The Christena disaster was a ferry boat shipwreck with 233 casualties [1] that occurred on 1 August 1970 between the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis in the Leeward Islands, West Indies.
The Christena disaster was a ferry boat shipwreck with 233 casualties [1] that occurred on 1 August 1970 between the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis in the Leeward Islands, West Indies.
MV Christena was a 160 ft (49 m), government-owned and operated ferry, which for the previous 11 years had worked the 12 mi (19 km) route between Basseterre, the capital of the island of Saint Kitts, and Charlestown, the capital of the island of Nevis.
Christena had been built between 1958 and 1959 by Sprostons Ltd. in Georgetown, British Guiana (present-day Guyana), and, at the time of sinking, had recently completed a refurbishment 2 months earlier at a dry dock in Bridgetown, Barbados. She was owned and operated by the Saint Kitts and Nevis Ministry of Communications, Works, and Transport, and constructed via an appropriation of $132,500 from the British government. Aside from being significantly overloaded on the day of the disaster, Christena left port with ballast tanks empty, a practice that had become standard procedure, to allow her to ride higher in the water and reduce complaints over waves soaking the decks, but which further compromised stability.
On the afternoon of Saturday 1 August 1970 (the weekend of the annual Emancipation Day holiday), the ferry boat was overloaded on her final run of the day from St. Kitts to Nevis. The passenger capacity was 155, but that afternoon Christena had approximately 320 to 322 people on board. When the boat was .5 mi (0.80 km) off Nags Head (a promontory at the southern tip of the southeastern peninsula of St. Kitts), and entering the rougher seas that line up with the channel between the two islands, the ferry boat took on water because the captain could not close the hermetic doors of the ship.The captain abruptly turned his ship towards the coast in an attempt to run it aground, but the large, heavy ship capsized and in a matter of minutes it sank. Fishing boats came to help, but only 91 people survived, and the great majority of those were people that had to be rescued. [2]
After the sinking, 57 bodies were retrieved and identified; 66 bodies were retrieved but were unidentifiable. A number of bodies were trapped inside the sunken wreckage, and these bodies were left in place: "A decision was made to leave the boat and [the entrapped] bodies undisturbed" notes Arthur Anslyn, Captain of the Caribe Queen, who was hired by the Commission of Inquiry to dive the site after August 1". [3] [4]
A memorial to the disaster is located on the waterfront in Charlestown, the capital of Nevis; that memorial reads, "In loving memory of all those who lost their lives in the Christena disaster of August 1st, 1970 R.I.P." A memorial headstone is located in the cemetery in the village of Bath on Nevis.
Oswald Tyson is one of the survivors of the disaster; in his 2011 autobiography he describes Christena as "a two-decker, partly enclosed craft... she was in poor repair and she always took on water in the lower level. If I had worn shoes, the water would have ruined them as it came up to my ankles." [5]
After the ferry boat sank, numerous injured people were in the water, and as Tyson explains, "the blood attracted the sharks. They had never bothered anyone before, that I had heard of, but on this day the sharks came like monkeys to a mango tree." [5]
Nevis is an island in the Caribbean Sea that forms part of the inner arc of the Leeward Islands chain of the West Indies. Nevis and the neighbouring island of Saint Kitts constitute the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, a singular nation state. Nevis is located near the northern end of the Lesser Antilles archipelago about 350 kilometres (220 mi) east-southeast of Puerto Rico and 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of Antigua. Its area is 93 square kilometres (36 sq mi) and the capital is Charlestown.
Saint Kitts and Nevis, officially the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis, is an island country consisting of the two islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis, both located in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands chain of the Lesser Antilles. With 261 square kilometres (101 sq mi) of territory, and roughly 48,000 inhabitants, it is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere, in both area and population, as well as the world's smallest sovereign federation. The country is a Commonwealth realm, with Charles III as King and head of state.
Saint Kitts and Nevis have one of the longest written histories in the Caribbean, both islands being among Spain's and England's first colonies in the archipelago. Despite being only two miles apart and quite diminutive in size, Saint Kitts and Nevis were widely recognized as being separate entities with distinct identities until they were forcibly united in the late 19th century.
Saint Kitts and Nevis is a twin island country with a total landmass of just 270 square kilometres (104 sq mi). The island of St. Kitts, the larger of the two, is 180 square kilometres (68 sq mi) in size and is located at latitude 17.30 N, and longitude 62.80 W. Nevis is 93 square kilometres (36 sq mi) and located at latitude 17.10 N, longitude 62.35 W, approximately 3 km south-east of St. Kitts. The islands are about one-third of the way from Puerto Rico to Trinidad and Tobago. The islands are volcanic and mountainous.
Transport in Saint Christopher and Nevis includes normal road traffic, public buses, taxis, ferries, airports, and one railway.
Basseterre is the capital and largest city of Saint Kitts and Nevis with an estimated population of 14,000 in 2018. Geographically, the Basseterre port is located at 17°18′N62°44′W, on the south-western coast of Saint Kitts Island, and it is one of the chief commercial depots of the Leeward Islands. The city lies within Saint George Basseterre Parish.
Charlestown is the capital of the island of Nevis in the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Leeward Islands of the West Indies. Charlestown is situated on the leeward side of the island of Nevis near the southern end of Pinney's Beach.
MV Princess Victoria was one of the earliest roll-on/roll-off ferries. Completed in 1947, she operated from Stranraer, Scotland, to Larne, Northern Ireland, initially by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) until 1 January 1948 and thereafter by LMS's successor British Railways. During a severe European windstorm on 31 January 1953, she sank in the North Channel with the loss of 135 lives. This was then the deadliest maritime disaster in United Kingdom waters since World War II. For many years it was believed that 133 people had lost their lives in the disaster. However, research by a local historian, Liam Kelly, identified two other victims—Gordon Wright and Thomas Saunders—who had not been identified as there had been no passenger list at the time.
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Captain Roy Arthur Anslyn, formally known as Arthur Anslyn or Captain Anslyn, and informally known as "Brother" Anslyn, was a recognized expert in marine knowledge who, from 1999 to his death, served as Marine Consultant to the Premier's Ministry, Nevis Air and Sea Ports Authority, Nevis Island Administration (NIA), and Marine Advisor to the Premier's Ministry, NIA. Over the years, Anslyn received numerous awards, both for his service to the community and for his bravery in saving lives and property in extreme situations.
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