Violet Constance Jessop

 Violet Constance Jessop might just be the unluckiest—or luckiest—person to ever live. You decide.

She was born in Buenos Aires in 1887. As a child, she got really sick with tuberculosis, and doctors didn’t think she’d make it. But somehow, she got better. Just when life seemed to be improving, her father died. Her parents were from Ireland, so her mother took Violet and her five siblings back to the UK. Violet went to school, but money was tight, so she had to quit and start working. And that’s where her unbelievable story begins.

Her first job was with the Royal Mail Line as a cabin maid. It didn’t pay much, but it was a start. From there, she landed a better job as a stewardess with the White Star Line. That’s how she ended up working on the RMS Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship, known at the time as the "lucky one."

But luck didn’t quite hold. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic collided with a British Navy ship, the HMS Hawke, and the back of the ship got badly damaged. Still, it made it back to port safely—and Violet did too. Because of the repairs, she was then transferred to the Titanic. You know what’s coming, right?

On April 10, 1912, Violet boarded the Titanic. Just four days into the journey, the ship hit an iceberg. Thousands died in the sinking, but Violet survived. Most of the survivors were women and children from first class—and she just happened to be the stewardess assigned to the first-class passengers.

But that still wasn’t the end of her story.

She kept working at sea and later trained as a nurse. That’s how she ended up on the Britannic, a huge ship like the Titanic and Olympic, but this time used as a hospital ship during World War I. On November 21, 1916, the Britannic struck a German mine and sank in under an hour. Violet made it onto one of the few lifeboats and—once again—she survived.

Despite all these close calls, Violet kept working at sea for around forty years. Luckily for her (and maybe even luckier for the people around her), she never faced another disaster again.