This is as great as Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest true escape stories of all time. In this episode, we set sale into the story of Miss Unsinkable and it brings us up close and personal with an infamous historic disaster. And yes, I am talking about my former relationship. I'm Arthur Castro, and I'm joined by the incredible writer and actress for stage and screen, Zowe Chow. Hello, everybody.
I am so excited to have with us the incredibly talented, very funny and all around good person and also Hawaii connoisseur. Zoe is how aloha? That's about the two things that you know about Hawaii? Correct?
Yep, Aloha and aloha.
Wow. In the way you say it, I can tell the difference.
She's bilingual.
I know. Hey, Zoe, thank you so much for being with us. I'm long time I did. Do you have anything that you consider greatest escape?
This is not an escape, but I remember being stuck at the movie theater with some friends and we were waiting to be picked up, and I was like, let's call people and say we're from Jenny Craig.
And I This was nineteen ninety four, where Jenny Craig was all the rage.
Yeah, all right, although is she maybe? Yeah?
So I called my dad, I think from a pay phone, and I said I left a message, and I think he was so confused he got really when he finally figured out it was me, he was I would say, disproportionately angry because I think it took him a while to figure it out. But I was like, don't be late to pick me up.
Then, right, And he's like, well, now you have to walk home and you're still waiting at the movie theater as we speak.
I am.
Don't you feel that Like in the nineties or whatever, like people were just like way more willing to stay on the phone to figure out what the fuck was up? You know what I say, Like right now, if you get called, I was like, this is Jenny greg You're like, all right, fuck you, like whatever. Back in the day, it's like, tell me more, how do how do you know about me? What?
I think?
He tried to write down the number over and over again that I had left to be like call us back.
Yeah. You know. The last thing I'll say about telephones in the nineties or like early two thousands or whatever, is that my kids when I have if I ever do we'll never know the fear it was to call a person you liked to ask to speak to them, to ge and Watemala like dads were so like kind
of cliche, asked how fucking mean? They were like they would like literally, like you know, and Spanish is such a much more flourishy language when you when you're trying to be polite, right, you're like like, hello, I don't mean to bother you in this finny evening by bah, you know that sort of shit, And and you'd like call at like five thirty pm and you'd be like hello, Hello, Yeah, who the fuck is this? You know? And oh, yeah, sir sir, but the pardon a pleasure? You're quite sir, how are they?
Yes?
Yeah, ye Yonder is I a daughter of this? And he's like, I remember this was a classic line. They were like it's pretty late to be calling, isn't it. And you're like, well, it's fucking five thirty pm or whatever, you know. So you go through this fucking like, you know, like this mote of angry father theom and then you like get on the phone with a girl and be like Hi, Hi, what do you what do you do? Nothing? Oh, that's cool.
You know it's for dinner.
Anyway. I have this like little device on my neck that I get electro shocked when I'm not being entertaining for my overlords, over nations. That's my fault. Probably I thought that wasn't working. I'm glad to hear it's getting through. It is, it is, it is, Carl, Thank you so much I felt that. So let's get ready to actually escape. Okay, Zoe, Today we have not one, not two, but three harrowing
death defying escapes, and all by one woman. Yeah, and so to start her story, we go back all the way to the eighteen nineties where telephone payphone still existed, where we meet her as a little girl named Violet jessup Right. She would spend her days standing at the seaside watching big ships sail into the port of Bayeavlanka and Argentina.
As one does.
Yes, who hasn't been to write a poem? So Violet Stad worked for the port authority there, so when a ship came in and sailors would stop by her family's house and bring presents, bribes, presents, and she remembered tins of marmalades and boxes of chocolates brought to her from far away places, and the day that her little brother was born, sailors gathered to sing Irish songs. Do you know any Irish sea shanties?
Oh me, lad, No, but I saw Ben.
She's a Venish. She is that Scott. That's Irish that we You know, we actually have an Irish song expert on our team. This is no joke, Carl, Carl Nolas, one of our main producers, is actually what are you an expert in Irish folk songs? Is something like that? Yeah?
I performed for a long time in a band called Sea Song Freedom Song.
Yeah.
Can you give us a little taste? Can you give us a little taste?
Let's do a here we go two three? What do you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a drunken swiler in the morning?
To be honest, thank you, Carl. That was awesome, But I would have expected something a little late, less mainstream. That's okay. You know we all knew that song, just like you have a long episode. Let's think of any one, Okay. So you see, Violet's family was far from home. Right. I always thought it was weird that this was a girl in Argentina named Violet Jessup. But they were Irish, you know, and they were living in Argentina. So they
loved drinking heavily and gesturing wildly around them. You know, that's what Argentinas do. They're just like I can do it. So sorry to Argentina family.
Hit meat.
Steak. Do you like steak so? Which is Spanish for I have steak, tango steak. So. When Violet's father died, her mom decided to seal them back across the Atlantic to raise them in London. So Violet's first trip across the Atlantic was a pretty fucking terrible one, right, So she spent a lot of the time sick. Plus the ship was carrying cattle below well what they usually call illness. It's all sort of things, right. She had the humors,
She had the humors. The ship was carrying this cattle below the decks, and Violet mostly remember watching the sailors throw dead cow carcasses overboard as they died. Oh god, so such an unfortunate sound effect. How do you do on boats? Are you good on boats? Have you ever had a sea no, no.
