Depending on your perspective, Violet Jessop was either the luckiest or unluckiest women to ever live. Either way, she certainly has one of the most interesting stories you’ll ever read. Jessop was a stewardess on ocean liners who began her career aboard the Orinoco in 1908 at age 21.
She started with the White Star Line when she went aboard the HMS Olympic, one of three Olympic class cruisers created by the company, in 1910.
A year later, while Jessop was still working aboard the ship, it collided with the British warship the HMS Hawke while the two were passing through a narrow strait. Though both vessels were damaged by the encounter, it did not completely destroy either ship and there were no fatalities.
While the Olympic was being repaired, Violet was employed aboard another White Star Line ship, and the sister vessel to the Olympic, the RMS Titanic. Jessop was onboard when the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, but was able to find a lifeboat and survived.
Despite these two sea accidents she had been a part of, Jessop was undeterred, and during World War I, she served as a Red Cross stewardess aboard the HMHS Britannic.
It had been converted into a hospital ship and was transporting injured soldiers to the United Kingdom when they hit a German mine in the Aegean Sea and sank.
While escaping the sinking ship on a lifeboat, Jessop and many other passengers were almost sucked into the ship’s propeller blades, but narrowly escaped, cementing her reputation as “Miss Unsinkable.” She would later recount her harrowing story in Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessop who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters.