Violet Jessop survived sinking Titanic - April 14, 1912

On this day in 1912, stewardess Violet Jessop escaped the sinking Titanic on a lifeboat.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Greetings everyone, Welcome to This Day in History Class,
where we learn a smidgen of history every day. Today
is April nineteen. The day was April fourteenth nine. Violet

(00:27):
Constance Jessup was working as a stewardess aboard the Royal
Mail ship Titanic when it crashed into an iceberg. Violet
calmly escorted passengers to boats, and eventually she escaped from
the Titanic on a lifeboat. But it wouldn't be the
last time Violet would survive a sinking ship. Violet's mother

(00:48):
worked as a stewardess and the Royal Mail Line, a
shipping company, for five years, but her mom's health deteriorated
and she was no longer up for the job. Violet
was working as a governess, but she wasn't making nearly
enough money to take care of her siblings and mother,
so Violet also decided to pursue a job as a
stewardess and the Royal Mail Line to support her family.

(01:12):
Violet's interviewer told her that she was too young and
too pretty to be a stewardess, but she got the
job anyway. She started on the Orinoco, traveling to the Caribbean.
It was a tough job and Violet didn't have any
experience in it, so she basically had to learn as
she went. She had to run passengers, errands, clean cabins,

(01:34):
and tend to stick passengers, among other taxing responsibilities. Being
stuck on a ship with passengers and crew who could
be bothersome and demanding while still having to complete difficult
work was a feat, but she acclimated, and she enjoyed
her time in port cities where she could get some
relief from her work and have a little leisure time.

(01:56):
But Jessup was fired from her job when a captain
who was romantic interested in her accused her of flirting
with officers. That's when she got a job as a
stewardess for the White Star Line, another British shipping company.
She'd heard that the roots its ships took were particularly treacherous,
and there was word that its passengers expected superior service

(02:18):
from crew. But since her exit from the Royal Mail
job wasn't on good terms, she ended up taking the
job at White Star anyway, and it went pretty well.
Her passengers liked her because she was a crowd favorite,
Violet was chosen to serve aboard the Olympic on its
maiden voyage in nineteen eleven. Violet was happy aboard the Olympic,

(02:40):
and she didn't seem phased by its collision with the
h M. S Hawk in September of that year. She
continued her work on the ship after it was out
of commission for a couple of months, but Violet's friends
convinced her to join the crew of the White Star
Lines Titanic when she was selected to work on its
maiden voyage. When the Titanic collided with the iceberg that

(03:02):
caused its demise, Violet was comfortably drowsy. As she put it, Violet,
like many other people aboard, didn't quite realize the urgency
of the situation, and she went back to her room
after helping passengers board boats. But as the ship tilted
to a dangerous angle, it became clear that the circumstances

(03:22):
were dire. She said in her memoir, I was ordered
up on deck calmly, passengers strolled about. I stood at
the bulkhead with the other stewardesses, watching the women cling
to their husbands before being put into the boats with
their children. Sometime after, a ship's officer ordered us into
the boat first to show some women it was safe.

(03:44):
As the boat was being lowered, the officer called here,
miss jessup, look after this baby, and a bundle was
dropped onto my lap. The people in her boat were
rescued by the ship the Carpathia after eight hours. The
Titanic sinking was a terrible incident, but Violet went back
to work. In nineteen fourteen, as World War One was beginning,

(04:09):
Violet began serving as a nurse with the British Red Cross.
Soon she was back aboard a ship, this time the Britannic,
the Titanic sister ship. Just four and a half years
after the Titanic incident, Violet was in another wreck, the
Britannic struck a Mind and the Aegean, but Violet again
made it out on a lifeboat. In her memoir, she

(04:32):
described being sucked under the ship's keel, hitting her head
and escaping, only to discover she had fractured her skull
years later when she went to the doctor for headaches.
Violet worked as a clerk during the war, then continued
her work as a stewardess during her later years. She
took more jobs as a clerk and in factories. After

(04:54):
a brief marriage and forty two years at sea, she
retired in Suffolk, England. Her memoir was published in nine
seven decades after her death. In May nineteen seventy one.
I'm Eve Stepcote and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like

(05:14):
to learn more about Violet, listen to the episode of
Stuff you Missed in History class called the Unsinkable Violet Jessup.
Keep up with us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at
t d i h C Podcast. We'll be back with
more history tomorrow