Speaker 1: This is as great as Escapes, a show bringing you
Speaker 1: the wildest true escape stories of all time. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we set sale into the story of Miss Unsinkable and
Speaker 1: it brings us up close and personal with an infamous
Speaker 1: historic disaster. And yes, I am talking about my former relationship.
Speaker 1: I'm Arthur Castro, and I'm joined by the incredible writer
Speaker 1: and actress for stage and screen, Zowe Chow. Hello, everybody.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to have with us the incredibly talented,
Speaker 1: very funny and all around good person and also Hawaii connoisseur.
Speaker 1: Zoe is how aloha? That's about the two things that
Speaker 1: you know about Hawaii? Correct?
Speaker 2: Yep, Aloha and aloha.
Speaker 1: Wow. In the way you say it, I can tell
Speaker 1: the difference.
Speaker 2: She's bilingual.
Speaker 1: I know. Hey, Zoe, thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: with us. I'm long time I did. Do you have
Speaker 1: anything that you consider greatest escape?
Speaker 3: This is not an escape, but I remember being stuck
Speaker 3: at the movie theater with some friends and we were
Speaker 3: waiting to be picked up, and I was like, let's
Speaker 3: call people and say we're from Jenny Craig.
Speaker 1: And I This was nineteen ninety four, where Jenny Craig
Speaker 1: was all the rage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, although is she maybe? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So I called my dad, I think from a pay phone,
Speaker 3: and I said I left a message, and I think
Speaker 3: he was so confused he got really when he finally
Speaker 3: figured out it was me, he was I would say,
Speaker 3: disproportionately angry because I think it took him a while
Speaker 3: to figure it out. But I was like, don't be
Speaker 3: late to pick me up.
Speaker 1: Then, right, And he's like, well, now you have to
Speaker 1: walk home and you're still waiting at the movie theater
Speaker 1: as we speak.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: Don't you feel that Like in the nineties or whatever,
Speaker 1: like people were just like way more willing to stay
Speaker 1: on the phone to figure out what the fuck was up?
Speaker 1: You know what I say, Like right now, if you
Speaker 1: get called, I was like, this is Jenny greg You're like,
Speaker 1: all right, fuck you, like whatever. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: it's like, tell me more, how do how do you
Speaker 1: know about me? What?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 3: He tried to write down the number over and over
Speaker 3: again that I had left to be like call us back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know. The last thing I'll say about telephones
Speaker 1: in the nineties or like early two thousands or whatever,
Speaker 1: is that my kids when I have if I ever
Speaker 1: do we'll never know the fear it was to call
Speaker 1: a person you liked to ask to speak to them,
Speaker 1: to ge and Watemala like dads were so like kind
Speaker 1: of cliche, asked how fucking mean? They were like they
Speaker 1: would like literally, like you know, and Spanish is such
Speaker 1: a much more flourishy language when you when you're trying
Speaker 1: to be polite, right, you're like like, hello, I don't
Speaker 1: mean to bother you in this finny evening by bah,
Speaker 1: you know that sort of shit, And and you'd like
Speaker 1: call at like five thirty pm and you'd be like hello, Hello, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who the fuck is this? You know? And oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: sir sir, but the pardon a pleasure? You're quite sir,
Speaker 1: how are they?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, ye Yonder is I a daughter of this? And
Speaker 1: he's like, I remember this was a classic line. They
Speaker 1: were like it's pretty late to be calling, isn't it.
Speaker 1: And you're like, well, it's fucking five thirty pm or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. So you go through this fucking like, you know,
Speaker 1: like this mote of angry father theom and then you
Speaker 1: like get on the phone with a girl and be
Speaker 1: like Hi, Hi, what do you what do you do? Nothing? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's cool.
Speaker 2: You know it's for dinner.
Speaker 1: Anyway. I have this like little device on my neck
Speaker 1: that I get electro shocked when I'm not being entertaining
Speaker 1: for my overlords, over nations. That's my fault. Probably I
Speaker 1: thought that wasn't working. I'm glad to hear it's getting through.
Speaker 1: It is, it is, it is, Carl, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much I felt that. So let's get ready to actually escape. Okay, Zoe,
Speaker 1: Today we have not one, not two, but three harrowing
Speaker 1: death defying escapes, and all by one woman. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so to start her story, we go back all the
Speaker 1: way to the eighteen nineties where telephone payphone still existed,
Speaker 1: where we meet her as a little girl named Violet
Speaker 1: jessup Right. She would spend her days standing at the
Speaker 1: seaside watching big ships sail into the port of Bayeavlanka
Speaker 1: and Argentina.
Speaker 2: As one does.
Speaker 1: Yes, who hasn't been to write a poem? So Violet
Speaker 1: Stad worked for the port authority there, so when a
Speaker 1: ship came in and sailors would stop by her family's
Speaker 1: house and bring presents, bribes, presents, and she remembered tins
Speaker 1: of marmalades and boxes of chocolates brought to her from
Speaker 1: far away places, and the day that her little brother
Speaker 1: was born, sailors gathered to sing Irish songs. Do you
Speaker 1: know any Irish sea shanties?
Speaker 2: Oh me, lad, No, but I saw Ben.
Speaker 1: She's a Venish. She is that Scott. That's Irish that
Speaker 1: we You know, we actually have an Irish song expert
Speaker 1: on our team. This is no joke, Carl, Carl Nolas,
Speaker 1: one of our main producers, is actually what are you
Speaker 1: an expert in Irish folk songs? Is something like that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I performed for a long time in a band called
Speaker 4: Sea Song Freedom Song.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a little taste? Can you give
Speaker 1: us a little taste?
Speaker 5: Let's do a here we go two three? What do
Speaker 5: you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do
Speaker 5: with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a
Speaker 5: drunken swiler in the morning?
Speaker 1: To be honest, thank you, Carl. That was awesome, But
Speaker 1: I would have expected something a little late, less mainstream.
Speaker 1: That's okay. You know we all knew that song, just
Speaker 1: like you have a long episode. Let's think of any one, Okay.
Speaker 1: So you see, Violet's family was far from home. Right.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was weird that this was a
Speaker 1: girl in Argentina named Violet Jessup. But they were Irish,
Speaker 1: you know, and they were living in Argentina. So they
Speaker 1: loved drinking heavily and gesturing wildly around them. You know,
Speaker 1: that's what Argentinas do. They're just like I can do it.
Speaker 1: So sorry to Argentina family.
Speaker 4: Hit meat.
Speaker 1: Steak. Do you like steak so? Which is Spanish for
Speaker 1: I have steak, tango steak. So. When Violet's father died,
Speaker 1: her mom decided to seal them back across the Atlantic
Speaker 1: to raise them in London. So Violet's first trip across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic was a pretty fucking terrible one, right, So
Speaker 1: she spent a lot of the time sick. Plus the
Speaker 1: ship was carrying cattle below well what they usually call illness.
