Retired teacher recalls 1988 cruise ship tragedy

MEMORIES . . . Sheila Antrobus with a cutting from the Chronicle telling of her dramatic escape from the Jupiter

‘I realise how lucky we were’

THE Italian cruise ship disaster has stirred up vivid memories for one Oldham woman.

Retired school teacher Sheila Antrobus escaped with her life when the ship she was on board sank off Greece in 1988.

She was among a party of 38 children and 11 adults from a Tameside school on the Jupiter for an educational cruise when, minutes after the liner left the port of Piraeus near Athens, the ship was holed by an Italian cargo vessel, causing “absolute chaos” on board.

Her horrifying experience bears striking similarities to last Friday’s disaster off the Italian island of Giglio, when the Costa Concordia struck rocks and partly sank.

Miss Antrobus (63), of Holts Lane, Lees, recalled that hundreds of children and adults frantically tried to abandon ship on a tragic October night that took the lives of four people, including a schoolgirl and teacher from Britain.

All the people in her school party survived the shipwreck.

She added: “The Italian tragedy has evoked memories that I thought were well and truly gone.

“This will raise some bad memories for people who were children at the time and more than likely have moved on with their lives.”

Miss Antrobus described how, like the Costa Concordia, the Jupiter was plunged into terrifying darkness, was close to the shore and listed heavily to one side.

The former Failsworth School teacher, who went on to work as a PE teacher at Two Trees High School, in Denton, until her retirement, believes lessons have not been learned.

“If it is true that no evacuation drill took place on the Costa Concordia before the disaster struck, that is also what happened on our ship.

“I was having a shower when I heard a loud bang. I put on my clothes and went up on deck, with blood running down my leg. I came through the dining room and saw the front of the ship that had crashed into us.

“The crew on the cargo vessel put its engines in reverse and there was a great big gaping hole.

“On deck we found all the Jupiter’s Greek crew sitting in lifeboats with their lifejackets and at that moment I thought this is serious.

“We had over 400 children on the boat and like the Costa, the lifeboats could not be launched because they would hit the side of the ship.

“A lot of people had jumped through terror and panicked. There was no organisation or system in place.”

Miss Antrobus’s parents spotted their daughter on the television news helping youngsters off a lifeboat on to the near-by shore.

She said “guardian angels” were working overtime the night the Jupiter sank.

She added: “You never know how you are going to handle a situation but you seem to find some inner strength.

“Now that I am older and wiser in life, I realise how lucky we all were because if that had happened further out at sea, I probably would not be here to tell the tale.”