Quote:
Originally Posted by OneBoatman
Only Molly 'Maggie' Brown is 'was' unsinkable. 
|
Margaret Brown’s friends called her "Maggie", but the press miss-dubbed her the "Unsinkable Molly Brown". However, she only survived one maritime disaster, the “Titanic” sinking.
Violet Jessop, however, was truly unsinkable, both at sea and on land. Jessop survived four [& 1/2] disasters:
1. Shortly after being born, in 1887, to Irish parents, in
Argentina, she developed tuberculosis, and wasn’t expected to live more than six months. Instead, she fought off TB, and lived to adulthood.
2. On a routine trip in 1911, the
"Olympic" ran into a British warship called the HMS "Hawke". The impact severely damaged the Olympic’s
hull (and below the
water line), but it hobbled back to port in
England, without sustaining any casualties.
3. About seven months later, Jessop was assigned to another of White Star’s ships, the
"Titanic", on its maiden voyage. But, while the boat quickly sank, Jessop still had to
work, charged with standing on a
deck, and acting out proper
safety and evacuation procedures, to non-English-speaking passengers, unable to understand the verbal orders. Jessop was among the last crew members to flee the Titanic, and after a few hours adrift in a lifeboat (while holding a baby that had been handed to her), she was among those rescued by the RMS "Carpathia".
4. When World War I broke out, the White Star Line converted its ship the
"Britannic" into a hospital transport vessel. Jessop worked as a stewardess. in conjunction with the Red Cross, onboard the Britannic. In November 1916, the ship was less than an hour into a voyage, on the Aegean Sea, when an explosion of some kind [it could have been a mine, or a torpedo] led the ship to rapidly sink. Thirty people died, but Jessop survived.
4.5 She almost got killed again, during this particular ordeal ['Britannic']. Her lifeboat got stuck under the stern, and she and other passengers were nearly torn apart by the boat’s propellers. She jumped out of her lifeboat and sustained serious injuries… but she survived. And resumed her
work for the White Star Line in 1920.