Speaker 1: It's all sort of things, right. She had the humors,
Speaker 1: She had the humors. The ship was carrying this cattle
Speaker 1: below the decks, and Violet mostly remember watching the sailors
Speaker 1: throw dead cow carcasses overboard as they died. Oh god,
Speaker 1: so such an unfortunate sound effect. How do you do
Speaker 1: on boats? Are you good on boats? Have you ever
Speaker 1: had a sea no, no.
Speaker 3: If you if one can feel seasick on a boat,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be feeling seasick.
Speaker 2: I have a big scar.
Speaker 3: On my knee, my right knee from going scuba diving
Speaker 3: and getting really sick when I came up from my
Speaker 3: first swim and then sliced my knee vomiting out the boat.
Speaker 1: Yes, I remember that story. The Bahamas is still talking
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: I puked and then all the Swedish people puked.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, I don't like this and this does
Speaker 1: not feel good. Tuck. So back to Violet.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, Jessup missed Jessup.
Speaker 1: So Violet's first trip should have been a no omen
Speaker 1: of what was coming for her, but she didn't really
Speaker 1: take it that way right, And there was one magical
Speaker 1: part of the journey.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Violet says that for the first time she saw a
Speaker 1: swarm of flying fish skimming over the ocean, and that's
Speaker 1: really cool. I don't know if you've ever seen something,
Speaker 1: but it's like, I haven't, but I've heard.
Speaker 2: But a YouTube.
Speaker 1: Yeah for YouTube. It. So when they reached London, relatives
Speaker 1: took them in. You know, Violet was sixteen and the
Speaker 1: oldest of the kids. So she helped raise the others
Speaker 1: while their mother worked. Right, she took a job as
Speaker 1: a stewardess for the biggest shipping company in the world,
Speaker 1: the Royal main Line, and they sponsored this show, so
Speaker 1: I have to say that their name like Royal main Line.
Speaker 1: But five years later, though, Violet's mom got sick, too
Speaker 1: sick to go to sea, so Violet decided to step
Speaker 1: up and she took her mother's place. There was one problem, though, Zoe,
Speaker 1: you want me to tell you about it? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: said that Violent was too young and too pretty to
Speaker 1: work as a royal male stewardess. Like what the fuck
Speaker 1: is that about? Like what are you supposed like, what
Speaker 1: are you supposed to whatever? To me? I mean, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, like every day I am too hot
Speaker 1: to do a job. You know what I'm saying? What
Speaker 1: are you supposed to do if you're too hot? An
Speaker 1: Irish person in nineteenth century? Like, imagine that?
Speaker 3: Also, what does that look like? What is too hot
Speaker 3: at the turn of the century.
Speaker 1: Looks like her ankles were gleaming. They were gleaming, glistening
Speaker 1: in the sun, gleaming ankles cleaning. You know, I guess
Speaker 1: this is not Victorian age. But I just always imagine
Speaker 1: people getting really wrapped up for like bare ankles. But
Speaker 1: Violet was the determined, right so she One account says
Speaker 1: that she made herself more plain for interviews by wearing
Speaker 1: her worst clothes, and eventually she succeeded. She was beginning
Speaker 1: to I imagine her talking to her friends like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just like I just can't make myself look ugly like.
Speaker 2: These, I look less snatched.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the word snatch. Thank you crazy. If
Speaker 1: you ever had a job that you wanted so badly
Speaker 1: that you would have done anything or said anything.
Speaker 3: To get it, yeah, I mean when I first moved
Speaker 3: to La I took a fake resume and my real
Speaker 3: headshot and hit the sunset strip, went to Cabo Cantina,
Speaker 3: was like can I work here? And They're like no,
Speaker 3: And then I somehow wound up at Chateau Marmont at Barmarmont, right,
Speaker 3: and like lied my way into a job there that
Speaker 3: I worked for four and a half years. No, we
Speaker 3: had to wear like silk red chiapows with frog buttons.
Speaker 2: They're like I did.
Speaker 1: Bellboy stuff for not even close.
Speaker 6: But this was a This was like a dress that
Speaker 6: had like opium den vies to Barbarmont and so he
Speaker 6: had to wear thigh highs and garter belt.
Speaker 1: Whoa. So back to Violet. So let's talk about our
Speaker 1: girl Violet. Violet set sail in nineteen oh eight. She
Speaker 1: was twenty one years old and the breadwinner form and
Speaker 1: working for the Royal Mainline. She was about to see
Speaker 1: the world. She was a lucky, plucky savvy heard the
Speaker 1: working Irish lass. So she did alright working on the ocean.
Speaker 1: That's the last time I'm going to do an Irish axon.
Speaker 1: I apologize to all my Irish friends, of which I
Speaker 1: have none. But her first journeys took her to Panama
Speaker 1: and Jamaica and New York and she loved every single
Speaker 1: second of it. For instance, when she was in Panama,
Speaker 1: she says it was the first time that she had
Speaker 1: food and wine as good as her childhood memories of Argentina.
Speaker 1: It reassured her that she had made the right choice
Speaker 1: and she would have a life at sea. There was
Speaker 1: no way that she could have known what stormy waters
Speaker 1: lay ahead. So violate okay, oh we're transported. Violent word
Speaker 1: is a stewardess doing cabin service. She was cleaning rooms
Speaker 1: and making beds, and delivering meals, running errands, and even
Speaker 1: taking care of seak passengers. She started in second class,
Speaker 1: but soon she was reassigned to work in the first
Speaker 1: class cabins. So, yeah, go off cavin, queen, I apologize
Speaker 1: to everybody. Was that written? No, no, none of this
Speaker 1: is right now.
Speaker 2: No off cabin, queen.
Speaker 1: That's the title of my memoir. So Kevin's Service Steward
Speaker 1: has typically had a dozen rooms out there to care,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound too bad at first glance, but the
Speaker 1: work was in violence words, soul grinding.
Speaker 2: Twelve rooms.
Speaker 1: That's too many, really, Yeah, to to wait on twelve
Speaker 1: rooms because like the rooms are massive, and it could
Speaker 1: be like waiting on entire families, that's right. I just
Speaker 1: guess at first clients, I was like, I figured that
Speaker 1: the second class cabin would be like kind of the
Speaker 1: thirty rooms, and now you have twelve rooms.
Speaker 3: But right, I think twelve rooms is a lot. Have
Speaker 3: you ever done work twelve tables? I guess it was
Speaker 3: a terrible. I was a waiter for about two weeks
Speaker 3: and I was pretty terrible at it. Not because I
Speaker 3: mean I got great tips and shit, but I kept
Speaker 3: forgetting orders, because you couldn't punch in the thing.
Speaker 1: You had to like run into the kitchen and yell
Speaker 1: ordering fu blah blah blah blahlah blah blah, and then
Speaker 1: like hang the little piece. So I keep sucking up
Speaker 1: people's orders and gave everybody a free salad, you know,
Speaker 1: because I was like, I'm sorry, he's a free salad.
Speaker 1: And then my manager yelled at me once and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, fuck this, Like I'm broke
Speaker 1: as shit, but I can't. I'm just too clumsy for this.
Speaker 1: So so yes, I have waited till twelve tables, and
Speaker 1: I fucking sucked at it. Okay, thank you for bringing
Speaker 1: up So Violet seems like she especially hated working for
Speaker 1: American passengers who had, she said, a streak of selfishness.
