Jessop had to jump out of her lifeboat, resulting in a traumatic head injury which she survived. While Britannic was sinking, Jessop and other passengers were nearly killed by the ship's propellers that were shredding lifeboats that collided with the propellers. This was shown in the documentary film of that dive, The Mystery of the Britannic. In a major diving expedition on the wreck in 2016, however, it was determined that the ship had struck a deep sea mine. Conspiracy theories have even circulated that suggest the British were responsible for sinking their own ship. British authorities hypothesized that the ship had either been struck by a torpedo or had hit a mine planted by German forces. Britannic sank within 55 minutes, killing 32 of the 1,066 people on board. On the morning of 21 November 1916, she was aboard HMHS Britannic, the younger sister ship of Olympic and Titanic that had been converted into a hospital ship, when it sank in the Aegean Sea after an unexplained explosion. In the First World War, Jessop was a stewardess for the British Red Cross. After arriving in New York City, she later returned to Southampton. According to Jessop, while on board Carpathia, a woman, presumably the baby's mother, grabbed the baby she was holding and ran off crying, without saying a word. The next morning, Jessop and the rest of the survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York City on April 18. She was later ordered into lifeboat 16, and as the boat was being lowered, one of Titanic 's officers gave her a baby to look after. She watched as the crew loaded the lifeboats. Jessop described in her memoirs how she was ordered up on deck to serve as an example of how to behave for the non-English speakers who could not follow the instructions given to them. Four days later, on 14 April, it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank about two hours and forty minutes after the collision. Jessop boarded RMS Titanic as a stewardess on 10 April 1912, at age 24. She continued to work on Olympic until April 1912, when she was transferred to sister ship Titanic. Jessop chose not to discuss this collision in her memoirs. There were no fatalities and, despite damage, the ship was able to make it back to port without sinking. Jessop was on board on 20 September 1911, when Olympic left from Southampton and collided with the British warship HMS Hawke. Olympic was a luxury ship that was the largest civilian liner at that time. In 1911, Jessop began working as a stewardess for the White Star liner RMS Olympic. At age 21, her first stewardess position was with Royal Mail Line aboard Orinoco in 1908. Jessop had to dress down to make herself less attractive to be hired. When her mother became ill, Jessop left school and, following in her mother's footsteps, applied to be a stewardess. When Jessop was 16 years old, her father died of complications from surgery and her family moved to England, where she attended a convent school and cared for her youngest sister while her mother was at sea working as a stewardess. She became very ill as a child with what is presumed to have been tuberculosis, which she survived despite doctors' predictions that her illness would be fatal. ![]() Jessop spent much of her childhood caring for her younger siblings. She was the first of nine children, six of whom survived. ![]() ![]() Early life īorn on 2 October 1887, near Bahía Blanca, Argentina, Violet Constance Jessop was the oldest daughter of Irish immigrants William and Katherine Jessop. Jessop is most well known for having survived the sinking of both the RMS Titanic in 1912 and her sister ship the HMHS Britannic in 1916, as well as having been onboard the eldest of the three sister ships, the RMS Olympic, when it collided with the British warship HMS Hawke in 1911. Violet Constance Jessop (2 October 1887 – ) was an Argentine woman of Irish heritage who worked as an ocean liner stewardess and nurse in the early 20th century.
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