If you if one can feel seasick on a boat, I'm going to be feeling seasick.
I have a big scar.
On my knee, my right knee from going scuba diving and getting really sick when I came up from my first swim and then sliced my knee vomiting out the boat.
Yes, I remember that story. The Bahamas is still talking about it.
I puked and then all the Swedish people puked.
They're like, yeah, I don't like this and this does not feel good. Tuck. So back to Violet.
Sure, sure, Jessup missed Jessup.
So Violet's first trip should have been a no omen of what was coming for her, but she didn't really take it that way right, And there was one magical part of the journey.
You know.
Violet says that for the first time she saw a swarm of flying fish skimming over the ocean, and that's really cool. I don't know if you've ever seen something, but it's like, I haven't, but I've heard.
But a YouTube.
Yeah for YouTube. It. So when they reached London, relatives took them in. You know, Violet was sixteen and the oldest of the kids. So she helped raise the others while their mother worked. Right, she took a job as a stewardess for the biggest shipping company in the world, the Royal main Line, and they sponsored this show, so I have to say that their name like Royal main Line. But five years later, though, Violet's mom got sick, too sick to go to sea, so Violet decided to step
up and she took her mother's place. There was one problem, though, Zoe, you want me to tell you about it? Yeah, they said that Violent was too young and too pretty to work as a royal male stewardess. Like what the fuck is that about? Like what are you supposed like, what are you supposed to whatever? To me? I mean, I was gonna say, like every day I am too hot to do a job. You know what I'm saying? What are you supposed to do if you're too hot? An
Irish person in nineteenth century? Like, imagine that?
Also, what does that look like? What is too hot at the turn of the century.
Looks like her ankles were gleaming. They were gleaming, glistening in the sun, gleaming ankles cleaning. You know, I guess this is not Victorian age. But I just always imagine people getting really wrapped up for like bare ankles. But Violet was the determined, right so she One account says that she made herself more plain for interviews by wearing
her worst clothes, and eventually she succeeded. She was beginning to I imagine her talking to her friends like, yeah, I'm just like I just can't make myself look ugly like.
These, I look less snatched.
Yeah, I love the word snatch. Thank you crazy. If you ever had a job that you wanted so badly that you would have done anything or said anything.
To get it, yeah, I mean when I first moved to La I took a fake resume and my real headshot and hit the sunset strip, went to Cabo Cantina, was like can I work here? And They're like no, And then I somehow wound up at Chateau Marmont at Barmarmont, right, and like lied my way into a job there that I worked for four and a half years. No, we had to wear like silk red chiapows with frog buttons.
They're like I did.
Bellboy stuff for not even close.
But this was a This was like a dress that had like opium den vies to Barbarmont and so he had to wear thigh highs and garter belt.
Whoa. So back to Violet. So let's talk about our girl Violet. Violet set sail in nineteen oh eight. She was twenty one years old and the breadwinner form and working for the Royal Mainline. She was about to see the world. She was a lucky, plucky savvy heard the working Irish lass. So she did alright working on the ocean. That's the last time I'm going to do an Irish axon. I apologize to all my Irish friends, of which I
have none. But her first journeys took her to Panama and Jamaica and New York and she loved every single second of it. For instance, when she was in Panama, she says it was the first time that she had food and wine as good as her childhood memories of Argentina. It reassured her that she had made the right choice and she would have a life at sea. There was no way that she could have known what stormy waters lay ahead. So violate okay, oh we're transported. Violent word
is a stewardess doing cabin service. She was cleaning rooms and making beds, and delivering meals, running errands, and even taking care of seak passengers. She started in second class, but soon she was reassigned to work in the first class cabins. So, yeah, go off cavin, queen, I apologize to everybody. Was that written? No, no, none of this is right now.
No off cabin, queen.
That's the title of my memoir. So Kevin's Service Steward has typically had a dozen rooms out there to care, which doesn't sound too bad at first glance, but the work was in violence words, soul grinding.
Twelve rooms.
That's too many, really, Yeah, to to wait on twelve rooms because like the rooms are massive, and it could be like waiting on entire families, that's right. I just guess at first clients, I was like, I figured that the second class cabin would be like kind of the thirty rooms, and now you have twelve rooms.
But right, I think twelve rooms is a lot. Have you ever done work twelve tables? I guess it was a terrible. I was a waiter for about two weeks and I was pretty terrible at it. Not because I mean I got great tips and shit, but I kept forgetting orders, because you couldn't punch in the thing.
You had to like run into the kitchen and yell ordering fu blah blah blah blahlah blah blah, and then like hang the little piece. So I keep sucking up people's orders and gave everybody a free salad, you know, because I was like, I'm sorry, he's a free salad. And then my manager yelled at me once and I was like, you know what, fuck this, Like I'm broke as shit, but I can't. I'm just too clumsy for this. So so yes, I have waited till twelve tables, and
I fucking sucked at it. Okay, thank you for bringing up So Violet seems like she especially hated working for American passengers who had, she said, a streak of selfishness. They were like Karens of the Sea, you know, or Seafaring Sea Karens. So I wrote that one. It's terrible. Thank you, thank you so much. English has my second language, everybody, so please take note. So she remember, once said an American passenger demanded that Violet bring her a lamb cutlet
and fresh green peas for a Pecanese dog. She commanded that the peace should be freshly picked and finally mashed like, oh oh good. So rich people have been terrible for like fucking forever.