Speaker 1: They were like Karens of the Sea, you know, or
Speaker 1: Seafaring Sea Karens. So I wrote that one. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you so much. English has my second language, everybody,
Speaker 1: so please take note. So she remember, once said an
Speaker 1: American passenger demanded that Violet bring her a lamb cutlet
Speaker 1: and fresh green peas for a Pecanese dog. She commanded
Speaker 1: that the peace should be freshly picked and finally mashed like,
Speaker 1: oh oh good. So rich people have been terrible for
Speaker 1: like fucking forever.
Speaker 3: Ye, well, this is the hottest steak I have in life.
Speaker 3: Dogs are constantly being treated better than I am being treated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're like walking in the same path as
Speaker 1: like fucking little shits or whatever, and the and the
Speaker 1: owner's like, no, no, Caroline doesn't like that. Caroline doesn't
Speaker 1: like that. She does. I'm like, lady, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm fine, Just like treat me as well as your.
Speaker 1: Dog, that's it. Yeah, freshly picked feet. Also, like, how
Speaker 1: are you gonna get freshly picked peas on fucking on
Speaker 1: an ocean? You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yourself, go fuck yourself.
Speaker 1: Lading. So the hell job got even worse when the
Speaker 1: captain of a ship she worked on made it pass
Speaker 1: at her right. So so when Violet refused him, he
Speaker 1: reported her to the company for flirting with his officers
Speaker 1: he fucking believed, so she was dismissed from the Royal
Speaker 1: La main line.
Speaker 2: They blamed her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's such a cliche, isn't it. Men
Speaker 1: in power have always been such cartoons of themselves, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we so if they were alive, we would fucking
Speaker 1: cancel them just but friend, that's right, I still need
Speaker 1: names and addresses so we can cancel their kin. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten, Violet was back in England and once
Speaker 1: again she was looking for work. Right, but now she
Speaker 1: started applying to a company that was shipping between England
Speaker 1: and America, the White Star Line. Right, so the North
Speaker 1: Atlantic was notoriously rough, and the number of Americans traveling
Speaker 1: under her care would be even higher. She's like, I
Speaker 1: don't like these Americans, and we're like, we got a
Speaker 1: name fame. So Violet applied, almost hoping that she would
Speaker 1: get rejected. But the White Star Line was working hard
Speaker 1: to hire a massive cruise as they launched the largest
Speaker 1: passenger ship ever built. Do you know where this is going? Titanic?
Speaker 1: There you go? So the White star Line, yea, back
Speaker 1: to the Titanic. All goes back to nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: which was a great year for cinema, or nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six brandther the fuck it was. So the White Star
Speaker 1: Line launched the Olympic in June nineteen eleven, and Violet
Speaker 1: was selected for the hand picked crew and was incredible,
Speaker 1: but the passengers were about the same shitty as ever.
Speaker 1: But Violet says that as soon as they were bored,
Speaker 1: there were There was a wealthy woman who started listing
Speaker 1: off her various demands. For example, she she started giving
Speaker 1: Violet orders about how to help her out when she
Speaker 1: was going to the bathroom. Gross, what what does this mean?
Speaker 1: Help with the going into the bathroom, like holding hands,
Speaker 1: lifting up the skirt. Maybe you know what, Maybe you're right,
Speaker 1: maybe it was really hard to get in and out.
Speaker 2: Of the garments. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Man. So to make sure that Violet would obey her orders,
Speaker 1: this lady that wanted help going to the bathroom, she
Speaker 1: said that she was friends with the president of the
Speaker 1: White Starling, and obviously Violet was supposed to be sympathetic
Speaker 1: and agree to all this stuff. But have you ever
Speaker 1: been in a situation where somebody's throwing their cloud around,
Speaker 1: like how do you How would you respond? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean I worked up Armama.
Speaker 3: Someone right asked me if I would make them a
Speaker 3: mango smoothie, and I said, ma'am, it's.
Speaker 1: Two am in the morning. Yeah, there's the top.
Speaker 3: We don't we have mangos and we don't have a
Speaker 3: smoothie maker, or and we don't have yogurt, and we
Speaker 3: don't She was like, but it's my birthday.
Speaker 2: I was like, but we still don't have yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So apparently, like Violet said that, every other passenger
Speaker 1: would say the same thing, that the president was their friend.
Speaker 1: Apparently he was very popular, go off friendship King, so
Speaker 1: at least he had friends, you know, until September nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: When the Olympic was leaving Southampton on September nineteen, did
Speaker 1: you say nineteen eleven?
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, okay, yes, my birthday September nineteen.
Speaker 1: It was your birthday. For some coincidence, I think not.
Speaker 1: When the Olympic was leaving Southampton on its fifth trip
Speaker 1: to New York, it was carrying over a thousand passengers
Speaker 1: and Violet was on board, and it's a ship steen
Speaker 1: out towards sea. It had to pass to a channel
Speaker 1: around the Isle of Wight, which is actually where my
Speaker 1: trainer is from. True story. He's from the Yellow White,
Speaker 1: which incidentally, he's very very white, you know, So it's
Speaker 1: like me being from like the Peninsula of Brown, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? I just say, okay, but I
Speaker 1: digress it back to the story, I guess, so let's
Speaker 1: put some ominous music. A Spileace ship was leaving on
Speaker 1: its journey. An English naval cruiser named the Hawk was
Speaker 1: speeding through the channel at the same time. When the
Speaker 1: Hawk tried to turn and avoid the Olympic, It's steering jammed.
Speaker 1: It couldn't change the course and avoid the passenger ship,
Speaker 1: so the Hawk rammed into the star Wars side of
Speaker 1: the Olympic. That's right, that's the right side for us landlovers.
Speaker 1: Give me a pirate sound, thank you, Yeah, go ahead
Speaker 1: mine as I arah. My pirate was really feeling himself,
Speaker 1: so miraculously, no pirates, fucking not no pirates, no passengers, sorry,
Speaker 1: but also no pirates. We're in the rooms on that
Speaker 1: part of the ship at that time, so one crew
Speaker 1: member was there though, so he was working to fire
Speaker 1: the steam engines when suddenly the ram on the front
Speaker 1: of the Navy cruisers smashed through the bulkhead and through
Speaker 1: the room, so water rushed in. Imagine being that dude,
Speaker 1: like you're going about your words, just getting the boys started,
Speaker 1: and suddenly the room splits in the half that you know,
Speaker 1: stressful and then when like when you tell, like if
Speaker 1: what if? Like when you tell everybody nobody believes you, like, bro,
Speaker 1: I swear good guy. It was like fucking this high, bro.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay, Bob, let's let's send you down, buddy.
Speaker 1: You're drugging.
Speaker 2: Is that work?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, go back. So the man pulled the emergency
Speaker 1: lever to slam shut the water tight doors, and the
Speaker 1: rest of the crew rushed to seal up the other
Speaker 1: cabins that were split open. So he's a hero. He
Speaker 1: is a hero. Apparently the Olympic was so big that
Speaker 1: it sent the navy cruisers spinning away like a top.
