Violet ConstanceJESSOPViolet Jessop was an ocean liner stewardess and nurse who achieved fame by surviving the sinking of both the Titanic in 1912 and its sister ship the Britannic in 1916.
She was also on board another White Star Line ship, the Olympic, when it collided dangerously with another vessel in 1911.
She died in retirement in Suffolk at the age on 83 in 1971.
Violet Jessop was born in Argentina in 1887 to Irish parents who had emigrated to become sheep farmers.Violet was the first of nine children, only six of whom survived. Violet herself caught tuberculosis in childhood but survived in the face of pessimistic predictions from doctors. After her father's death, Violet and her family moved to Great Britain where she attended a convent school.
She began her sea career, aged 21, on the Royal Mail Line steamer Orinoco in 1908.
In 1910 she joined the White Star Line and worked aboard the Majestic, before moving on to the Olympic. It was while she was on the Olympic in 1911 that the ship was in collision with HMS Hawke. Miraculously, considering the damage each ship sustained, neither vessel sank and they were both able to limp back into port under their own steam.
Captain of the Olympic during this incident was Edward Smith, who a year later would also be captain of the Titanic on its maiden voyage.
Violet boarded the RMS Titanic as a stewardess on 10 April 1912 and five days later on the night of 14 April the Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink.
Violet described in her memoirs that she was alseep when the ship struck the iceberg but was ordered up on deck. she writes: "Calmly, passengers strolled about. I stood at the bulkhead with the other stewardesses, watching the women cling to their husbands before being put into the boats with their children. Some time after, a ship's officer ordered us into the boat (boat 16) first to show some women it was safe. As the boat was being lowered the officer called: 'Here, Miss Jessop, look after this baby', and a bundle was dropped on to my lap."
The next morning Violet and the rest of the survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia. According to Violet, while on board the Carpathia, a woman grabbed the baby she was holding and ran off with it without saying a word.
During World War I Violet served as a nurse with the British Red Cross, and incredibly was on board HMS Britannic in 1916 when the ship apparently struck a mine laid by a German U-boat and sank in the Aegean Sea.
This time she was forced to jump as the Britannic was sinking and was sucked under the water and struck her head on the ship's keel before being rescued by another lifeboat.
She later said she thought her thick auburn hair helped save her life. She wrote: "I escaped, but years later when I went to my doctor because of a lot of headaches, he discovered I had once sustained a fracture of the skull!"
After the war Violet continued to work for the White Star Line, before joining the Red Star Line - where she was assigned to world crusies which she enjoyed enormously. In 1935 she rejoined the Royal Mail Line and worked there until the outbreak of World War II. In 1948, at the age of 61, she signed on again with Royal Mail for a final two-year stint.
In the late 1920s Violet had a brief marriage to a fellow crew member, but no children. In 1950 she retired to Great Ashfield, Suffolk.
Violet filled her home with mementos of her 42 years at sea and enjoyed some celebrity when the 1958 film about the Titanic, A Night to Remember, was released. Violet Jessop died of congestive heart failure in 1971. She is buried in the Suffolk village of Hartest, next to her sister and brother-in-law, Eileen and Hubert Meehan
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