Ye, well, this is the hottest steak I have in life. Dogs are constantly being treated better than I am being treated.
Yeah, if you're like walking in the same path as like fucking little shits or whatever, and the and the owner's like, no, no, Caroline doesn't like that. Caroline doesn't like that. She does. I'm like, lady, what the fuck? You know?
Yeah, I'm fine, Just like treat me as well as your.
Dog, that's it. Yeah, freshly picked feet. Also, like, how are you gonna get freshly picked peas on fucking on an ocean? You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yourself, go fuck yourself.
Lading. So the hell job got even worse when the captain of a ship she worked on made it pass at her right. So so when Violet refused him, he reported her to the company for flirting with his officers he fucking believed, so she was dismissed from the Royal La main line.
They blamed her.
Yeah, I mean, it's such a cliche, isn't it. Men in power have always been such cartoons of themselves, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, so we so if they were alive, we would fucking cancel them just but friend, that's right, I still need names and addresses so we can cancel their kin. So in nineteen ten, Violet was back in England and once again she was looking for work. Right, but now she started applying to a company that was shipping between England
and America, the White Star Line. Right, so the North Atlantic was notoriously rough, and the number of Americans traveling under her care would be even higher. She's like, I don't like these Americans, and we're like, we got a name fame. So Violet applied, almost hoping that she would get rejected. But the White Star Line was working hard to hire a massive cruise as they launched the largest passenger ship ever built. Do you know where this is going? Titanic?
There you go? So the White star Line, yea, back to the Titanic. All goes back to nineteen ninety eight, which was a great year for cinema, or nineteen eighty six brandther the fuck it was. So the White Star Line launched the Olympic in June nineteen eleven, and Violet was selected for the hand picked crew and was incredible, but the passengers were about the same shitty as ever. But Violet says that as soon as they were bored, there were There was a wealthy woman who started listing
off her various demands. For example, she she started giving Violet orders about how to help her out when she was going to the bathroom. Gross, what what does this mean? Help with the going into the bathroom, like holding hands, lifting up the skirt. Maybe you know what, Maybe you're right, maybe it was really hard to get in and out.
Of the garments. Yeah, I don't know.
Man. So to make sure that Violet would obey her orders, this lady that wanted help going to the bathroom, she said that she was friends with the president of the White Starling, and obviously Violet was supposed to be sympathetic and agree to all this stuff. But have you ever been in a situation where somebody's throwing their cloud around, like how do you How would you respond? Yeah?
I mean I worked up Armama.
Someone right asked me if I would make them a mango smoothie, and I said, ma'am, it's.
Two am in the morning. Yeah, there's the top.
We don't we have mangos and we don't have a smoothie maker, or and we don't have yogurt, and we don't She was like, but it's my birthday.
I was like, but we still don't have yeah.
Yeah. So apparently, like Violet said that, every other passenger would say the same thing, that the president was their friend. Apparently he was very popular, go off friendship King, so at least he had friends, you know, until September nineteen eleven. When the Olympic was leaving Southampton on September nineteen, did you say nineteen eleven?
Oh sorry, okay, yes, my birthday September nineteen.
It was your birthday. For some coincidence, I think not. When the Olympic was leaving Southampton on its fifth trip to New York, it was carrying over a thousand passengers and Violet was on board, and it's a ship steen out towards sea. It had to pass to a channel around the Isle of Wight, which is actually where my trainer is from. True story. He's from the Yellow White, which incidentally, he's very very white, you know, So it's like me being from like the Peninsula of Brown, you
know what I mean? I just say, okay, but I digress it back to the story, I guess, so let's put some ominous music. A Spileace ship was leaving on its journey. An English naval cruiser named the Hawk was speeding through the channel at the same time. When the Hawk tried to turn and avoid the Olympic, It's steering jammed. It couldn't change the course and avoid the passenger ship, so the Hawk rammed into the star Wars side of the Olympic. That's right, that's the right side for us landlovers.
Give me a pirate sound, thank you, Yeah, go ahead mine as I arah. My pirate was really feeling himself, so miraculously, no pirates, fucking not no pirates, no passengers, sorry, but also no pirates. We're in the rooms on that part of the ship at that time, so one crew member was there though, so he was working to fire the steam engines when suddenly the ram on the front of the Navy cruisers smashed through the bulkhead and through
the room, so water rushed in. Imagine being that dude, like you're going about your words, just getting the boys started, and suddenly the room splits in the half that you know, stressful and then when like when you tell, like if what if? Like when you tell everybody nobody believes you, like, bro, I swear good guy. It was like fucking this high, bro. Yeah yeah, okay, Bob, let's let's send you down, buddy. You're drugging.
Is that work?