Speaker 1: And some people that's a top sound, by the way,
Speaker 1: and they didn't know what that. Oh that's you without
Speaker 1: you making it. Oh my god, that was mimicking. I
Speaker 1: know yours was more like a top actually, So ben Chug,
Speaker 1: you're getting replaced, buddy. We need to stay it up.
Speaker 1: Some of the people on board didn't even feel the crash,
Speaker 1: that's how big the ship was. Wow. So the Olympic
Speaker 1: was able to turn around and sail back to port,
Speaker 1: canceling the voyage, but without a single injury. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that there was at least one seafaring carry and being
Speaker 1: like I got a whiplash. I felt it. I actually
Speaker 1: did feel it, So yeah my spine, guys, I need
Speaker 1: help with the bathroom lady. Fuck off. The Olympic was
Speaker 1: badly damaged, so it limped back to port. Violet obviously
Speaker 1: survived the wreck along with everyone else on board, and
Speaker 1: it was to be her first escape from a disaster
Speaker 1: at sea. The problem was the damage was so massive
Speaker 1: that she was going to be out of work while
Speaker 1: it took months to repair the ship. Luckily, the White
Speaker 1: Star Line had a new ship that was ready to
Speaker 1: launch the next year, and this one say it with
Speaker 1: me now, was unsinkable. They wanted experienced crew members because
Speaker 1: the new one was built like the Olympic, only bigger.
Speaker 1: So the company made the Violet a stewardess on and
Speaker 1: you know the ship Zoe the Titanic. So ifvi ilead
Speaker 1: jests sail out on the Titanic in nineteen twelve, again
Speaker 1: not your birthday. There were fluttering flags and handkerchiefs when
Speaker 1: the Titanic slipped away from Doc and the tugboats were
Speaker 1: tooting farewell and all that stuff. Right, yeah, woo, that's right.
Speaker 1: Shooting yeah, tooting. I love, that's what tugboats do. It's
Speaker 1: so cute, Like I'm so the journey was It's apparently
Speaker 1: a train in my mind. So the journey was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a simple one, right. The ship would leave
Speaker 1: from the port in England and make a quick little
Speaker 1: pitstop in Ireland and then puff merrily crossed the Atlantic
Speaker 1: to New York. In fact, the Titanic almost had its
Speaker 1: own collision with another passenger ship as it launched. When
Speaker 1: they escaped with only a near miss, the crew thought
Speaker 1: that they had avoided the misfortune for the journey. They
Speaker 1: were wrong.
Speaker 2: Little did I know.
Speaker 1: The one thing that Violet that realized by this point
Speaker 1: was that she was uneasy on big ships, you know,
Speaker 1: becauseaid the Olympic and all that. What would have happened
Speaker 1: if she followed her intuition? Was there ever a time
Speaker 1: where you ignored the signs and kept doing something that
Speaker 1: was doomed to fail? Ever?
Speaker 3: I mean every day, my whole life, my memoir doomed
Speaker 3: to fail.
Speaker 1: What about your relationship? I had in like my high
Speaker 1: school years. I was like, this is you look like
Speaker 1: you're gonna hurt me. Let's do this red flex. I
Speaker 1: didn't fix this. So once the ship was underway, it
Speaker 1: was just as luxurious as you might think, right, at
Speaker 1: least for the wealthiest of passengers. It was the world's
Speaker 1: largest ocean liner, and it was kind of like the Olympic,
Speaker 1: but if this time they pulled out literally all the stops, right,
Speaker 1: Violet called it.
Speaker 2: Keep That means, by the way, sorry, pulling out.
Speaker 1: All the stops. No, I don't do you know that,
Speaker 1: Merchand no you don't.
Speaker 2: It's pulling out all the stops in an organ.
Speaker 1: In an organ, isn't it a playing organ? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, So they're like the keys, they are the they're
Speaker 3: like the floor pedals, and then there are these stops,
Speaker 3: and I think when you.
Speaker 2: Pull them all out, it just makes a massive amount
Speaker 2: of sound.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying, going off.
Speaker 2: Piece here, yea my specialty. But so is so correct,
Speaker 2: Thank you God.
Speaker 1: They pulled out all the stops, which, Zoe, did you
Speaker 1: know that that's in reference to an organ. That's the
Speaker 1: only thing that's.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 1: I called it grander in every way, or like extremely baller.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: It was literally supposed to be a floating Chateau Marmont.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think I would farewell on a big,
Speaker 3: big boat, like trapped for weeks.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with you, The big big cruises
Speaker 1: kind of freak me out because you can't leave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also you're stuck with people you did not
Speaker 3: choose exactly.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, Like it's a hotel that you
Speaker 1: cannot like you just can't take a break for I
Speaker 1: guess you can go to port and whatever. But it's
Speaker 1: just like the activities of all I've grown up going
Speaker 1: to all inclusive hotels up until like my teenage years.
Speaker 1: God bless my family. That's so lovely that you did
Speaker 1: that for us. We're bawling on a budget, but my god,
Speaker 1: it gives you such crippling anxiety, like having to like
Speaker 1: fight over like the buffet with like Bob from fucking Florida.
Speaker 2: From Florida needs what top Hispanic and you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm like, I don't fucking know, Bob.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's how I met my girl. God, yeah, you
Speaker 1: was so caught of brown Angel and that's how I
Speaker 1: met my second husband. So cruises freaked me out. But
Speaker 1: for the Titanic, it was all like beautiful mahogany furniture
Speaker 1: and baroque molding and scull through o'clocks and young whipper
Speaker 1: snappers coming up from steerage to woo society. Girl's named
Speaker 1: Rose stuff like that, you know. And after all that,
Speaker 1: they after all they had John Jacob Astro on board,
Speaker 1: and he was the wealthiest man in the world at
Speaker 1: the time, and he brought along, oh so sweet, his
Speaker 1: nineteen year old wife. You fucking creep. So the ballrooms
Speaker 1: and dining rooms, it's so stupid to know that, like
Speaker 1: throughout history, we made such society, has made such loopholes
Speaker 1: for rich men. You know, it stops today with this podcast.
Speaker 1: It stops today.
Speaker 3: I knew it was an important move to do this podcast.
Speaker 1: The bottoms and dining rooms and everything were supposed to
Speaker 1: be at the height of luxury. The biggest problem for
Speaker 1: Violet was that she wasn't there to enjoy the luxury, right,
Speaker 1: She was the one providing the luxury, and she was
Speaker 1: running between the private rooms, arranging lace bed spreads, running
Speaker 1: to the kitchen to carve meat and serve food, running
Speaker 1: to help the wealthy passengers go to the bathroom, you know,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. So basically there's just a lot of running, right,
Speaker 1: and then came the night. They were in the middle
Speaker 1: of the journey and Violet was lying awake when suddenly
Speaker 1: she heard a low, crunching, ripping sound, and the whole
Speaker 1: ship shivered under her. The strangest part, though, was that
Speaker 1: when the engines quit suddenly everything was quiet for only
Speaker 1: a minute, though, but then Violets started to hear low
Speaker 1: voices in the passage way outside, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of frantic footsteps passing the door, violently, still hoping that
Speaker 1: she was wrong about what was happening, just hoping against logic,
Speaker 1: you know. But the crash had woken up the stewardess
Speaker 1: who shared Violet's room, and she said, sounds like something
Speaker 1: bad has happened. The two of them realized that they
Speaker 1: now had to assist the passengers, to which the entire
Speaker 1: world replied, no fucking shit, buddy, you.
