OCTOBER 21, 1988, is a date that will be etched for ever on the memories of former staff and schoolchildren from Cator Park School in Beckenham.

On a warm evening more than 10 years ago in the port of Piraeus, near Athens, the cruise liner Jupiter had just left with 391 British children on board, all excited to be starting their school trip.

Fifteen minutes later, Italian container ship the Adige had borne down on the Jupiter and gouged a huge hole in the side of the liner.

Forty panic-stricken minutes later, the Jupiter was at the bottom of the sea, with, thankfully, most of the children and their teachers safely off it.

A decade has now passed, and survivors of the disaster have written about their experiences for a new book, Jupiter's Children, collected by former teacher Mary Campion.

Compiled of accounts that children, parents and staff wrote shortly after the disaster, the book makes strangely compulsive reading.

The book is split into nine sections, of which the largest and most interesting is a part called "a cruise to disaster".

Extracts from the accounts of the 12 staff and 17 children who were on board that fateful day retell the tale, from the moment they stepped on board to when they were flown back home.

What makes the book so engrossing is that the reader is confronted by the immediacy of the events, the rawness of the emotions, and the coolly explicit nature of the details.

Testimony like that of Mr Howard Britton, on the trip with his daughter, Sarah.

He writes: "People were trying to come down, but no-one moved away at the bottom. My daughter Sarah's knee became trapped in a hand rail, people pressed against her and she began to scream."

Rather like the warped satisfaction one gets from watching an X-rated horror movie, a desire to witness the final moments of the stricken liner drives you to turn page after page.

Satisfaction guaranteed for horror movie fans then? Yes, I'd say so; but as well as the thrill, there are heart-warming accounts of bravery and courage, and tales of what the survivors have achieved since that night.

Simon Weston, the Falklands War veteran, was asked to write a foreword to the book.

Jupiter's Children, compiled by Mary Campion is published by Liverpool University Press and is priced £9.95.

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