Born in 1887, Violet Jessop is a woman who devoted her entire life to the oceans and worked as a stewardess and nurse on ships for years.
That’s not what’s interesting about Jessop; As a matter of fact, what makes him famous is that he managed to survive 3 shipwrecks, including the Titanic!
Violet Jessop is originally from Ireland, but was born in Argentina to William and Katherine Jessop.
In the mid-1880s, a few years before he was born, his family immigrated from Dublin to Argentina with the goal of farming. The couple has a total of 9 children, the eldest being Violet, and 3 of them die at a very young age. In fact, Violet also caught tuberculosis when she was little and comes face to face with death, but contrary to all predictions, she manages to hold on to life and begins to give clues that she will come from that age.
Violet’s life changes when she returns to Britain with her family after her father’s death. Losing her mother in a short time, Violet starts working as a hostess in Royal Mail Line, one of the famous companies of the time.
After this point, things start to get very interesting; As a matter of fact, on September 20, 1911, Violet, who was on board the RMS Olympic, the largest luxury cruise ship history had ever seen, continued to take care of the passengers, unaware that she would collide with the battleship HMS Hawke a little later. Violet had narrowly escaped the famous accident when the RMS Olympic miraculously managed to make it back to Southampton harbour, which was mostly flooded.
Moreover, this was only the beginning; Not even a year after the incident, Violet would be involved in the Titanic accident this time.
The young woman, who was assigned to the Titanic on April 10, 1912, was one of the names on the ship when it collided with the iceberg in the North Atlantic 4 days later. While describing what she experienced on the ship, which split in two and sank in two hours, she says that the first thing to do is to call the passengers who do not speak English to the deck and be informed about what to do.
Seeing that the crew of the ship was put on the boats while she was doing this task, Violet still continues her duty. She is then summoned to the number 16 boat to convince the female passengers that the boat is safe. First Jessop gets on the boat and convinces the other passengers, and after the boat is full, Jessop is ordered to leave with the boat. Meanwhile, a baby whose parents cannot be reached is placed in Jessop’s arms and asked to keep an eye on the baby.
In the 24 hours following the day of the accident, the passengers on boat 16 are rescued by a ship called Carpathia. While on deck of Carpathia, a woman approaches Violet, grabs the baby in her arms, and hurries away. Already freezing from the cold, Violet is enjoying the pleasure of surviving, not even bothered by the fact that the woman did not even thank her.
Four years later, in 1916, Violet is involved in another accident. While serving in the British Red Cross during the First World War, the ship Britannic crashed into a sea mine and ended up at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. In the accident that killed more than 30 people, Violet also risks being pulled to pieces by her propellers as the ship sinks, but miraculously escapes.
These three major accidents can’t keep Violet out of the seas.
After the war, he continues to take part in many cruises. Years after he retires, he receives a phone call, as he describes it, on a stormy evening. The person on the phone asks if he saved a baby while the Titanic was sinking, and after receiving a positive response, he hangs up saying that baby is him.
Judging by the records kept, the only baby aboard rescue boat 16 that day was a man named Assad Thomas. Again, according to the same records, this baby seems to have reunited with its mother in Carpathia. So it’s quite possible that he was the caller.
Violet died of heart failure in 1971, at the age of 83.
You can also see this interesting story of him in the movie Titanic.
The character named Lucy, who prepared Rose Dewitt Bukater’s suite in the background at the beginning, is instructed to show the passengers who do not speak English what to do as the ship sinks. Just like in reality…
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