Speaker 2: Know, oh they did it, you know, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So the two of them realized that they had a
Speaker 1: responsibility to manage the passengers. They were still pulling their
Speaker 1: clothes on when another stewards knocked under door. They opened
Speaker 1: it and he said, have you heard the ship is sinking?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine the fucking feeling?
Speaker 2: I mean to be on a sinking ship.
Speaker 1: No, no, sorry, think you're going.
Speaker 3: Amore, Just like the amount of times you use that
Speaker 3: as a say, you know, actually.
Speaker 1: One at least one person yelling we're in a metaphor, right, No,
Speaker 1: but imagine the panic knowing that there's just nothing you
Speaker 1: can fucking do, I know.
Speaker 2: And it's like that long it was.
Speaker 3: I imagine time was really weird. Get like sped up
Speaker 3: but also slowed down and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so there is a sense of urgency, right
Speaker 1: like a Violet rushed to her passengers and she started
Speaker 1: helping children strap on life jackets. But suddenly the order
Speaker 1: came down. Everybody to the lifeboats. Right. Most of the
Speaker 1: people in violet section have been asleep, and they fumbled
Speaker 1: with their valuable struggle to put on thick coats before
Speaker 1: Violet let them up the gangways. Before the stewardess could
Speaker 1: go back for their things, they had to make sure
Speaker 1: that every guest from their section had evacuated. Violet had
Speaker 1: her own panic moment digging through her wardrobe when she
Speaker 1: realized that she didn't bring a coat. You know, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a bone chilling cold once you're off
Speaker 1: that ship, right, what would you do? If you don't
Speaker 1: have a coat. Oh my god, I mean, ah, that's
Speaker 1: what I thought.
Speaker 2: Would you do?
Speaker 3: I mean I would I would ask if someone had
Speaker 3: an extra coat.
Speaker 2: Excuse me a second.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Yeah, I know you guys are all in survival mode,
Speaker 1: but like, what's some hmm, yeah, this is not really
Speaker 1: my color?
Speaker 2: Size medium.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the fuck I would have done.
Speaker 1: I probably would have panicked and been like, I just
Speaker 1: want to dance, you know. And Violet was more resourceful
Speaker 1: than either of us. She grabbed the silk bed cover
Speaker 1: on her way back to the lifeboats.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And one of the most super surreal details that she
Speaker 1: remembered was that she passed a group of officers who
Speaker 1: were still in their dress uniforms with their hands in
Speaker 1: their pockets, just kind of chatting quietly, and they smiled
Speaker 1: at her as she went by. So weird, like you
Speaker 1: don't never know how panic is going to strike you, right.
Speaker 1: She also passed some of the pantry boys who were
Speaker 1: trying to carry a huge load of bread. They tripped
Speaker 1: on something hard and everybody looked down to realize that
Speaker 1: it was a suitcase that it burst open filled with
Speaker 1: gold coins. Oh got it? So by the time Violet
Speaker 1: got to the boats, the arguments had already started, like
Speaker 1: who would get left behind to go down with a ship,
Speaker 1: and who would be allowed to board one of the
Speaker 1: remaining lifeboats and live. Violet watched as John Jacob asked her,
Speaker 1: handed his wife into a boat and waved through goodbye.
Speaker 1: Then with a roar, white distress, rockets were fired up
Speaker 1: into the sky. Families arrived at the lifeboats together, and
Speaker 1: then they cried as they split up. The women climbed
Speaker 1: onto the boats and the men faded back into a
Speaker 1: growing crowd. Some guys nearby started throwing things over the side,
Speaker 1: like wooden chairs and anything that would float. They were
Speaker 1: hoping that there would be things to hold onto in
Speaker 1: the water when the lifeboats were gone. And then someone
Speaker 1: grabbed Violet's arm. It was a deck officer who was
Speaker 1: filling the lifeboat. It was Violet's turn. Violet. Another steward
Speaker 1: is clambered on top of the side of the boat,
Speaker 1: and the officer held something up towards Violet and said,
Speaker 1: look after this. And so when Violet reached down and
Speaker 1: he tossed it to her, and she made the catch.
Speaker 1: It was somebody's baby. It was a freaking baby.
Speaker 2: My gosh, yeah to a story.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 1: How desperate do you have to feel. Imagine how desperate
Speaker 1: you have to feel to be like give somebody your baby?
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, Oh my god, we're joking, but this is
Speaker 3: so harrowing.
Speaker 1: I know. So so then the LFE boat dropped and
Speaker 1: it was such a long way down, and the lights
Speaker 1: of the decks like flashed past them, and then they
Speaker 1: hit the water right finally, remember that the impact was
Speaker 1: bone cracking, and the baby started to scream. A few
Speaker 1: members of the crew were in the boats had the
Speaker 1: oars and they started to pull right. The lifeboat moved
Speaker 1: into the darkness, away from the Titanic, but it was
Speaker 1: the Titanic was still things so badly now. One of
Speaker 1: the men rowing the boat had come from the firing
Speaker 1: rooms and violets said that his face was still blackened
Speaker 1: by cold dust and his eyes were super bloodshot. He
Speaker 1: was only wearing his thin shirt from the engine room,
Speaker 1: and there was nothing to protect them from the cold.
Speaker 1: Everyone of the lfeboat watched the lights of the Titanic
Speaker 1: go out. There were six rows of deck lights, than five,
Speaker 1: then four, then three, then the split in half and
Speaker 1: it started going down now. Violet, a good Catholic, closed
Speaker 1: her eyes and she prayed for the rest of the night.
Speaker 1: It was mostly the extreme cold, the Violet remembered. She
Speaker 1: wrapped the silk oiled around the baby and worried that
Speaker 1: it's crying was getting weaker and quieter. But don't worry, okay,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna spoil it for you. The baby survived,
Speaker 1: so don't forget. The water was chopping around them, and
Speaker 1: the boat was thrown between the waves, and Violet was
Speaker 1: ferociously determined that the baby was not going to die
Speaker 1: in her arms. As the sun came up, the survivors
Speaker 1: in the lifeboil were able to see tons of ice
Speaker 1: mountains floating around them. How crazy is that sight?
Speaker 2: That's nuts, so nuts.
Speaker 1: And finally, in the light of day, they also spotted
Speaker 1: a speck in the horizon. It was the ocean liner Karpathia.
Speaker 1: They had received the Titanic's distress called the night before,
Speaker 1: and they had arrived in time to pick up the lifeboats.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: That's also I mean, I know they're not we can't
Speaker 1: consider them lucky because of the sinking Titanic, but what
Speaker 1: a blessing that it only took them a.