Yeah? Yeah, go back. So the man pulled the emergency lever to slam shut the water tight doors, and the rest of the crew rushed to seal up the other cabins that were split open. So he's a hero. He is a hero. Apparently the Olympic was so big that it sent the navy cruisers spinning away like a top. And some people that's a top sound, by the way, and they didn't know what that. Oh that's you without
you making it. Oh my god, that was mimicking. I know yours was more like a top actually, So ben Chug, you're getting replaced, buddy. We need to stay it up. Some of the people on board didn't even feel the crash, that's how big the ship was. Wow. So the Olympic was able to turn around and sail back to port, canceling the voyage, but without a single injury. I'm sure that there was at least one seafaring carry and being
like I got a whiplash. I felt it. I actually did feel it, So yeah my spine, guys, I need help with the bathroom lady. Fuck off. The Olympic was badly damaged, so it limped back to port. Violet obviously survived the wreck along with everyone else on board, and it was to be her first escape from a disaster at sea. The problem was the damage was so massive that she was going to be out of work while
it took months to repair the ship. Luckily, the White Star Line had a new ship that was ready to launch the next year, and this one say it with me now, was unsinkable. They wanted experienced crew members because the new one was built like the Olympic, only bigger. So the company made the Violet a stewardess on and you know the ship Zoe the Titanic. So ifvi ilead jests sail out on the Titanic in nineteen twelve, again
not your birthday. There were fluttering flags and handkerchiefs when the Titanic slipped away from Doc and the tugboats were tooting farewell and all that stuff. Right, yeah, woo, that's right. Shooting yeah, tooting. I love, that's what tugboats do. It's so cute, Like I'm so the journey was It's apparently a train in my mind. So the journey was supposed
to be a simple one, right. The ship would leave from the port in England and make a quick little pitstop in Ireland and then puff merrily crossed the Atlantic to New York. In fact, the Titanic almost had its own collision with another passenger ship as it launched. When they escaped with only a near miss, the crew thought that they had avoided the misfortune for the journey. They were wrong.
Little did I know.
The one thing that Violet that realized by this point was that she was uneasy on big ships, you know, becauseaid the Olympic and all that. What would have happened if she followed her intuition? Was there ever a time where you ignored the signs and kept doing something that was doomed to fail? Ever?
I mean every day, my whole life, my memoir doomed to fail.
What about your relationship? I had in like my high school years. I was like, this is you look like you're gonna hurt me. Let's do this red flex. I didn't fix this. So once the ship was underway, it was just as luxurious as you might think, right, at least for the wealthiest of passengers. It was the world's largest ocean liner, and it was kind of like the Olympic, but if this time they pulled out literally all the stops, right, Violet called it.
Keep That means, by the way, sorry, pulling out.
All the stops. No, I don't do you know that, Merchand no you don't.
It's pulling out all the stops in an organ.
In an organ, isn't it a playing organ? Yeah?
Okay, So they're like the keys, they are the they're like the floor pedals, and then there are these stops, and I think when you.
Pull them all out, it just makes a massive amount of sound.
I see what you're saying, going off.
Piece here, yea my specialty. But so is so correct, Thank you God.
They pulled out all the stops, which, Zoe, did you know that that's in reference to an organ. That's the only thing that's.
So.
I called it grander in every way, or like extremely baller.
Right.
It was literally supposed to be a floating Chateau Marmont.
Oh, I don't think I would farewell on a big, big boat, like trapped for weeks.
I'm gonna be honest with you, The big big cruises kind of freak me out because you can't leave.
Yeah, and also you're stuck with people you did not choose exactly.
That's what I'm saying, Like it's a hotel that you cannot like you just can't take a break for I guess you can go to port and whatever. But it's just like the activities of all I've grown up going to all inclusive hotels up until like my teenage years. God bless my family. That's so lovely that you did that for us. We're bawling on a budget, but my god, it gives you such crippling anxiety, like having to like fight over like the buffet with like Bob from fucking Florida.
From Florida needs what top Hispanic and you.
Yeah, And I'm like, I don't fucking know, Bob.
Yeah.
And that's how I met my girl. God, yeah, you was so caught of brown Angel and that's how I met my second husband. So cruises freaked me out. But for the Titanic, it was all like beautiful mahogany furniture and baroque molding and scull through o'clocks and young whipper snappers coming up from steerage to woo society. Girl's named
Rose stuff like that, you know. And after all that, they after all they had John Jacob Astro on board, and he was the wealthiest man in the world at the time, and he brought along, oh so sweet, his nineteen year old wife. You fucking creep. So the ballrooms and dining rooms, it's so stupid to know that, like throughout history, we made such society, has made such loopholes for rich men. You know, it stops today with this podcast. It stops today.
I knew it was an important move to do this podcast.
