Sinking Narratives: Survival and Racial Sidelines
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Having survived a terminal type of tuberculosis from an early age, Violet Constance Jessop made it to a convent school in England. The Irish born immigrant had lost her father at this time and had started taking up domestic responsibilities while her mother, a then stewardess, footed the bills. In no time, her mother passed on and she had to do away with her education. She followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a ship stewardess afterwards. Because she was in her prime, 21 years old, her dream was threatened so much that she had to dress down to stint aboard the Orinoco, in 1908, with the Royal Mail Line steamer. The reason for this owes to her employees’ belief that her youthfulness would be a disadvantage to her and those onboard — the crew and the passengers.
A slice of this truth was laid bare when she highlighted in her autobiography that she met her first love onboard on the RMS Olympic but things didn’t work out with them because her man made a promise to his mother never to get married until he was promoted. 3 years into the job, she took a stewardess position with the White Star vessel known as RMS Olympic. The vessel was the biggest luxurious civilian ship then and it was a thing of class to be on board. Despite her merger pay of 2.10 Euros, Violet’s love for massive ships increasingly multiplied. She, at some point, had her doubts about the water condition before the ship sailed but she recounted that her final decision to sail was due to the human treatment given to her by the American employees. The RMS Olympic didn’t sail long before colliding with the HMS Hawke, a British warship. This damage was magnanimous still the ship made it back to the port.
By 1912, the White Star Line was in search of crew members for the VIPs boarding the RMS Titanic. For experience sake, Violet did not consider the offer a good ticket but her friends and family worked on her conviction stating that the ship was unsinkable. She boarded the Titanic on the 11th of April that year and 4 days later, the ship struck an iceberg somewhere in the North Atlantic. It took just 2 hours and some minutes for the ship to sink with over 1500 lives perishing alongside the unsinkable ship. According to Violet, her escape was through a lifeboat — lifeboat 16. In explaining the scenes before the escape, she recounted how she was ordered by a ship officer to jump into the lifeboat in other to show non-English passengers, it was safe. In her words, “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”. She added that an officer gave her baby to look after as the ship sunk. This baby was later snatched from her by a woman who ran off the safety ship named Carpathia. Jokingly for Violet, one thing she missed was her toothbrush while trying to escape the Titanic.
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Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche was also on the Titanic before she lowered herself into the Atlantic. But not too much was written about this Haitian African family man who decided to take his family to Africa since he could not secure an engineering job in France. History kept track of him making plans to travel via another line. But due to some complications, he decided to board the Titanic. This story only became newsworthy when Olivier Mendez, a French researcher, revealed that there was an African man on board who also died with the unsinkable ship.
The whole 1912 press releases ignored this part of the story and the question then is why? In Brandie Course’s article titled “Black People and Titanic: The Reality”, she explained that the reason this was done was based on the neglect of other groups asides from the known ones. She noted that this accounted for the compulsory apology tendered by the White Star Line after a derogatory statement uttered by one of the Titanic’s crew members about the “Italians” and how they were treated on board. In context, the word “Italians” did not only address Italians rather it extended to mean people of darker skin who were on board.
The uniqueness of Joseph’s story is that he travelled in a second-class accommodation unlike the typical third-class which was the popular African narrative. In fact, his initial trip was first-class but he had to exchange it for a second-class on the Titanic for some reasons unpublished. Zondra Hughes in her article, “What Happened to the Only Black Family On the Titanic?” highlighted that racial identity was a critical issue aboard the Titanic and people like Joseph attracted “insults and crude behaviour directed at them by crewmembers and fellow passengers”. Some Eurocentric historians negate this conclusion citing a letter written about 14 hours thereabout after the Laroches’ boarded the ship that wasn’t any mention of such racially motivated reality. According to them, Louise Juilette Laroche (Joseph’s wife) letter was full of praises and love for the people on board. The Philadelphia Inquirer later added, in relation to an exhibition which had the Laroches’ being mentioned, that racial discrepancies were the norm on the ship and the family practically endured the journey till it ended the way it did.
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The First World War demanded more than gunboats and war vessels thus the need for a hospital vessel like HMHS Britannic, a younger sister ship of the Titanic, was essential. In response to this was the need for crew members for this ship arose and experienced stewardesses like Jessop joined the British Red Cross to take care of war survivors and more. She boarded the ship on the 21st of November 1916 and a few distances into the Aegean Sea, the ship experienced an explosion. Some historical researchers explained that the explosion was due to the ship running into a German mine which damaged the ship beyond major modifications the ship’s technicians tried to proffer. The Britannic drowned within 58 minutes after the explosion. Violet Jessop, on the other hand, survived this ship but with some memorial scar.
It was said that while trying to escape the ship, she jumped overboard and was pulled close to the Britannic rotating propellers. This explained why she had to jump from the sinking ship but unfortunately, she missed the lifeboat, hitting her head on the keel. In her own voice, she explained that when she leapt into the water, she got struck by the head underneath the water. She added that it was her thick hair that saved her. Her description of the final moment of the Britannic reads thus “the white pride of the ocean’s medical world … dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child’s toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths”. Violet, in her autobiography, didn’t forget to narrate the part of her not missing her toothbrush this time. This experience fractured her skull and left her hospitalized for some period. This unsinkable lady left the White Star Line years later for the Red Star Line where she worked for several years, cruising the world around. Violet’s body, at age 84, was finally confirmed dead in 1971 after suffering congestive heart failure.