Speaker 2: Night, you know, yeah, truly, truly.
Speaker 3: Also something I thought I have thought about whenever I
Speaker 3: think about the Titanic, which is kind often quite often, yeah,
Speaker 3: is when the boat went in the pull of the yeah,
Speaker 3: the water and just trying to clear the it's that that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And also just like the sound that I like both too,
Speaker 1: must make right.
Speaker 3: Gotten into three car accidents. That's why I don't live
Speaker 3: in LA anymore. Total three cars in five years.
Speaker 1: Thank god, you're okay, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: Two of the cars were pet cruisers and one was
Speaker 3: a rental car on the way to pick up the
Speaker 3: second PT cruiser.
Speaker 1: Well, just because it was a life threatening car crash,
Speaker 1: I will make no comment. But no than in any
Speaker 1: of the circumstances, I would just have so many questions.
Speaker 1: But go on.
Speaker 3: But the reason I bring this up is I can
Speaker 3: conjure the sound of a car crash so easily.
Speaker 2: The stick, the well, the crinkling. Oh and the smell.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it smells like burn to burn, rubber burnt. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's very it's singular, like I I God,
Speaker 3: if you smell that smell not good.
Speaker 1: Back to Violet, back to Violet and just so Alredie
Speaker 1: just knows, like we understand the tragedy of the Titanic.
Speaker 1: It's just like there is I don't know about Uzoe,
Speaker 1: but whenever I get nervous or there's anything tragic, I
Speaker 1: have to like find some lightness around it, because otherwise
Speaker 1: it's just too dark, you know. Yeah, So I left
Speaker 1: at funerals, is what I'm saying. So hire me as
Speaker 1: a stand up comedian for your funeral. Come to my funeral.
Speaker 1: Please come to my funeral. So the men in Violet's
Speaker 1: vote pulled hard on the yours, and they were the
Speaker 1: last to reach the rescue ship. When Violet and the
Speaker 1: others climbed out to the deck, the first thing that
Speaker 1: they were given was a glass of brandy. I mean,
Speaker 1: to be honest, that sounds pretty fantastic. Like what, I
Speaker 1: don't know, what would you want? It's your first thing
Speaker 1: after being rescued. Hmmm, kanji kanji? What's conch kanji is?
Speaker 3: It's it's like a kind of a warm rice porridge.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, I would want some college. I would like
Speaker 1: a soluble? Am I just being weird? Like I was
Speaker 1: just like, no, I don't know, but maybe that's I
Speaker 1: don't know, but also nutritious and dele warm, like I
Speaker 1: want superfood and I want to remain true to I
Speaker 1: want to remain true to my fitness goals, is what
Speaker 1: I want. So Violet was standing on the deck feeling
Speaker 1: days when suddenly a woman rushed up and grabbed the
Speaker 1: baby out of her arms. She turned and ran away
Speaker 1: into the crowd. We can only speculate and hope to
Speaker 1: God that that was the baby's mom, right, because I
Speaker 1: don't know, that was definitely the baby's mom, right, Please? Yeah, please,
Speaker 1: So the Titanic was the deadliest sinking of a ship
Speaker 1: in history up to that point. By the time it
Speaker 1: was over, sixty percent of the first class passenger survived.
Speaker 1: Fuck in the se in class, less than half managed
Speaker 1: to make it. Overall, thirteen hundred people died. Seven hundred
Speaker 1: of those were third class passengers. So fucking unfair. And
Speaker 1: you might think that the escaping of the record the
Speaker 1: Titanic and living to tell the tale would be enough
Speaker 1: to keep Violet Jessa from ever going to see again.
Speaker 1: But that's wrong. No, No, it's an abusive it's like
Speaker 1: a terrible relationship. It's a red flag. She just can't.
Speaker 1: She's gonna fix it, ye, viol Wood Banks ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to fix the ocean, you guys. That is
Speaker 1: the confidence. Yeah, I love that confidence. She even said
Speaker 1: that she knew that she had to go back right
Speaker 1: away otherwise she would lose her nerve, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: fair enough, that makes sense to me. So just two
Speaker 1: weeks after she was finished giving her testimony about the wreck,
Speaker 1: she was back at it again. Well like, if you
Speaker 1: literally just survived the wreck of the Olympic Escape number
Speaker 1: one and then the Titanic escape, are you going back
Speaker 1: to sea or.
Speaker 2: Are you finally I'm taking two years at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go to Long
Speaker 1: Island and just on the ground it all good time,
Speaker 1: and look up at the stars and that's just going
Speaker 1: to be my job. What's even crazier, though, is that
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen, for your birthday, she even had the gun.
Speaker 1: She even had the guts to join the crew of
Speaker 1: the third replica model of the White star Line fleet,
Speaker 1: the Britannic. Can you believe she's just like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get this right. She's the thing hard Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the thing was basically no one in the world knew
Speaker 1: how to cruly ships like Violet did. Plus, the Britannic
Speaker 1: was commissioned as a wartime hospital ship because, of course,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen was in the middle of World War One,
Speaker 1: so Violet felt her own kind of patriotic duty to
Speaker 1: serve in the war, and that meant overcoming her fears
Speaker 1: and going back to sea to serve as a Red
Speaker 1: Cross nurse. On the latest copy of The Titanic, She's
Speaker 1: a fucking badass.
Speaker 2: She really is so brave.
Speaker 1: So when they went to see in nineteen sixteen, the
Speaker 1: crew of the hospital ship didn't realize how extremely dangerous
Speaker 1: their job was, and that brings us to escape number three.
Speaker 1: So in November that year, the Britannic was cruising the
Speaker 1: Agency to pick up a load of wounded soldiers. Violet
Speaker 1: was sitting down to breakfast with a crew. She says
Speaker 1: that she had a hot pot of tea in one
Speaker 1: hand and some butter in the other, when suddenly an
Speaker 1: explosion rocked the ship. That is a very tiny explosure.
Speaker 1: That was explosion rocked the ship. But to be honest,
Speaker 1: it was such a tiny little explosion that they were
Speaker 1: all fine in the quo. Just imagine she was like,
Speaker 1: excuse me, yeah, sorry, yeah, but part of me, the
Speaker 1: butter helps with my guys. I just imagine Violet being like,
Speaker 1: you gotta be fucking kidding me, like again, truly tru again. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the nurses brought today, not today, I'm gonna tame your
Speaker 1: fucking sea. Yeah, I can fix it. So the nurses
Speaker 1: rushed to gather their life for servers, but Violets started
Speaker 1: by helping a few of the others, and while everybody
Speaker 1: went to their lifeboats, Violet went back to her cabin.
Speaker 1: So you know, this wasn't Violet's first rodeo, so by
Speaker 1: now the sense of panic wasn't going to overwhelm her,
Speaker 1: and she was determined to take a few things with her.
Speaker 1: She grabbed her ring, a bible, her alarm clock, and
Speaker 1: a toothbrush. If your ship's going down, what are the
Speaker 1: things that you're gonna grab?
Speaker 3: Well, that's a silk duvet, a silk dovey of course.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she's learned from you, learned from others.