The bottoms and dining rooms and everything were supposed to be at the height of luxury. The biggest problem for Violet was that she wasn't there to enjoy the luxury, right, She was the one providing the luxury, and she was running between the private rooms, arranging lace bed spreads, running to the kitchen to carve meat and serve food, running to help the wealthy passengers go to the bathroom, you know, all this stuff. So basically there's just a lot of running, right,
and then came the night. They were in the middle of the journey and Violet was lying awake when suddenly she heard a low, crunching, ripping sound, and the whole
ship shivered under her. The strangest part, though, was that when the engines quit suddenly everything was quiet for only a minute, though, but then Violets started to hear low voices in the passage way outside, you know, a lot of frantic footsteps passing the door, violently, still hoping that she was wrong about what was happening, just hoping against logic, you know. But the crash had woken up the stewardess who shared Violet's room, and she said, sounds like something
bad has happened. The two of them realized that they now had to assist the passengers, to which the entire world replied, no fucking shit, buddy, you.
Know, oh they did it, you know, Oh my god.
So the two of them realized that they had a responsibility to manage the passengers. They were still pulling their clothes on when another stewards knocked under door. They opened it and he said, have you heard the ship is sinking? Can you imagine the fucking feeling?
I mean to be on a sinking ship.
No, no, sorry, think you're going.
Amore, Just like the amount of times you use that as a say, you know, actually.
One at least one person yelling we're in a metaphor, right, No, but imagine the panic knowing that there's just nothing you can fucking do, I know.
And it's like that long it was.
I imagine time was really weird. Get like sped up but also slowed down and.
Yeah, yeah, so there is a sense of urgency, right like a Violet rushed to her passengers and she started helping children strap on life jackets. But suddenly the order came down. Everybody to the lifeboats. Right. Most of the people in violet section have been asleep, and they fumbled with their valuable struggle to put on thick coats before Violet let them up the gangways. Before the stewardess could go back for their things, they had to make sure
that every guest from their section had evacuated. Violet had her own panic moment digging through her wardrobe when she realized that she didn't bring a coat. You know, it's going to be a bone chilling cold once you're off that ship, right, what would you do? If you don't have a coat. Oh my god, I mean, ah, that's what I thought.
Would you do?
I mean I would I would ask if someone had an extra coat.
Excuse me a second.
Sorry, Yeah, I know you guys are all in survival mode, but like, what's some hmm, yeah, this is not really my color?
Size medium.
I don't know what the fuck I would have done. I probably would have panicked and been like, I just want to dance, you know. And Violet was more resourceful than either of us. She grabbed the silk bed cover on her way back to the lifeboats.
Wow.
And one of the most super surreal details that she remembered was that she passed a group of officers who were still in their dress uniforms with their hands in their pockets, just kind of chatting quietly, and they smiled at her as she went by. So weird, like you don't never know how panic is going to strike you, right. She also passed some of the pantry boys who were
trying to carry a huge load of bread. They tripped on something hard and everybody looked down to realize that it was a suitcase that it burst open filled with gold coins. Oh got it? So by the time Violet got to the boats, the arguments had already started, like who would get left behind to go down with a ship, and who would be allowed to board one of the remaining lifeboats and live. Violet watched as John Jacob asked her, handed his wife into a boat and waved through goodbye.
Then with a roar, white distress, rockets were fired up into the sky. Families arrived at the lifeboats together, and then they cried as they split up. The women climbed onto the boats and the men faded back into a growing crowd. Some guys nearby started throwing things over the side, like wooden chairs and anything that would float. They were hoping that there would be things to hold onto in the water when the lifeboats were gone. And then someone
grabbed Violet's arm. It was a deck officer who was filling the lifeboat. It was Violet's turn. Violet. Another steward is clambered on top of the side of the boat, and the officer held something up towards Violet and said, look after this. And so when Violet reached down and he tossed it to her, and she made the catch. It was somebody's baby. It was a freaking baby.
My gosh, yeah to a story.
I know.
How desperate do you have to feel. Imagine how desperate you have to feel to be like give somebody your baby?
Yeah, totally, Oh my god, we're joking, but this is so harrowing.
I know. So so then the LFE boat dropped and it was such a long way down, and the lights of the decks like flashed past them, and then they hit the water right finally, remember that the impact was bone cracking, and the baby started to scream. A few members of the crew were in the boats had the oars and they started to pull right. The lifeboat moved into the darkness, away from the Titanic, but it was
the Titanic was still things so badly now. One of the men rowing the boat had come from the firing rooms and violets said that his face was still blackened by cold dust and his eyes were super bloodshot. He was only wearing his thin shirt from the engine room, and there was nothing to protect them from the cold. Everyone of the lfeboat watched the lights of the Titanic go out. There were six rows of deck lights, than five, then four, then three, then the split in half and
it started going down now. Violet, a good Catholic, closed her eyes and she prayed for the rest of the night. It was mostly the extreme cold, the Violet remembered. She wrapped the silk oiled around the baby and worried that it's crying was getting weaker and quieter. But don't worry, okay, I was just gonna spoil it for you. The baby survived,
so don't forget. The water was chopping around them, and the boat was thrown between the waves, and Violet was ferociously determined that the baby was not going to die in her arms. As the sun came up, the survivors in the lifeboil were able to see tons of ice mountains floating around them. How crazy is that sight?
That's nuts, so nuts.
And finally, in the light of day, they also spotted a speck in the horizon. It was the ocean liner Karpathia. They had received the Titanic's distress called the night before, and they had arrived in time to pick up the lifeboats.
Oh my god.
