One woman survived all three sister ships
Forget the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown, Violet Jessop—a woman blessed with incredible good fortune—survived the Olympic, the Titanic and the Britannic. Born in Argentina, from her youngest years she showed herself to be a survivor: overcoming a terminal diagnosis of tuberculosis. After emigrating from Argentina to Britain, Violet found work as a ship’s stewardess. She struggled initially, her employers believing her youth and beauty to be potential sources of problems with passengers and fellow crew. And in some ways their fears were justified: she received at least three marriage proposals during her time at sea, one from an especially affluent first-class passenger.
Violet Jessop was hired by White Star Line in 1908. Two years later, she started working aboard the Olympic: doing a job which, despite the low pay, gave her immense satisfaction (she liked how the Americans treated her; better than the snobby British). But her time aboard the Olympic was short-lived. In 1911 it collided with the HMS Hawke, putting this ship out of action though, fortunately, without any casualties. A year later, her friends and family managed to persuade her to work aboard the Olympic‘s sister ship, the Titanic.
On the night of April 14, 1912, less than an hour after the Titanic’s terminal glancing of the iceberg, Jessop was ordered onto lifeboat 16 to show the other women it was safe in the boats. Procedure gradually turned into panic, and before lifeboat 16 was lowered, Jessop was handed a baby to look after. She looked after it until she was rescued by the Carpathia. Once onboard, (who she presumed was) the baby’s frantic mother snatched the baby out of her arms without saying a word and hurried away.
Even the trauma of the Titanic wasn’t enough to put Violet Jessop off. After the outbreak of World War One, she enlisted as a nurse on the third sister ship, the Britannic. Then, on November 21, 1916 in the Cyclades Archipelago in the Aegean Sea, the Britannic hit a German mine. She started going down very quickly, forcing her captain into a snap decision. Rather than giving the order to abandon ship, he decided to keep the engine going, trying to beach her on the nearby island of Kea. Up on deck, however, some officers decided to load and launch lifeboats. Tragically, two of them—loaded with passengers—were lowered and sucked back into the ship’s propellers, cutting everyone and everything to pieces.
Realizing he would not be able to make it to land, the captain ordered the ship’s evacuation. With a serious list to starboard, this was easier said than done. Violet Jessop was forced to jump into the water, hitting her head on the ship’s keel and sustaining a traumatic head injury. Demonstrating true Edwardian steel, however, she would only realize this some time after a doctor informing her that her headaches could in fact be explained by her fractured skull. Just 55 minutes after the explosion, the Britannic reared up one last time before nosediving towards the bottom of the Aegean, where it still remains as the largest passenger ship on the seafloor.