She Survived the Titanic… and Its Two Sister Ships

Miss Unsinkable: The Woman Who Survived the Titanic and Her Sister Ships In 1912, one woman climbed into a lifeboat as the Titanic sank. What nobody knew is that it wasn't her first disaster at sea. And it wouldn't be her last. Her name was Violet Jessop. She was born in Argentina in 1887, the daughter of Irish immigrants. As a little girl, she caught a terrible lung illness. Doctors said she had only months to live. She survived. When her father died, the family moved to England, and at twenty-one, Violet became a stewardess on ocean liners. Employers said she was too pretty for the job. So she wore old clothes, no makeup, and got hired anyway. In 1911, she joined the biggest ship in the world, the Olympic. That September, it smashed into a British warship. Somehow, it made it back to port. Nobody died. Violet's next ship was the Olympic's brand new sister. Its name... was Titanic. On the night of April fourteenth, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg. Violet was woken and sent up on deck to help calm the passengers. As she climbed into lifeboat sixteen, an officer pushed a baby into her arms and told her to look after it. She held that baby all night, in the freezing dark, watching the Titanic disappear. The next morning, on the rescue ship Carpathia, a woman ran up, grabbed the baby, and left without saying a single word. More than fifteen hundred people died that night. Violet survived her second disaster. Then came World War One. Violet became a nurse on the third sister ship, the hospital ship Britannic. In 1916, the Britannic hit a mine. Violet ran back to her cabin... for her toothbrush. It was the one thing she had missed after the Titanic. Her lifeboat was being pulled toward the ship's giant spinning propellers. So Violet jumped into the sea. She was dragged under and hit her head on the ship's keel. Years later, doctors found she had fractured her skull. But she survived. Again. Three disasters. Three sister ships. One woman. Violet kept working at sea for decades, then retired to the English countryside, where she kept chickens until she died in 1971. Years later, she said a stranger called her on a stormy night and asked, did you save a baby the night the Titanic sank? Then the voice said, I was that baby, and hung up. They called her Miss Unsinkable. Follow for more true stories history forgot.