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The Woman Who Survived The Titanic, The Olympic, and The Britannic
The incredible story of ‘Miss Unsinkable’, Violet Jessop
Located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Harland and Wolff Shipyard was responsible for the building of numerous large ships over the course of the late 1800s and into the 1900s. The White Star Line commissioned the construction of three ships in particular — RMS Olympic, the now infamous RMS Titanic, and HMHS Britannic. Little did they know at the time that all three of these liners would run into serious problems in their lifetimes, causing two of them to sink.
Born in Argentina in 1887, Violet Jessop had a tough start in life. She was one of six children out of a total of nine in her family to survive infancy. Growing up, she suffered from tuberculosis and her parents were told that she had little chance of survival. Miraculously, she overcame the disease and made a full recovery. Following the death of her father, Jessop and her family moved to England and she began to seek work as a ship stewardess. Being just twenty-one years of age, Violet had to dress in old clothes and wear no make-up to interviews in order to make herself look older. She was hired and worked for a short time on-board the Royal Mail steamer ‘Orinoco’ before being hired by the White Star Line in 1908.
