The Queen Of Shipwrecks : Violet Jessop – Bizarre Buffet
A Podcast, Of All You Can Eat Weird. – Listen To This Episode Right Here !
How did Violet Jessop survive the Titanic, Brittanic, & Olympic shipwrecks!? How does one person experience three historical disasters, and live to tell the tale ? Violet Jessop became known as ” The Queen of Sinking Ships“, due to her surviving three separate ship wreck incidents including none other than the RMS Titanic! Tune in to this episode of Bizarre Buffet to hear about this insane story.
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” The Queen Of Shipwrecks : Violet Jessop ” – Episode Credits
Hosted By Mark Tauriello , Jen Wilson , & Marc Bluestein .
Original Story Concept & Episode Art By Mark Tauriello
Episode Production By Marc Bluestein
S2E43
Released On August 29th, 2021
” The Queen Of Shipwrecks : Violet Jessop ” – Episode Show Notes
What is the most dangerous aspect of your line of work that could potentially hurt and kill you, or worse case scenario go wrong??
Violet Jessop – Early Years
Born October 2 in 1887 in Argentina, she was the older daughter of Irish immigrants who has 9 children. Out of the 9 children in her family, she was 1 of 6 that actually survived living in those specific times.
Much of her childhood she was caring for her younger siblings. At an early age she also had become ill with tuberculosis and was told that her illness would be fatal.
At the age of 16 her father passed away, so the family ended up moving to England where she started to attend convent school. She also took on the responsability of taking care of her younger sister while her mother was at sea working as a stewardess.
The Royal Mail Line
Unfortunatly, her mother became ill, and Violet Jessop left school and followed her mothers footsteps by becoming a stewardess as well.She was a very attractive young lady, so in order to be hired for such a job she had to dress her self down to make her self look less attractive.
She at first had a very difficult time finding work in their field considering that the other stewardesses were middle aged. By the time she was 21 years old, she earned her first stewardess position with the Royal Mail Line onboard the Orinoco. The Royal Mail Line was a British shipping company that shipped all over the world. Dispite not wearing make up and trying to “ugly” her self, it didn’t stop her from receiving 3 marriage proposals while working as a stewardess.
The RMS Olympic
In 1911, Jessop moved on to working as a stewardess on the RMS Olympic. Thew RMS Olympic was a luxury ship that was the largest ocean liner that carried civilians.
On September 20, 1911, the RMS Olypmic had collided with a British Warship called the HMS HAWKE. Nobody died! Nor did the ship sink. The sip was able to make art safely back to port without sinking. In Jessop’s memoirs, for some reason, she chose not to discuss this collision which is unusual considering the trend that will develop further in her life..
The RMS Titanic
Violet Jessop found her self on the Titanic. She boarded the RMS Titanic as a stewardess on April 10, 1912 at the age of 24. 4 Days Later, on the 14th of April, as we all know… the titanic struck an iceberg in the northern Atlantic and sank about 2 hours and 40 minutes after the collision. The film TITANIC is 3 hours and 15 minutes long…so the ship sank in less time than the overall length of the movie.
Due to the lack of urgency, and lifeboats (3,547 passingers and 18 lifeboats) 1,517 livers were lost out of 3,547
We have a piece of the titanic!
Violet references in her memoirs that she was ordered up ion deck to serve an example of how to behave for all of the non English speakers who could not follow instructions given to them .Eventually she was placed on life boat #16 where officers gave her a baby to look after while lowering the boat.
The ship sank and the next morning she with the rest of the survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia. While on the Carpathia and attending to this baby, a random woman (presumably the baby momma) snatched the baby fro her and ran off crying…not saying anything…not a hello. Not a thank you. Not a “ thats my baby”.
HMHS Brittanic
Not allowing the past 2 shipwrecks she encountered in her career to deter her from employment opportunities, she continued to serve as a stewardess on these ocean liners.
In November of 1916, she onboard the HMHS Britannic….the younger sister ship of the Titanic. This ship was converted to a hospital ship. After an unknown explosion, the Britannic sank in the Aegean Sea. 100 years later in 2016, a major diving expedition determined that the Britannic struck a deep sea mine. On this specific ship, 1,066 people were on board and 33 were killed.
Then the conspiracy theories unfolded, as people were saying that the British were responsible for intentionally sinking their own ship so they could blame it on German forces. As the ship was winking, Violet Jessop and several other passengers were almost killed by the ships propellers that were sucking life boats underwater toward the ships stern.
This forced her out of the lifeboat where she suffered from a traumatic head injury, but survived. She described the scene of the ship sinking as looking like a Childs toy falling unto the sea. Being a working gal, she went right back to the next gig in 1920 where she continues to work for White Star Line.
Violet Jessop – Later Years
Thankfully that was her last shipwreck, though she is nicknamed “THE QUEEN OF SHIPWRECKS”, she was just an honest woman who found comfort and pride in a specific industry in service to others at sea that unfortunately plagued by shipwrecks. She had a brief marriage in her late 30s, and ended up retiring in 1950.
Violet Jessop Receives A Mysterious Phone Call
Many years after the Titanic sinking, she claims that she received an anonymous phone call on a stormy night. When she answered the phone the woman on the other end asked her “If she had saved a baby the night the Titanic sank” to which she replied “Yes”. The woman then responded to Violet by saying “I was that baby, laughed, and hung up”.
It could be said that this was a prank phonecall, however, Violet claims that she never told anybody about that baby in her life, so there is no possible way anyone could have known otherwise.
Throughout her life, Jessop was called “Miss Unsinkable” (similar to that of Molly Brown the unsikable). However, her heart sank in 1971 when she had congestive heart failure at the age of 83.
In films about the Titanic and Britanic, she is referenced subtly.
