In 1988, 14-year-old Carole Gardner was on a school trip on the cruise ship the Jupiter when it collided with the car carrier, the Addy-jay. Carole survived, along with all but 4 of the 600 passengers. But the ordeal was not over as she returned home to deal with the emotional aftermath ...
Carole was first aware that something was badly wrong when she heard a very loud bang. The cruise ship, the Jupiter, on which she was travelling with 391 other British schoolchildren had collided with the car carrier the Addy-jay, in Piraeus harbour. Carole remembers, "the glasses on the bar started sliding down and smashing - the waiter was trying to catch them. I had this sensation of being tipped to the right ..."
Carole didn't realise what had happened until she walked through the dining room, "there was a big black thing sticking into the side of the ship - the walls all peeled back like a sardine can - and water spraying ..."
The ship began to list heavily. The lights went out and in total darkness, Carole recalls falling and smashing her head against some chairs, "I was disorientated and confused - and then had this feeling of a massive weight slamming me in the back and being pushed really hard up against the chairs, and then another weight and another weight, coming down and down and down..." As the ship began to sink, the people behind Carole were sliding down on top of her. Carole was trapped but eventually she and others managed to get out of a nearby door onto the deck, and from there dived into the sea. The ship was literally sinking beneath them. "The water was full of grease, I came out covered in black oil - I was treading water as the Jupiter sank."
Carole’s mother, Sheila first heard the news when her mother-in-law called to say she’d heard about a ship sinking in Piraeus harbour on the 7 o’clock news. In a state of total disbelief, Carole's parents followed every news broadcast they could tune into, "it was like watching a film." Finally, at one o'clock in the morning, they managed to speak to their daughter on a ship to shore phone.
The families of the schoolchildren gathered in the local church hall. It was an emotional re-union for parents and children. Carole remembers, "looking desperately to find my family - the first face I saw was Dad’s poking up from this mass of people - he just gave me the biggest hug I ever had..."
The re-union was the beginning of an emotional backlash. On the first night, Sheila remembers her daughter just wanting to escape into her bedroom, "she just didn’t want to know anybody or anything.." Later Carole began to feel elated, "the world was the most bright and beautiful thing I’d ever seen - like being re-born almost." But other feelings surfaced. Carole felt confused, as of she didn't quite understand what was going on, and guilt at having survived. She even contemplated suicide.
Inevitably, Carole’s need for her parents' support caused Sandra, Carole's sister, to feel that she was the ‘forgotten one.’ Sandra was also confused about the effect of Carole's experience, "She went away a normal young lady and came back a middle-aged woman, who didn’t want to play with Sindy with me or go to the park - I lost my sister to this new person." Sandra still feels that she doesn’t fully understand what her sister’s been through. When the subject of Carole’s escape comes up, Sandra admits, "I don’t want to listen sometimes. I have the feeling ‘can’t we just it alone' ..." The sister's relationship improved when Carole went to university. Sandra says, "I’d got my parents to myself for a bit .."
Carole still has good and bad days. The anger and emotion associated with the experience remains, and Sandra and Sheila too, still have feelings of vulnerability and pain because of that night. Carole says they all three of them tend to feel that "as soon as something's wrong, it’s wrong and it’s never going to be better.." In spite of this, they agree that "you've got to be perky, otherwise you slip into depression."
