Do you consider yourself lucky just because you won a free plastic ka dabba [plastic container] the other day?
If yes, then, I’m sure you haven’t heard about this lady.
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Dunno if she’s been talked about before, but, she is Violet Constance Jessop.
An Irish - Argentine ocean liner stewardess and nurse, she is popularly called “Miss Unsinkable”.
But, do you even have a clue of how lucky she’s been?
Jessop began working as a stewardess for the White Star vessel RMS Olympic, the largest civilian liner of the time, and was on board, on 20 September 1911, when Olympic collided with the British warship HMS Hawke.
There were no fatalities and despite damage, the ship was able to make it back to port without sinking.
So, Violet survived!
Just four days after boarding RMS Titanic, as a stewardess, on 14 April 1912, it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and sank about two hours and forty minutes after the collision.
She watched as the crew loaded the lifeboats, and was later ordered into lifeboat 16. The next morning, Jessop and the rest of the survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia.
All in all, Violet survived, again!
During the First World War, Jessop served as a stewardess for the British Red Cross. On the morning of 21 November 1916, she was on board HMHS Britannic, a White Star liner that had been converted into a hospital ship, when it sank in the Aegean Sea due to an unexplained explosion.
While Britannic was sinking, Jessop and other passengers were nearly killed by the boat’s propellers that were sucking lifeboats under the stern. Jessop had to jump out of her lifeboat, resulting in a traumatic head injury which she survived.
But, Violet Jessop survived, yet again.
This lady, Violet Jessop, survived not 1, not 2 but THREE most tragic ship disasters of the 20th century, which included the disastrous collision of RMS Olympic and the catastrophic sinkings of RMS Titanic and HMHS Britannic.
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But, this lady, after living such a topsy-turvy life, died of congestive heart failure in 1971 at the age of 83.
In my opinion, she was, is and will forever remain the luckiest person on the Earth, until someone even comes near her unusual record.
