BASSETERRE, St. Kitts. - “I made a conscious decision to stay among the dead people while I waited to be picked up,” recounted Christena survivor Diana Richards (nee Williams), “for I knew they would not fight me for the box-crate that kept me afloat and alive.”
As this survivor told of her struggles to stay alive after the MV Christena went down, her eyes portrayed her realization that there is a very thin line between life and death, and that her survival had changed her thoughts forever.
She spoke of one woman who was staying afloat on a bag of provisions but who kept watching her and her box-crate, and then the woman suddenly reached forward and pushed her head down under the water and tried snatching her drinks-crate away from her at the same time.
A struggle ensued which she (Diana) won as she held on desperately to the crate...but she can never forget the look the woman gave her as she went under for the last time. It was a look, Diana said, that had haunted her ever since then, and would become part of the nightmares she often had years after her rescue.
Then she related how a guy suddenly jumped on her back and locked his arms around her neck. It felt as if he were choking her or maybe in his frantic attempt to stay alive, he was just desperately holding on for dear life; he just had to grab on to anything that was afloat.
In order for her to stay alive she had to shake him off and prise his hands from around her neck for she felt he was choking her to death.
Everyone wanted to survive. The law of the jungle kicked in and the struggle to survive became frantic and animalistic.
The suddenness and unexpected nature of the disaster called for quick decisive action. By now there were already dead bodies floating around them. This was when Diana realised it was safer to stay among the dead.
Deep down, she felt that a crowd would be at the Charlestown pier waiting for the boat, and she sensed that those waiting for their loved ones would realise that something was wrong after the Christena did not appear. She felt certain they would send out an alarm or send some kind of help.
These were her thoughts as she managed to stay afloat on her crate among the dead. It was not long before a fishing boat appeared and so it was that Diana Richards was rescued and managed to reach her relatives in Charlestown even before they knew that the Christena had capsized killing two thirds of the people it carried.
No one would have expected that this fine August Saturday of 1970 would end the way it did for it was such a good holiday weekend.
As was the custom, many Nevisians had come to St. Kitts to shop; many Nevisians who worked on St. Kitts, as Diana Richards did (she was employed then by Barclays’ Bank) were eager to return for the holiday; many Nevisian farmers had come to sell their provisions in St. Kitts; all were looking forward to returning home.
True, they knew the boat was crowded but this was not the first time that it was, and all believed that as long as they got on to this sturdy Government boat, it would take them over safely. It always did.
Diana boarded the vessel a bit late and walked past the crowded lower deck filled with hucksters and bags of unsold vegetables and fruit and climbed up the steps to the upper deck where she met one or two friends.
She recalled that one friend even joked when she saw how crowded the boat was, “We goin’ drown this afternoon!” But, she was only joking, of course. Her ‘joke’ turned out to be prophetic for she did not survive the crossing.
She remembered vaguely that she did see the captain try to get the passengers to distribute themselves more evenly along both sides of the boat.
But the first inkling she had that anything was wrong was when she saw the mate who was steering the boat get up and jump overboard. Soon after that the boat capsized and she was literally thrown off the boat and into the water.
At first people remained close to the boat, perhaps hoping that it would still be their means of survival. But after the screams and frantic squabbling to grab whatever they could hold on to, some set out to swim to shore. In desperation they were prepared to attempt the 4-5 mile journey; some refused to attempt to swim it across; some could not even swim.
In the end Diana was one of the 90 survivors; 236 were not so fortunate and succumbed to a watery grave. The sharks soon got wind..... and as seen from some of the bodies which came ashore two or three days later, they had a feeding frenzy. For many, many months, Kittitians and Nevisians could not bring themselves to eat fish of any kind.
For Diana, there were many weeks of nightmares and waking up in cold sweats.
She would never again commute by boat to St. Kitts; she would travel only by flying across the Channel. But as time passed she was able to put the experience and those harrowing images behind her.
It took some coercing by fellow students when she was at University in Canada to even get her to board a river boat for a short five to ten minute ride. But gradually she was able to overcome her phobias, and images began to fade until...
Just recently she met Ozzie Tyson who was a boy at the time and had lost his mother, brother and sister on that day. Since then he has written a book “Ozzie’s Odyssey –My life before and after the M.V. Christena went down”
Diana recalls that on reading his book, she had a sudden clear flashback of him being rescued. He was then just eleven years old and she marvels that after 41 years that this book and talking to Ossie Tyson, could suddenly cause all the images of that traumatic day to come tumbling back.
When asked if she ever felt she had survived for some reason, she shrugs and says she cannot tell.
Diana is presently married to Larkland Richards, attorney at law and proprietor of Bird Rock Beach Hotel. They have a son, Greg, who, as a product of a survivor owes his existence to Diana's survival on that fateful day.
(Ozzie Tyson’s book referred to above is now available on Amazon.com and copies may still be available at Laws Bookshop and at bookshops in Nevis. It is certainly worthwhile reading)