That's also I mean, I know they're not we can't consider them lucky because of the sinking Titanic, but what a blessing that it only took them a.
Night, you know, yeah, truly, truly.
Also something I thought I have thought about whenever I think about the Titanic, which is kind often quite often, yeah, is when the boat went in the pull of the yeah, the water and just trying to clear the it's that that.
Yeah, I don't know.
And also just like the sound that I like both too, must make right.
Gotten into three car accidents. That's why I don't live in LA anymore. Total three cars in five years.
Thank god, you're okay, Yeah, thank you.
Two of the cars were pet cruisers and one was a rental car on the way to pick up the second PT cruiser.
Well, just because it was a life threatening car crash, I will make no comment. But no than in any of the circumstances, I would just have so many questions. But go on.
But the reason I bring this up is I can conjure the sound of a car crash so easily.
The stick, the well, the crinkling. Oh and the smell.
Oh my god, it smells like burn to burn, rubber burnt. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's very it's singular, like I I God, if you smell that smell not good.
Back to Violet, back to Violet and just so Alredie just knows, like we understand the tragedy of the Titanic. It's just like there is I don't know about Uzoe, but whenever I get nervous or there's anything tragic, I have to like find some lightness around it, because otherwise it's just too dark, you know. Yeah, So I left at funerals, is what I'm saying. So hire me as a stand up comedian for your funeral. Come to my funeral.
Please come to my funeral. So the men in Violet's vote pulled hard on the yours, and they were the last to reach the rescue ship. When Violet and the others climbed out to the deck, the first thing that they were given was a glass of brandy. I mean, to be honest, that sounds pretty fantastic. Like what, I don't know, what would you want? It's your first thing after being rescued. Hmmm, kanji kanji? What's conch kanji is?
It's it's like a kind of a warm rice porridge.
Fuck yeah, I would want some college. I would like a soluble? Am I just being weird? Like I was just like, no, I don't know, but maybe that's I don't know, but also nutritious and dele warm, like I want superfood and I want to remain true to I want to remain true to my fitness goals, is what I want. So Violet was standing on the deck feeling days when suddenly a woman rushed up and grabbed the baby out of her arms. She turned and ran away
into the crowd. We can only speculate and hope to God that that was the baby's mom, right, because I don't know, that was definitely the baby's mom, right, Please? Yeah, please, So the Titanic was the deadliest sinking of a ship in history up to that point. By the time it was over, sixty percent of the first class passenger survived. Fuck in the se in class, less than half managed to make it. Overall, thirteen hundred people died. Seven hundred
of those were third class passengers. So fucking unfair. And you might think that the escaping of the record the Titanic and living to tell the tale would be enough to keep Violet Jessa from ever going to see again. But that's wrong. No, No, it's an abusive it's like a terrible relationship. It's a red flag. She just can't. She's gonna fix it, ye, viol Wood Banks ocean. Yeah, I'm going to fix the ocean, you guys. That is
the confidence. Yeah, I love that confidence. She even said that she knew that she had to go back right away otherwise she would lose her nerve, and to be honest, fair enough, that makes sense to me. So just two weeks after she was finished giving her testimony about the wreck, she was back at it again. Well like, if you literally just survived the wreck of the Olympic Escape number one and then the Titanic escape, are you going back to sea or.
Are you finally I'm taking two years at least.
Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go to Long Island and just on the ground it all good time, and look up at the stars and that's just going to be my job. What's even crazier, though, is that in nineteen sixteen, for your birthday, she even had the gun. She even had the guts to join the crew of the third replica model of the White star Line fleet, the Britannic. Can you believe she's just like, no, no, no,
I'm going to get this right. She's the thing hard Yeah, well, the thing was basically no one in the world knew how to cruly ships like Violet did. Plus, the Britannic was commissioned as a wartime hospital ship because, of course, nineteen sixteen was in the middle of World War One, so Violet felt her own kind of patriotic duty to serve in the war, and that meant overcoming her fears and going back to sea to serve as a Red Cross nurse. On the latest copy of The Titanic, She's a fucking badass.
She really is so brave.
So when they went to see in nineteen sixteen, the crew of the hospital ship didn't realize how extremely dangerous their job was, and that brings us to escape number three. So in November that year, the Britannic was cruising the Agency to pick up a load of wounded soldiers. Violet was sitting down to breakfast with a crew. She says that she had a hot pot of tea in one hand and some butter in the other, when suddenly an explosion rocked the ship. That is a very tiny explosure.
That was explosion rocked the ship. But to be honest, it was such a tiny little explosion that they were all fine in the quo. Just imagine she was like, excuse me, yeah, sorry, yeah, but part of me, the butter helps with my guys. I just imagine Violet being like, you gotta be fucking kidding me, like again, truly tru again. Yeah, yeah, the nurses brought today, not today, I'm gonna tame your
fucking sea. Yeah, I can fix it. So the nurses rushed to gather their life for servers, but Violets started by helping a few of the others, and while everybody went to their lifeboats, Violet went back to her cabin. So you know, this wasn't Violet's first rodeo, so by now the sense of panic wasn't going to overwhelm her, and she was determined to take a few things with her. She grabbed her ring, a bible, her alarm clock, and
a toothbrush. If your ship's going down, what are the things that you're gonna grab?
