Unsinkable c 'Titanic': the story of Violet Jessop, who survived the crash of three ships
'14.03.2020'
Source: Woman.ru
The phenomenon of Violette Jessop excites researchers around the world: still, this girl, according to all the laws of probability theory, had to die - and more than once. But instead, she cheerfully survived fatal diseases, and poverty, and hunger, and several wrecks of ocean liners. Just luck? Or was Violett protected by a higher power? Woman.ru offers to sort things out together.
When Violette Constance Jessop was born, doctors measured her only a couple of months of life. Six months is the maximum that her parents, Irish immigrants William Jessop and Katherine Kelly could count on. The baby became the ninth child in a poor family who moved to Argentina, and immediately caught tuberculosis. The treatment and even the “rest” prescribed by the doctors could not afford her parents, and they reconciled. He will die, so he will die. But, strangely enough, this girl was not going to say goodbye to life. A month passed, then a second, and then a year. At the next examination, the doctors spread their hands: somehow Violet managed to recover. This is where her amazing Dickensian story began.
Violette’s father left Ireland in his hungry years: he hoped that luck would smile in Argentina and he could provide a large family with at least the most necessary. The only thing he could do and do it well was to graze and raise cattle. But there were a lot of emigrants like him at that time, and therefore William Jessop clutched at any part-time job, often disappeared for days and practically did not eat anything. Violet was not 16 when he died. Katherine packed her bags and bought a ticket to England with her last money. It's time to go home.
They settled poorly, always lacked money, and therefore the mother of nine children made the only right decision at that time: to distribute the kids to boarding school type. True, you need to pay a considerable amount for a real boarding house, but educational institutions at the monasteries did not require a fee - in any case, not all. So young Violette went to a Christian school at a nunnery, and with her a younger sister.
Clever, quick-witted, calm and obedient, Violette immediately charmed both the nuns and the abbess. The girl was not afraid of hard work, eagerly helped other novices, easily memorized sacred texts and, in general, did not cause any problems. On the contrary, at 16 she seemed an accomplished woman, she deftly cared for her younger sister while their mother was away. Yes, at that time Katherine Kelly traveled a lot - she got a job as an air hostess on ocean liners and spent almost all her time swimming.
At the beginning of the 10th century, shipping was developing rapidly, and therefore ships always needed new crew members - especially hardy ones. Especially those who have nothing to lose. It is not known whether Katherine Kelly reported that she had 350 children left on land. At the time of the interview, she was only concerned about one thing - the need to provide the family with at least some means of subsistence. And if in order for her children to not starve to death, she had to spend XNUMX days a year in the ocean, she would agree without hesitation.
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The abbess believed that upon completion of her studies, Violette would take a vow and become a nun, but this did not happen. Not because the girl dreamed about social life. It just didn’t work out: at the end of the training, news came of mother's illness. Due to the difficult working conditions, Katherine weakened, ceased to cope with work, and she was “asked”. Violette realized that she could not pray all day in the cell, knowing that her mother and sister had nothing to eat. Whether their older brothers and sisters helped them at that time is not known for certain.
Be that as it may, after leaving the monastery school she was very good at cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and linen, ironing, and if necessary, could provide first aid and even suture wounds - the nuns taught the girls how to do nursing. With such a specific education, Violet did not know where to go, and therefore decided to go in the footsteps of her mother - and got a job as a stewardess. At that time, mostly middle-aged women were taken aboard - experienced enough not to be afraid of hard work, and elderly enough not to arrange a love adventure during the voyage.
21-year-old Violette would hardly have been accepted into the state, and therefore, before the interview, the girl consulted her mother and, on her advice, made herself an old-fashioned hairstyle. She borrowed clothes and shoes from lying Catherine, and from cosmetics she applied only whiten on her face - to remove the girlish blush. On the same day she was accepted into the crew of the Orinoco liner.
The first disaster in Violet’s life happened two years later. Then, in June 1911, a 23-year-old stewardess boarded the transatlantic ship Olympic. Captain Edward John Smith was one of the best military officers, and his assistants were the young and ambitious William McMaster Murdoch and Charles Herbert Lightoller. As the newspapers then wrote, due to the unpredictable and severe weather conditions of the Atlantic Ocean, the Olimpik made unsuccessful maneuvers and collided with the cruiser Hawk.
Contemporaries accepted this version with disbelief: perhaps, a different story was hidden behind this unconvincing story, but this information seems to have become a military secret. At least in her memoirs, Violet Jessop spoke extremely dry about this incident. Yes, that day the young stewardess survived, just as everyone else survived, because due to an insignificant collision both ships remained afloat. Violet was not too worried about her life. The nuns explained to her what eternal life is and why it is important to accept all hardship with humility.
However, after the story of Olimpik got into the press, the sisters of the Catholic monastery where the girl was studying were scared. One old Irish nun gave Violette her own translation of an old Jewish prayer, which, according to Jessop herself, "protected from the elements of fire and water." It was this note with sacred words that the girl clutched in her hands every evening during prayer, and she accompanied her on the Titanic.
