Violet Jessop was born in 1887 into an Irish family living at the time in Argentina. She contracted and survived tuberculosis as a child while still in Argentina. Upon the death of her father, the family later moved to England, where Violet would take the first step in her extraordinary life as ship stewardess on the Orinoco, a Royal Mail liner. She continued with the Royal Mail on the Oruba, Danube, and Clyde, until in 1910 she was hired by the White Star line on board the first Majestic.

After a stint on the Adriatic and the second Oceanic, she was transferred to the new Olympic upon its completion. When the Olympic collided with the HMS Hawke in 1911, she was working on board. Both ships, though heavily damaged, managed to limp into port under their own steam, and no lives were lost in the incident. After the Olympic was repaired, she went on working on it. A year after the accident, she joined the crew on the Titanic.

Violet was not yet asleep when the Titanic hit the iceberg and ordered on deck from her cabin. Together with other stewardesses she was ordered into a lifeboat to show passengers that they were safe. Someone thrust a baby at her in the last moment, and together with that unknown baby she was later taken aboard the Carpathia.

Some people would have called it quits at that point and started looking for a land bound employment. I know, I would. Not so Violet, who was back aboard the Olympic by June of the same year. Except for a stint on the P&O’s Malwa, she continued working on the Olympic until the Great War began.

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In 1914, Violet Jessop began training as a nurse (V.A.D.) and joined the second Britannic, sister ship to both the Olympic and the Titanic, on November 12th 1916. The Britannic hit a German mine on November 21st. Almost all the sites dealing with that particular incident put Violet Jessop on the first lifeboat to be lowered and which was caught in the still running propeller of the Britannic. This story is anecdotal and not based on fact. Rather, Violet jumped over board of the fast sinking ship and hit her head on the rump in the process.

This time round, Violet is kept land bound first until repatriation in 1917. She worked ashore until 1920, when she returned to work on the Olympic. Leaving the Olympic upon the commissioning of the second Majestic (the former Bismarck), she continued to work as a stewardess until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was years later that it turned out she had broken her skull when jumping ship, and never been treated for it.

If you are interested in reading her story in her own unexcited and understated words, her autobiography was edited by John Maxtone-Graham and published by Sutton in 1997.