Friday, April 14, 2017

Violet Jessop: Miss Unsinkable

From the Vintage News comes this remarkable story of a woman - Violet Jessop "Miss Unsinkable" - who survived three historic shipping accidents:
White Star Line was a prominent British shipping company, famous for their luxurious liners. Founded in 1845, the company had their first liner, the Oceanic, built in 1870. The ship had a successful run; it was taking passengers across the Pacific until 1895 when it was decommissioned and sold for scrap. Encouraged by this success, White Star Line ordered three more vessels from Harland & Wolff, the same company that built the Oceanic. The new trio of luxurious ships were named Olympic-class ocean liners, which were constructed in the period from 1908 to 1914, and one of those ships later became the most famous vessel of all time.
These three ships where known as the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Britannic. Violet was aboard all three and survived to tell the tale. The story continues ....

Ship 1 - The Olympic:
In 1910, she became an employee of White Star Line and started working on the biggest civilian vessel of that time, the Olympic. On 20 September 1911, the Olympic collided with HMS Hawke, a British warship, specially designed to ram into other ships and sink them. The Olympic had its hull breached but still managed to sail into port. Violet Jessop was not harmed in the accident.
Ship 2 - the Titanic
Several months after the Olympic mishap, Violet joined the crew of the RMS Titanic. The luxurious and now biggest ship in the world left Southampton on 10 April 1912 and struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean four days later. Two hours after the accident, the ship sank, and 1503 passengers lost their lives.
Ship 3 - the Britannic
On 21 November 1916, the Britannic was in the Aegean Sea when she hit a mine planted by a German submarine. 57 minutes after that, the grandiose ship was already at the bottom of the sea. (Violet was working as a nurse).

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