Violet did not want to board the Titanic, an exact copy of the Olympic. History repeated itself - even the captain and assistants on board were the same: Smith, Murdoch and Lightoller. Jessop did not believe in signs, but cats scratched their hearts. And yet: they paid good money, and a mark on the service on such a ship could come in handy in the future. After some thought, Violet agreed. On April 10, 1912, the girl, along with other crew members, climbed the Titanic.
No, she didn’t panic. Not at the moment when an alarm sounded on all decks, nor during the evacuation of passengers. Instead, she read the words of the prayer delivered to her by an Irish nun. When the ship collided with an iceberg on April 14, Violette, along with her cabin neighbor (also a stewardess), were already asleep. Having learned that absolutely all passengers and crew were asked to go up to the upper deck, they, together with their companion, dressed without any fuss, gathered some things (the prayer first fit in Violet’s breast pocket) and went upstairs.
According to Jessop, on the upper deck everything was pretty calm. Nobody shouted, did not run, because at first few people understood the scale of the disaster. It seems like an unusual and very original entertainment - to raise an alarm on an unsinkable airliner late at night. True, when the shaking and rattle began, and the ship began to go under the water a little, the laughing gentlemen and sleepy ladies were really alarmed. The crush began. No one wanted to go down on water in rescue boats. “Guinea pigs” became stewardesses.
According to Violette, the captain of the ship ordered several girls from the service personnel to take the first boat at number 16 to show the ladies from high society that it was absolutely safe to do this. Violette, along with the rest of the flight attendants, dutifully sat on the wooden bench of the boat. When their heads almost disappeared overboard the Titanic, some woman slipped Violette into a child, wrapped in a blanket. “Take care of him,” the girl only heard.
Jessop became the only survivor who confirmed: during the crash of the Titanic, the ship’s orchestra played sacred hymns, one of which was “Closer, Lord, to Thee.”
Violet was saved. She held the child tightly to her, even when she found herself on dry land. There, in this bustle, a woman approached her and almost tore the baby out. “This is mine,” she said only. Violet never found out who this woman was and whose child she had saved. Later, doubts crept into my head, why was the happy mother not happy to meet? And why didn't you just say thank you? True, many years later, the already elderly Violet received a call from an unknown number. When she answered the phone, someone asked her through laughter: "Did you save the child from the Titanic?" When Jessop answered in the affirmative, the other end of the phone line said, "That child was me." And they hung up.
Violet never managed to find out if the baby survived that night, whose heir he was and then went to his family (if any). And she didn’t believe telephone hooligans much - it looked more like a mockery, a mockery, than the first “meeting” with a rescued child many years later. However, she did not lose hope and believed that everything was in order with that baby from the blanket.
If you think that Jessop saved and stopped working as a flight attendant, then you are mistaken. Having recovered after the disaster, she again returned to sea voyages and, as if nothing had happened, worked on liners and ships. Neither weather conditions nor extreme situations stopped her. So, during World War I, Violette Constance Jessop served as a nurse in the military Britannica, the third twin of Olympic.
It would seem that the third time the “curse” of such a ship does not overtake. But it was not there. During the voyage, the Britannic was blown up by a German mine, and part of the front compartments was flooded. The captain decided to evacuate and launched the first two rescue boats into the water. Among those who were “lucky” to leave the damaged ship earlier than all, were flight attendants and nurses, including Violette.
Only when both boats were lowered down, the ship's captain announced the cancellation of the evacuation order - it was extremely dangerous to do so. Due to damage to the Britannica, a real whirlpool appeared at the bottom of the ship’s bow. The boats immediately began to drag under the water to the propellers, which continued to work at full capacity. Violet was the only one who managed to survive after this rescue operation. She noticed what was happening, and without losing time dived into the water. She was unable to swim far, and she hit hard on the keel of the ship. As she later wrote in her memoirs, her life was covered with thick hair, which she always collected on the back of her head. They softened the blow and allowed her to remain conscious.
True, a few years later the injury made itself felt: Jessop was overcome by headaches and, when she went to the doctor, it turned out that she had been walking with a crack in her skull for many years.
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Until her very old age, Violette Jessop worked as a stewardess: rising all the way up the career ladder, in recent years she served liners for extremely wealthy people and made a couple of trips around the world. According to unconfirmed reports, she managed to marry a sailor whom she met at work. True, they wondered whether they had children or not. At least Miss Jessop has no official heirs.
She was called "Unsinkable" and "Catastrophe" at the same time. Surviving the Titanic is either God's blessing or a devilish curse. Considering how often Violet was accompanied by failure, society tended to a second explanation for its vitality. The stewardess herself and the nurse only smiled at such speculation. She remained a Catholic believer, still often visited the monastery, where she studied several years after the move, and led a very modest and quiet life.
Having retired in 1950, Violette moved to Suffolk, in the small settlement of Great Ashfield, and began writing memoirs. At the same time, her friend John Maxtone-Graham took up the biography of “Unsinkable”. These books, more reminiscent of adventure novels, are still reprinted around the world in huge print runs, and researchers at Titanic consider Jessop to be one of the most mysterious. What is her secret? Why did she manage to survive every time even in the most extreme situations? And how did such a young girl maintain her composure when even military officers lost him? Unfortunately, the answers to these questions were not found during the life of the stewardess. They did not solve them even after.
Violette Constance Jessop died in 1971 at the age of 83 from heart failure.
