the portholes open for ventilation, sank in the Aegean Sea. While the Britannic was sinking, she jumped out of a lifeboat to avoid being sucked into the Britannic′s propellers. She, nevertheless, was sucked under the water and struck her head on the ship's keel before surfacing and being rescued by a lifeboat