Speaker 2: Very well done, I think leave it all.
Speaker 1: Why is grabbing a fucking alarm clock? Though? What are
Speaker 1: you like? She's like just doothbrush. Yeah, she's like reminding
Speaker 1: me to brush my teeth if we're in long enough.
Speaker 2: I know, Ring, I guess maybe yeah, special ring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like, this is my invisibility ring. Violet, you're
Speaker 1: reading too much h J R R. Tolken, which is
Speaker 1: not the time because Jerr Token was fighting in the
Speaker 1: war and I knew that. So Violet said that she
Speaker 1: made sure to get the toothbrush because of how much
Speaker 1: people made fun of her for not having one after
Speaker 1: the Titanic went down. I guess that's what happens to
Speaker 1: you when you're mostly surrounded by first class fucking assholes,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: So they were making they were like nagging her about yeah.
Speaker 2: On the tugboat.
Speaker 1: On the tugboat day, there was a bigger ship, the
Speaker 1: Maker ship that rescue them from the right. So this
Speaker 1: is what happens, right, You're getting made fun of for
Speaker 1: not having toothrush when you're surrounded by assholes, and what
Speaker 1: a fucking weird thing to do. But she grabbed the toothbrush,
Speaker 1: which is kind of endearing.
Speaker 2: Shame, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So by the time she reached the deck, Violet
Speaker 1: was the last one on board, and the officer there
Speaker 1: was surprised to see you, or because he thought that
Speaker 1: all the nurses had already been loaded into the lifeboats.
Speaker 1: What Violet was finally in lifeboats. She remembered that it
Speaker 1: dropped so fast that it was smashing lights and bouncing
Speaker 1: off the brass rims into portholes as it went down,
Speaker 1: and then it finally hit the water so hard that
Speaker 1: it knocked everyone dizzy. I'm just going to suggest that
Speaker 1: people start taking courses of how to lower lightboats and
Speaker 1: then not like such a greasy way. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: if it's me reading the signs, I mean, guys, you know,
Speaker 1: save yourselves, of course, but like you don't want to
Speaker 1: kill them on the way down. You know, I've seen
Speaker 1: Why Loadus season two. You know, getting off of boats
Speaker 1: is dangerous. But that still wasn't the worst thing that happened,
Speaker 1: you know, because by now, okay, this is really fucked up.
Speaker 1: By now, the front of the ship was dipping down,
Speaker 1: and that meant that the huge propeller was now lifting
Speaker 1: out of the water. At the back the ship was
Speaker 1: still moving forward too, so the propeller was now swinging
Speaker 1: forward toward the lifeboats and chopping the water, pulling them
Speaker 1: towards it. No, no, no, that's what you were saying.
Speaker 1: So she says that she looked back and saw other
Speaker 1: lifeboats and the people in them sucked into the propeller, and,
Speaker 1: in her words, minced so violently jumped out of the
Speaker 1: lifeboat into the water. She held her breath, she closed
Speaker 1: her eyes, and she felt herself get whipped into the
Speaker 1: propeller's spin. Twice, something hard crashed into her head. She
Speaker 1: had a life jacket on, but it was too small
Speaker 1: to carry her weight. The only thing that actually saved
Speaker 1: her was grabbing a second life jacket that went floating by.
Speaker 1: Once she was floating on the surface, Violet opened her eyes,
Speaker 1: but she says that she closed them again to block
Speaker 1: out the site of the ship sinking away. Eventually, she
Speaker 1: opened her eyes in time to see that the Britannic
Speaker 1: finally dove into the waves with a stern flying upward
Speaker 1: into the air, before the whole ship sank straight down.
Speaker 1: One crazy fucking thing here, She says that she never
Speaker 1: learned to swim, so you would think, sorry, are you okay?
Speaker 1: So let me bive check you're I'm.
Speaker 3: Just disturbed by this. This is a bomber. When you
Speaker 3: said they were minced. Yeah, did we need to use
Speaker 3: that burb?
Speaker 1: Listen? I didn't write her memoir, Okay, I knows now.
Speaker 2: It's just so crazy.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I would have known to jump
Speaker 3: out of the boat.
Speaker 1: My fory is that by the time she she swam
Speaker 1: far enough that by the time that the propeller was
Speaker 1: even pulling at them, that it was going more vertical.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Also that you're never going to forget fucking seeing people
Speaker 1: get absolutely ravaged by It's.
Speaker 2: So crazy, like they thought that they were safe.
Speaker 1: Too, exactly. And you know when you were talking about
Speaker 1: the boats sinking and how that would pull you under, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was also thinking that, But I was like, I'd
Speaker 1: never even thought about like a propeller also pulling you
Speaker 1: towards it. Like fuck, Like, how many fucking things do
Speaker 1: I have to worry about?
Speaker 2: Totally?
Speaker 3: I also like trying to like catch a wave on
Speaker 3: like a you know, like swimming out on a surfboard,
Speaker 3: and like I'm always humbled by how much exertion.
Speaker 2: You need to Oh my god, you know how much
Speaker 2: energy you need to exert to.
Speaker 1: Swim back out to the surfing. It's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so inove and also surfing is one of those
Speaker 1: things that like really makes you respect the sea because like,
Speaker 1: no matter how good you are at it, like it's
Speaker 1: going to make you feel like a dumbass, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So she floating on the water until the rescue boats
Speaker 1: reached her, and they brought her back to shore on
Speaker 1: a Greek island, and Violet learned that they had sailed
Speaker 1: into a string of underwater mines dropped by a German
Speaker 1: submarine the day before. Somehow, only twenty people were killed
Speaker 1: as the ship went down, and most of them were
Speaker 1: not killed by a mine. They were actually killed by
Speaker 1: the propellers. Violet had a frack skull. I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: do this to you, so, but I just need to
Speaker 1: tell you a story. I wish I could change the facts.
Speaker 2: I thought the escapes were gonna be like fun.
Speaker 1: You're like, so I escaped like this really weird relationship
Speaker 1: in Tabo. No, ma'am.
Speaker 2: She ractured skull. Do you think? What do you think?
Speaker 1: She hit probably a piece of the lifeboats, a piece
Speaker 1: of the boat really anything, and it hit her twice
Speaker 1: right and her leg was cut open to the bone.
Speaker 1: So it took her three full years to heal. Now.
Speaker 1: Fortunately for her, she had again escaped the White Star
Speaker 1: Line with her life. So listen, we're coming to the
Speaker 1: end of violet story here. And if you escape three
Speaker 1: second ship, would you ever, like, please let me out
Speaker 1: of this? Would you ever travel by sea again? No?
Speaker 2: But this bitch be crazy.
Speaker 1: She's like, like, let me get out back out there.
Speaker 1: She's like, she's like, I was close this time. Put
Speaker 1: me in coach. When it was finally time to go home,
Speaker 1: Violet decided to travel to London by land. Thank god.
Speaker 1: So in London, Violet took a job a bank and
Speaker 1: for a while she would at least she stopped tempting faate.
