The story of the RMS Titanic sinking in 1912 is a tragic one, but also one that is full of fascinating stories. One of them is the story of a woman named Violet Jessop, who not only survived the sinking of Titanic but also the sinking of its two sister ships.
Jessop, who was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, started working as a stewardess on an ocean liner RMS Olympic in 1911. The start of her career didn’t get to the best of starts as Olympic crashed with the British warship HMS Hawke in September of the same year and was heavily damaged.
In April 1912, Jessop transferred to Olympic’s sister ship, RMS Titanic, to continue serving in the same role. She was part of the Titanic’s maiden voyage, which tragically hit an iceberg and sank on April 16, 1912. Fortunately for Jessop, she managed to get off the ship in a lifeboat before it got underwater.
According to Jessop’s accounts, she was handed a baby while boarding the lifeboat and later managed to reunite it with its mother after Titanic survivors were rescued by RMS Carpathia.
Surviving two tragedies didn’t stop Jessop from returning to the sea several years later, but this time under different circumstances. During World War I, Jessop became a stewardess for the British Red Cross and became part of the crew of the hospital ship Britannic, which was the younger sister ship of both the Olympic and Titanic.
Britannic ended up facing the same fate as its sister ships, sinking in November 1916 after coming across a German naval mine. But Jessop survived once again, although she suffered a serious head injury in the process.
You would think that Jessop would finally say goodbye to the sea after this and remain on land. But that wasn’t the case. She continued to work as a stewardess on various ocean liners until her retirement in 1950.