Violet Constance Jessop | |
|---|---|
 Jessop in herVoluntary Aid Detachment uniform while assigned to HMHSBritannic. | |
| Born | (1887-10-02)2 October 1887 Bahía Blanca, Argentina |
| Died | 5 May 1971(1971-05-05) (aged 83) Great Ashfield, Suffolk, England |
| Nationality | Argentine |
| Citizenship | Irish |
| Occupation(s) | Maritime stewardess, nurse |
| Spouse | |
Violet Constance Jessop (2 October 1887 – 5 May 1971) was anIrish-Argentine ocean liner stewardess andVoluntary Aid Detachment nurse in the early 20th century. Jessop is best known for having survived the sinking of both RMSTitanic in 1912 and hersister shipHMHS Britannic in 1916, as well as having been aboard the eldest of the three sister ships,RMS Olympic, when itcollided with the British warshipHMS Hawke in 1911.[1][2]
Born in thepampas on 2 October 1887, nearBahía Blanca, Argentina, Violet Constance Jessop was the eldest daughter of Irish immigrants Katherine (née Kelly) and William Jessop, a sheep farmer.[3][4][5] She was the first of nine children, six of whom survived. Jessop spent much of her childhood caring for her younger siblings. She became very ill as a child with what is presumed to have beentuberculosis, which she survived contrary to doctors' predictions that her illness would be fatal.[6] When Jessop was 16 years old, her father died of complications from surgery and her family moved to England, where she attended aconvent school[3] and cared for her youngest sister while her mother was at sea working as a stewardess.[6] When her mother became ill, Jessop left school and, following in her mother's footsteps, applied to be a stewardess. Jessop had to dress down to make herself less attractive to be hired.[7] At age 21, her first stewardess position was withRoyal Mail Line aboardOrinoco in 1908.[3][6]
In 1911, Jessop began working as a stewardess for theWhite Star liner RMSOlympic.[8]Olympic was a luxury ship that was the largest civilian liner at that time.[3] Jessop was aboard on 20 September 1911, whenOlympic left from Southampton and collided with the British warshipHMS Hawke.[1][8] There were no fatalities[1] and, despite damage, the ship returned to port unaided.[8] Jessop did not discuss this collision in her memoirs. She continued to work onOlympic until April 1912, when she was transferred to its sister shipTitanic.[6]
Jessop boardedTitanic as a stewardess on 10 April 1912, at age 24.[1] Four days later, on 14 April, it struck an iceberg in theNorth Atlantic andsank about two hours and forty minutes after the collision.[9] 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.[3] She watched as the crew loaded the lifeboats.[1] She was later ordered intolifeboat 16, and as the boat was being lowered,Titanic's sixth officer, James Paul Moody, gave her a baby to look after. The next morning, Jessop and the rest of the survivors were rescued by theRMS Carpathia and taken toNew York City on 18 April. According to Jessop, while aboardCarpathia, a woman, presumably the baby's mother, grabbed the baby she was holding and ran off crying, without saying a word.[3] After arriving in New York City, she later returned to Southampton.[8]
In theFirst World War, Jessop was a stewardess with nursing duties for theBritish Red Cross.[3] On the morning of 21 November 1916 she was aboard thehospital shipBritannic, the younger sister ship ofOlympic andTitanic, when it sank in theAegean Sea after detonating a Germannaval mine.[1][10]Britannic sank within 55 minutes, killing 30 of the 1,066 people aboard.
WhileBritannic was sinking, Jessop and other passengers were nearly killed by the ship's propellers that were shredding lifeboats that collided with them.[10] Jessop had to jump out of her lifeboat, resulting in a traumatic head injury which she survived.[1][6] In her memoirs, she described the scene she witnessed asBritannic went under: "The white pride of the ocean's medical world ... dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths."[10] Two otherTitanic survivors,Arthur John Priest andArchie Jewell, were also aboard and both survived.
Jessop returned to work for White Star Line in 1920,[1] before joiningRed Star Line and thenRoyal Mail Line again.[11] In her time with Red Star, Jessop went on two cruises around the World on the company's flagship,Belgenland. When Jessop was 36, she married John James Lewis, a fellow White Star Line steward. Lewis had served aboardOlympic andMajestic. They divorced around a year later. In 1950, she retired toGreat Ashfield, Suffolk.
Years after her retirement, Jessop claimed to have received a telephone call, on a stormy night, from a woman who asked Jessop if she had saved a baby on the night thatTitanic sank. "Yes," Jessop replied. The voice then said "I was that baby," laughed, and hung up. Her friend and biographerJohn Maxtone-Graham said it was most likely some children in the village playing a joke on her. She replied, "No, John, I had never told that story to anyone before I told you now." Records indicate that the only baby on lifeboat 16 was As'ad Tannūs, also known as Assad Thomas, who was handed to Edwina Troutt, and later reunited with his mother onCarpathia. However, Tannūs died on 12 June 1931,[12] so he could not have 'phoned Jessop two decades later. But reports also failed to mentionMilvina Dean, who was a two-month-old baby during the sinking ofTitanic so she also could have been the one who made the call.
Jessop died ofcongestive heart failure in 1971 at the age of 83.[13][11]
In the 1958 filmA Night To Remember, a scene depicts naval architectThomas Andrews (played byMichael Goodliffe) instructing a stewardess to be seen wearing her life jacket as an example to the other passengers. Several scenes from this film inspired later depictions of the sinking; inJames Cameron's later 1997 blockbusterTitanic, a similar encounter takes place involving Andrews and a stewardess named Lucy, who is also told to wear her life jacket in order to convince the passengers to do the same.
In the 1979 television movieS.O.S. Titanic, she was portrayed as an elderly stewardess played byMadge Ryan.
In the 2000 television movieBritannic, the main character is Vera Campbell (played byAmanda Ryan), a woman who is apprehensive about travelling onBritannic because she had survived the sinking ofTitanic four years earlier.
In 2006, "Shadow Divers" John Chatterton and Richie Kohler led an expedition to dive HMHSBritannic. The dive team needed to accomplish a number of tasks including reviewing the expansion joints. The team was looking for evidence that would change the thinking on RMSTitanic's sinking. During the expedition, Rosemary E. Lunn[14] played the role of Violet Jessop, re-enacting her jumping into the water, from her lifeboat which was being drawn intoBritannic's still turning propellers.
The character of Jessop is featured in the Chris Burgess stage playIceberg – Right Ahead!, staged for the first timeUpstairs at the Gatehouse inHighgate, March 2012, to commemorate the centenary of the sinking ofTitanic. Jessop's role was played byAmy-Joyce Hastings.[15]
Jessop is a secondary character in the 2020 historical horror novelThe Deep byAlma Katsu. The fictional main character meets Jessop while working aboardTitanic; offers her a job; and later works with her aboardBritannic.
Miss Violet Constance Jessop, 24, of 71 Shirley Road, Bedford Park, London was born in the pampas near Bahia Blanca, Argentina, the first child of Irish emigrants William and Katherine (née Kelly) Jessop. Her father was a sheep farmer and she had five younger brothers and sisters. As a child Violet contracted Tuberculosis, Doctors gave her only months to live but she managed to overcome the disease.
Violet Jessop third from left; with fellow Titanic Stewardesses at Millbay Dock, Plymouth England after return on SS Lapland April 1912
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