Speaker 1: Violet published a memoir in the nineteen thirties, when her
Speaker 1: memories of the White Star Line were still fresh now
Speaker 1: for a while, though her book didn't really get much attention.
Speaker 1: There are people interested in the Titanic, sure, but not
Speaker 1: very many of them were paying attention to the story
Speaker 1: of a stewardist. They are all about guys like John
Speaker 1: Jacob Astor and all the other fancy pants in the
Speaker 1: first class people. Oh, one crazy thing. Even after JJ
Speaker 1: died on the Titanic, we're that close that I just
Speaker 1: call him JJ. His family kept investing in the White
Speaker 1: Star line. His son was collecting stock certificates in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, like the company killed him with their terrible
Speaker 1: fucking boat, and there was still money to be made.
Speaker 3: People are making crazy decisions, insane.
Speaker 1: The early nineteen hundreds was just fucking nuts.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: It's maybe just the takeaways, like people have been crazy forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't find comfort in that, but I
Speaker 1: find comfort in I find a comfort in the fact
Speaker 1: that people have been the same throughout history and in
Speaker 1: the sense of, like, not to get too deep on this,
Speaker 1: but like, my dad died when I was seventeen, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that helped me was that my
Speaker 1: teacher gave me this the Hamlet monologue to be or
Speaker 1: not to be right, And at first it made no
Speaker 1: fucking sense to me because it was Greek to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, wearing water, Mala, why the fuck are
Speaker 1: you giving me like old English books? But then once
Speaker 1: I started really paying attention to it, after a brief
Speaker 1: moment of mourning, I realized that this guy was talking
Speaker 1: about exactly what I was going through right five hundred
Speaker 1: years before me, and I found there's a certain sense
Speaker 1: of comfort in knowing that the human existence is not
Speaker 1: that different, you know, so that I'm not alone in
Speaker 1: this experience. And it was actually, incidentally what made me
Speaker 1: take acting seriously and moved to New York and study acting.
Speaker 1: Why we have a podcast? Oh my god, there we go.
Speaker 2: That's a very moving story.
Speaker 1: So Violet finally retired in nineteen fifty and moved herself
Speaker 1: into a little English college on the east coast of England.
Speaker 1: I love that for her. Do you have a retirement
Speaker 1: destination in mind? Oh?
Speaker 2: Man, I don't know. We've been talking about Ireland so much.
Speaker 6: Love.
Speaker 1: So now you're moving til we'll see, Like we'll check
Speaker 1: in next week. We're telling you about about the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: You're like, yeah, I just always felt like Jamaica was
Speaker 1: calling to me. What about like the Caribbean speaking It's
Speaker 1: just like calling to me anybody else see it. So
Speaker 1: if you survived the death traps made by the White
Speaker 1: Star Line enough times, I feel like you deserve a
Speaker 1: little seaside cottage. You know, the should just give it
Speaker 1: to you. Honestly, the White Star Line should have paid
Speaker 1: for it, you know, and maybe huh they would have,
Speaker 1: except they went bankrupt in nineteen thirty four on say
Speaker 1: it with me you birthday, that's right. So anyway, Violently
Speaker 1: finally gave herself permission to just, you know, just raise
Speaker 1: some chickens and put up her feet. And she lived
Speaker 1: there for almost twenty years, all the way into her eighties. Oh.
Speaker 1: In one little last little tidbit, one day, this is nuts.
Speaker 1: One day, a little while before she died, Violet got
Speaker 1: a phone call super late at night. That's the sound
Speaker 1: of a phone, in case you didn't know, and Violent
Speaker 1: Violet gets out of bad and answers it, and it
Speaker 1: was somebody saying they were from Jenny fucking Craig. Just no,
Speaker 1: so what are you really?
Speaker 2: I was with you?
Speaker 1: So Violet gets out of bed, she answers the phone.
Speaker 1: Right she hears the voice of a lady on the
Speaker 1: other end of the line who asked if she was
Speaker 1: Violet Jessep who had been on the Titanic, and Violin
Speaker 1: was like, yes, that was me. Who is this? The
Speaker 1: person on the other end of the phone was like,
Speaker 1: I am the baby you rescued, oh my, And then
Speaker 1: they just hung up and she never called again. Isn't
Speaker 1: that crazy? Is that all? She said, that's all she
Speaker 1: said and investing. Yahoo, I guess I don't fucking know.
Speaker 1: But isn't that wild?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess maybe.
Speaker 3: Well I wish that Violet had been like, was the
Speaker 3: woman who grabs you out of my arms? Your mom?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Who is your mother? What does she look like? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it's this crazy story and I really hope that
Speaker 1: it wasn't just somebody crane calling her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: So the wreck of the Titanic was found on the
Speaker 1: ocean floor almost fifteen years after Violet died. The discovery
Speaker 1: of the wreck kicked off a new wave of interest
Speaker 1: in the ship what it was really like during the voyage,
Speaker 1: So that finally brought violet story the attention it deserved.
Speaker 1: Her book was published in nineteen eighty seven, and this
Speaker 1: time it became one of the defining stories of the
Speaker 1: Titanic by including what it was really like for normal
Speaker 1: people working there to survive. And so that's when Violet
Speaker 1: finally got her nickname, Miss Unsinkable. Miss Unsinkable, that's sexually
Speaker 1: her nickname. Now, anyway, that's our story. What do you think?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the twists and turns so crazy.
Speaker 1: Right, Wow, we're like last one minute and I'm like
Speaker 1: fucking like so disturbed, and then I'm also like kind
Speaker 1: of hungry, Like just a lot went on. So you're
Speaker 1: fucking amazing, dude. And you're in so many different projects
Speaker 1: like The after Party Night Bitch and your Voice a
Speaker 1: Mermaid scientists are on Creature Commandos. So wow, yeah, listeners,
Speaker 1: go find her work asap. I want to go back
Speaker 1: to our producer, call Knillis, because he's had an entire
Speaker 1: episode to think about a New Sea shanty or an
Speaker 1: Irish song, an Irish song of any kind. So Carl,
Speaker 1: do you have something for me? Yes?
Speaker 4: I do, and here we go. Zoey Child was the
Speaker 4: Queen of podcast. Zoe Child is the Queen no Podcast.
Speaker 4: Zoe Child is the Queen no Podcast. There lying in
Speaker 4: the morning. Way hey enops? She rises way, hey enop,
Speaker 4: she rises way Hey enough she rises in the morning.
Speaker 1: Hey. Thank you, Carl, Thank you everybody. Zoe, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being in this. You were such a
Speaker 1: wonderful guest.
Speaker 3: You are such a great storyteller and so fun to
Speaker 3: hang out with.
Speaker 1: Oh, thanks so much, See you later. Banana A. Bo
Speaker 1: Brady's Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation
Speaker 1: Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers from
Speaker 1: me or Turo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka from
Speaker 1: Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Winning Donaldson from Gilded Audio,
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show was produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Carl and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively,
Speaker 1: our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
Speaker 1: technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riiseek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein,
Speaker 1: Olivia Canny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
Speaker 1: a rating or review. My mom will call you each
Speaker 1: personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next week.