Violet Jessop, Titanic Survivor, Died on May 5, 1971

The Life of Violet Jessop
Violet Constance Jessop (2 October 1887 – 5 May 1971) was an ocean liner stewardess and nurse who achieved fame by surviving the disastrous sinkings of two sister ships: the RMS Titanic in 1912 and the HMHS Britannic in 1916. In addition, she had been on board the one other ship of the class, the RMS Olympic, when it collided with the HMS Hawke in 1911.

Violet Jessop was born to William and Katherine Jessop, Irish emigrants living near Bahía Blanca, Argentina. William Jessop had emigrated from Dublin in the mid-1880s to try his hand at sheep farming in the Argentine. His fiancée, Katherine Kelly, followed him out there from Dublin in 1886. Violet was the first of nine children, only six of whom survived. Violet herself contracted tuberculosis at an early age and despite doctor's predictions survived. After her father died, Violet and her family moved to Great Britain where she attended a convent school.

In 1908, after her mother became sick, Violet left school and became a stewardess for the Royal Mail Line. In 1910 she began working for the White Star Line and in 1911, while working on board the RMS Olympic she experienced her first incident on an Olympic-class vessel. Off the Isle of Wight, the British warship HMS Hawke collided with the Olympic, seriously damaging both ships.

Violet boarded the RMS Titanic as a stewardess on 10 April 1912 and four days later on 14 April, at 11:40 PM the Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink. Violet described in her memoirs that she was ordered up on deck where she watched as the crew loaded the lifeboats. She was later ordered into lifeboat 16, and as the boat was being lowered, one of the Titanic's officers gave her a baby to look after. 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 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 sank in the Aegean Sea. While the Britannic was sinking she jumped out of a lifeboat being sucked into the Britannic's propellers. She was sucked under the water and struck her head on the ship's keel before being rescued by another lifeboat.[1] She later stated that the cushioning due to her thick auburn hair helped save her life. She had also made sure to grab her toothbrush before leaving her cabin on the Britannic, saying later that it was the one thing she missed most immediately following the sinking of the Titanic.

After the war Violet continued to work for the White Star Line, before joining the Red Star Line and then the Royal Mail Line again. During her tenure with the Red Star Violet went on two round the world cruises on that company's largest ship, the Belgenland. In her late 30's Violet had a brief marriage and in 1950 she retired to Great Ashfield, Suffolk. Years after her retirement, she got a telephone call on a stormy night from a woman claiming to be the baby she saved from the sinking Titanic. The voice asked Violet if she saved a baby on that dreadful night. "Yes", Jessop replied. The voice then said "Well, I was that baby", laughed, and then hung up. Her friend, and biographer John Maxtone-Graham said it was most likely some children in the village playing a joke on her. She replied, "No, John, I had never told that story to anyone before I told you now." To this day, the baby she saved has never been positively identified.

The Death of Violet Jessop
In 1971, after surviving two sinking ships and one ship collision, Violet Jessop dies of congestiev heart failure. She was 84 years old.