Christena disaster

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.

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.

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.