- Titanic stewardess Violet Jessop also survived another sinking years after the tragedy.
- Jessop was on board HMHS Britannic when it struck a mine in 1916 and sank.
- Before joining the Titanic, she was also aboard a ship that was involved in a collision.
More than 100 years after the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, the stories of survivors still captivate people around the world.
But one survivor's story was more shocking than most. Violet Jessop was a cruise-ship stewardess who survived not one, but two cruise-ship sinkings during her career.
Jessop was born on October 2, 1887, outside the city of Bahía Blanca, Argentina, according to the historical record publication The Archive. She was one of nine children — six of whom survived infancy — and her parents were Irish immigrants, the outlet added.
Jessop's father died when she was 16, and the family subsequently relocated to London, where her mother became a stewardess on a cruise ship, The Archive wrote. When Jessop turned 21 in 1908, she followed in her mother's footsteps and applied to become a stewardess, too. The decision would set in motion a string of events that changed Jessop's life.
Jessop survived 2 ship sinkings and one collision
Jessop worked on several ships, including the RMS Majestic and the RMS Olympic, Titanic's sister ship.
Before joining the Titanic in 1912, she was on board the Olympic when it collided with HMS Hawke off the Isle of Wight, an island in the English Channel, on September 20, 1911.
The collision caused large holes in Hawke's hull and the ship lost its bow, while Olympic's watertight compartments flooded, according to Ocean Liners Magazine.
Unlike the major incidents Jessop would later experience, there were no fatalities on either ship. In fact, the incident was likely deemed insignificant by Jessop since there was no mention of it in her memoir, John Maxtone-Graham, who edited the manuscript after Jessop's death in 1971, wrote in the book's preface.
Jessop joined the Titanic in 1912 when she was 24, according to the UK's National Archives.
Jessop was in bed when the Titanic hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912
Upon realizing the ship was sinking, she left her cabin and helped women and children into lifeboats, the National Archives wrote. She was handed a baby and ordered into a lifeboat before the ship sank.
She was among the 700 survivors. More than 1,500 people died in the tragedy.
According to the National Archives, despite the ordeal she went through on the Titanic, Jessop returned to sea shortly after. She was on board the HMHS Britannic as a wartime nurse on November 21, 1916, when that ship struck a mine and started to sink.
Jessop was able to get to a lifeboat. However, the turning of the ship's propellers created a current that pulled some of the lifeboats closer to the ship, which resulted in the shredding of some of the boats, as well as injuries and deaths of some of the passengers, the National Archives said. Jessop's was one of the lifeboats that was pulled towards the ship, and she sustained a head injury after banging her head against the boat's keel, the National Archives reported.
Jessop was one of the 1,000 people to survive the sinking, while 30 passengers lost their lives, according to the National Archives.
Her injury was apparent to Maxtone-Graham when he interviewed Jessop in 1970 for a book about Titanic survivors.
"She was almost completely bald and wore an auburn wig, legacy, I would learn years later, of a violent head injury received while abandoning Britannic," Maxtone-Graham wrote in the preface of Jessop's memoir.
Jessop retired from the sea in 1960 at the age of 63, according to the National Archives report. She spent the next two decades in retirement until she died of heart failure in 1971.