12. The unsinkable Violet Jessop survived the Titanic sinking and other nautical disasters
In 1911 RMS Olympic, then the largest ship afloat, collided with the Royal Navy cruiser Hawke. Aboard Olympic was a young stewardess named Violet Jessop. Both ships were damaged, but neither sank and Olympic returned safely to port. Jessop was uninjured. The following April she joined the crew of RMS Titanic, in time for that vessel’s ill-fated maiden voyage. She was loaded into a lifeboat as the ship went down, and was one of the survivors rescued later in the day by RMS Carpathia. Having survived two ship accidents unscathed, Jessop remained in the employ of White Star Lines, which operated both of the ships.
In 1916 she joined the crew of HMHS Britannic, a White Star liner which had been transferred to His Majesty’s Navy as a hospital ship. In November, 1916, Britannic was operating in the Aegean Sea when it was ripped apart by an explosion, whether from a mine, a torpedo, or another cause which has never been determined. The ship sank in less than an hour. Although Jessop suffered a slight head injury, she survived the sinking. Jessop returned to the White Star Line following the war, and worked for other British shipping lines until her retirement in 1950, though she had no further misadventures involving the loss of the ships in which she served.