Titanic Survivor

Violet Jessop was probably the only rescued person with a toothbrush after the Britannic struck a mine and sank. But then she had been on the Titanic four years earlier and remembered what she had missed... In 1934, she wrote her memoirs. After a childhood in Argentina and formative years in England, she became a stewardees aboard a variety of passenger ships. She was there when Titanic sideswiped the iceberg and sank; four years later, she was a wartime nurse aboard the hospital ship Britannic. Service with the White Star Line put her literally in harm's way, at the center of two epic maritime disasters. Her life was saved on the Titanic because an officer asked her to get into a lifeboat so non-English speaking emigrants would follow her example. But apart from these historically significant occasions, there is much, much more. Few, if any, ocean liner stewardesses ever wrote their memoirs; hence, Violet Jessop's life story is doubly valuable - one of a kind as well a articulate, authoritative and informative. From her unique vantage point, whether in pantry or glory hole, on deck or in a lifeboat, we are suddenly privy to below-stairs life aboard the great ocean liners.