Well, that's a silk duvet, a silk dovey of course.
Oh yeah, she's learned from you, learned from others.
Very well done, I think leave it all.
Why is grabbing a fucking alarm clock? Though? What are you like? She's like just doothbrush. Yeah, she's like reminding me to brush my teeth if we're in long enough.
I know, Ring, I guess maybe yeah, special ring.
Yeah, she's like, this is my invisibility ring. Violet, you're reading too much h J R R. Tolken, which is not the time because Jerr Token was fighting in the war and I knew that. So Violet said that she made sure to get the toothbrush because of how much people made fun of her for not having one after the Titanic went down. I guess that's what happens to you when you're mostly surrounded by first class fucking assholes, you know.
So they were making they were like nagging her about yeah.
On the tugboat.
On the tugboat day, there was a bigger ship, the Maker ship that rescue them from the right. So this is what happens, right, You're getting made fun of for not having toothrush when you're surrounded by assholes, and what a fucking weird thing to do. But she grabbed the toothbrush, which is kind of endearing.
Shame, you know.
Yeah, So by the time she reached the deck, Violet was the last one on board, and the officer there was surprised to see you, or because he thought that all the nurses had already been loaded into the lifeboats. What Violet was finally in lifeboats. She remembered that it dropped so fast that it was smashing lights and bouncing off the brass rims into portholes as it went down, and then it finally hit the water so hard that
it knocked everyone dizzy. I'm just going to suggest that people start taking courses of how to lower lightboats and then not like such a greasy way. I'm just like, if it's me reading the signs, I mean, guys, you know, save yourselves, of course, but like you don't want to kill them on the way down. You know, I've seen Why Loadus season two. You know, getting off of boats is dangerous. But that still wasn't the worst thing that happened, you know, because by now, okay, this is really fucked up.
By now, the front of the ship was dipping down, and that meant that the huge propeller was now lifting out of the water. At the back the ship was still moving forward too, so the propeller was now swinging forward toward the lifeboats and chopping the water, pulling them towards it. No, no, no, that's what you were saying. So she says that she looked back and saw other lifeboats and the people in them sucked into the propeller, and, in her words, minced so violently jumped out of the
lifeboat into the water. She held her breath, she closed her eyes, and she felt herself get whipped into the propeller's spin. Twice, something hard crashed into her head. She had a life jacket on, but it was too small to carry her weight. The only thing that actually saved her was grabbing a second life jacket that went floating by. Once she was floating on the surface, Violet opened her eyes, but she says that she closed them again to block
out the site of the ship sinking away. Eventually, she opened her eyes in time to see that the Britannic finally dove into the waves with a stern flying upward into the air, before the whole ship sank straight down. One crazy fucking thing here, She says that she never learned to swim, so you would think, sorry, are you okay? So let me bive check you're I'm.
Just disturbed by this. This is a bomber. When you said they were minced. Yeah, did we need to use that burb?
Listen? I didn't write her memoir, Okay, I knows now.
It's just so crazy.
I don't know if I would have known to jump out of the boat.
My fory is that by the time she she swam far enough that by the time that the propeller was even pulling at them, that it was going more vertical.
Wow.
Also that you're never going to forget fucking seeing people get absolutely ravaged by It's.
So crazy, like they thought that they were safe.
Too, exactly. And you know when you were talking about the boats sinking and how that would pull you under, Yeah, I was also thinking that, But I was like, I'd never even thought about like a propeller also pulling you towards it. Like fuck, Like, how many fucking things do I have to worry about?
Totally?
I also like trying to like catch a wave on like a you know, like swimming out on a surfboard, and like I'm always humbled by how much exertion.
You need to Oh my god, you know how much energy you need to exert to.
Swim back out to the surfing. It's just like, yeah, I'm so inove and also surfing is one of those things that like really makes you respect the sea because like, no matter how good you are at it, like it's going to make you feel like a dumbass, you.
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
So she floating on the water until the rescue boats reached her, and they brought her back to shore on a Greek island, and Violet learned that they had sailed into a string of underwater mines dropped by a German submarine the day before. Somehow, only twenty people were killed as the ship went down, and most of them were not killed by a mine. They were actually killed by the propellers. Violet had a frack skull. I'm sorry to do this to you, so, but I just need to
tell you a story. I wish I could change the facts.
I thought the escapes were gonna be like fun.
You're like, so I escaped like this really weird relationship in Tabo. No, ma'am.
She ractured skull. Do you think? What do you think?
She hit probably a piece of the lifeboats, a piece of the boat really anything, and it hit her twice right and her leg was cut open to the bone. So it took her three full years to heal. Now. Fortunately for her, she had again escaped the White Star Line with her life. So listen, we're coming to the end of violet story here. And if you escape three second ship, would you ever, like, please let me out of this? Would you ever travel by sea again? No?
But this bitch be crazy.
She's like, like, let me get out back out there. She's like, she's like, I was close this time. Put me in coach. When it was finally time to go home, Violet decided to travel to London by land. Thank god. So in London, Violet took a job a bank and for a while she would at least she stopped tempting faate. Violet published a memoir in the nineteen thirties, when her memories of the White Star Line were still fresh now for a while, though her book didn't really get much attention.
