3 October 1916

My dear Annie,

I hope this letter finds you. Yes, I am writing again even though I have not heard from you since the letter you sent via the White Star Line head office. You can understand why I continue to write. I pray your condition has not worsened. I was sorry to read of your current situation, although, from your letter, you do not sound unwell to me. Can you ever forgive me for losing track of you after that Terrible Night? I didn’t know if you had lived or died. I feared I would never see you again.

To speak to the question that may still be weighing on your mind: I have received no further knowledge of what happened to the baby. Throughout the cold and miserable evening waiting in the lifeboat, silently praying to God to spare us, I held her tight to my chest to keep her warm. But when we were rescued by the Carpathia, as I mentioned in my last letter, I was forced to surrender her to the crew, and I have since gathered that she was likely left at an orphanage. You must consider that she may be lost to you and to me forever.

I’m so sorry, Annie.

Let me turn my attention now to you, dear friend. It grieves me to think of you wasting away behind the walls of an asylum. Whatever melancholy has possessed you since that fateful night, you must rise above it. I know that you can. I remember the girl who was my roommate on that doomed ship. I shall never forget the last time I saw you, jumping into those dark, icy waters. We thought you had lost your mind, made senseless by the terrible shock of it all. But only you had seen the baby tumble into the water. Only you knew that there wasn’t a moment to waste. Annie Hebbley is the bravest girl I have ever known, I thought that night.

That is how I know you will survive your current circumstances, Annie. You are stronger than you think.

I am no longer a stewardess but a nurse now, as part of the war effort. The ship on which I currently serve is a twin to that lovely one we both knew so well. Imagine if you can, however, that all its finery has been transformed, like Cinderella returned to her life as a scullery maid! HMHS Britannic has been fitted out as a hospital ship. The crystal chandeliers are gone, as is the flocked paper from the walls of the grand staircase. Now all is whitewash and canvas duck and everything smells of antiseptic, always antiseptic. The ballroom has been remade into a series of operating stations, the pantries made to hold stocks of surgical equipment. The wards can accommodate thousands of patients. The nurses and rest of the crew occupy many of the first-class staterooms, where you and I would’ve once made the beds and doted on passengers.

Annie, the Britannic is still in desperate need of nurses. I beg you, again, to consider reprising your career at sea to come to work with me. I shan’t lie to you: we see injuries almost too terrible to be borne. What they say in the newspapers is true: this is surely the war to end all wars, for we could never surpass its horrors. These boys need you, Annie—to lift their spirits, to remind them of what’s waiting for them at home. You will be the best tonic in the world for them.

And, if I am truthful, you will be the best tonic in the world for me. I have come to miss you terribly, Annie. There are few people who would understand what we have been through. Few people to whom I could admit that I still am haunted by that night, that it comes in my dreams monthly, weekly, and that I still sometimes cry out in fright. Who could understand why I still make my living on the water, why I am bound to it when it has shown me what awfulness it can do.

You, I am sure, will understand. I would be surprised if you did not suffer these same afflictions and fears yourself because you, too, are bound to the sea. I always sensed that in you.

Write, Annie, and tell me that you’ll join me on the Britannic. I have already filed a letter of recommendation for you with the London office. We depart from Southampton terminal on the twelfth of November. I pray to see you before we sail.

Yours most fondly,

Violet Jessop