There are people interested in the Titanic, sure, but not very many of them were paying attention to the story of a stewardist. They are all about guys like John Jacob Astor and all the other fancy pants in the first class people. Oh, one crazy thing. Even after JJ died on the Titanic, we're that close that I just call him JJ. His family kept investing in the White
Star line. His son was collecting stock certificates in nineteen thirty one, like the company killed him with their terrible fucking boat, and there was still money to be made.
People are making crazy decisions, insane.
The early nineteen hundreds was just fucking nuts.
I know.
It's maybe just the takeaways, like people have been crazy forever.
Yeah, And I don't find comfort in that, but I find comfort in I find a comfort in the fact that people have been the same throughout history and in the sense of, like, not to get too deep on this, but like, my dad died when I was seventeen, and one of the things that helped me was that my teacher gave me this the Hamlet monologue to be or not to be right, And at first it made no fucking sense to me because it was Greek to me, and I'm like, wearing water, Mala, why the fuck are
you giving me like old English books? But then once I started really paying attention to it, after a brief moment of mourning, I realized that this guy was talking about exactly what I was going through right five hundred years before me, and I found there's a certain sense of comfort in knowing that the human existence is not that different, you know, so that I'm not alone in
this experience. And it was actually, incidentally what made me take acting seriously and moved to New York and study acting. Why we have a podcast? Oh my god, there we go.
That's a very moving story.
So Violet finally retired in nineteen fifty and moved herself into a little English college on the east coast of England. I love that for her. Do you have a retirement destination in mind? Oh?
Man, I don't know. We've been talking about Ireland so much.
Love.
So now you're moving til we'll see, Like we'll check in next week. We're telling you about about the Caribbean. You're like, yeah, I just always felt like Jamaica was calling to me. What about like the Caribbean speaking It's just like calling to me anybody else see it. So if you survived the death traps made by the White Star Line enough times, I feel like you deserve a little seaside cottage. You know, the should just give it
to you. Honestly, the White Star Line should have paid for it, you know, and maybe huh they would have, except they went bankrupt in nineteen thirty four on say it with me you birthday, that's right. So anyway, Violently finally gave herself permission to just, you know, just raise some chickens and put up her feet. And she lived there for almost twenty years, all the way into her eighties. Oh. In one little last little tidbit, one day, this is nuts.
One day, a little while before she died, Violet got a phone call super late at night. That's the sound of a phone, in case you didn't know, and Violent Violet gets out of bad and answers it, and it was somebody saying they were from Jenny fucking Craig. Just no, so what are you really?
I was with you?
So Violet gets out of bed, she answers the phone. Right she hears the voice of a lady on the other end of the line who asked if she was Violet Jessep who had been on the Titanic, and Violin was like, yes, that was me. Who is this? The person on the other end of the phone was like, I am the baby you rescued, oh my, And then they just hung up and she never called again. Isn't that crazy? Is that all? She said, that's all she said and investing. Yahoo, I guess I don't fucking know.
But isn't that wild?
Yeah, so I guess maybe.
Well I wish that Violet had been like, was the woman who grabs you out of my arms? Your mom?
Yeah? Who is your mother? What does she look like? Yeah? And it's this crazy story and I really hope that it wasn't just somebody crane calling her.
Yeah, me too.
So the wreck of the Titanic was found on the ocean floor almost fifteen years after Violet died. The discovery of the wreck kicked off a new wave of interest in the ship what it was really like during the voyage, So that finally brought violet story the attention it deserved. Her book was published in nineteen eighty seven, and this time it became one of the defining stories of the Titanic by including what it was really like for normal people working there to survive. And so that's when Violet
finally got her nickname, Miss Unsinkable. Miss Unsinkable, that's sexually her nickname. Now, anyway, that's our story. What do you think?
Oh my god, the twists and turns so crazy.
Right, Wow, we're like last one minute and I'm like fucking like so disturbed, and then I'm also like kind of hungry, Like just a lot went on. So you're fucking amazing, dude. And you're in so many different projects like The after Party Night Bitch and your Voice a Mermaid scientists are on Creature Commandos. So wow, yeah, listeners, go find her work asap. I want to go back to our producer, call Knillis, because he's had an entire episode to think about a New Sea shanty or an
Irish song, an Irish song of any kind. So Carl, do you have something for me? Yes?
I do, and here we go. Zoey Child was the Queen of podcast. Zoe Child is the Queen no Podcast. Zoe Child is the Queen no Podcast. There lying in the morning. Way hey enops? She rises way, hey enop, she rises way Hey enough she rises in the morning.
Hey. Thank you, Carl, Thank you everybody. Zoe, thank you so much for being in this. You were such a wonderful guest.
You are such a great storyteller and so fun to hang out with.
Oh, thanks so much, See you later. Banana A. Bo Brady's Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers from me or Turo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka from Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Winning Donaldson from Gilded Audio, and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show was produced and edited by Carl and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively,
our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riiseek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein, Olivia Canny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop a rating or review. My mom will call you each personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next week.