The Marchioness nightmare

For the past three years, model-agency owner Annette Russell has lived in Battersea, a few hundred yards from the river which claimed the lives of so many of her friends.

"I actually find it quite peaceful now when I'm walking my dog, Castro, along the Thames. I often sit on a bench in front of Battersea Church and look out on to the water. I do pray and thank God that I survived."

Annette is one of 80 survivors of the Marchioness disaster in the early hours of 20 August 1989, which happened 15 years ago this month.

Fifty-one people lost their lives when a river dredger, the Bowbelle, ploughed into the pleasure boat they were partying on. The average age of the victims was 22.

Annette herself was 26 and lost half the 30 friends and colleagues she had invited to the party to celebrate the birthday of her business partner, financier Antonio de Vasconcellos, who also died that night.

She has never before spoken in detail about the disaster, but even after all these years, the 41-year-old breaks down as she recalls that night.

"We had drinks at mine and I remember one of my models, Simon Senior, sat on a table and broke it. I can't remember what I said, but I snapped at him. I still wish those hadn't been the last words I ever spoke to him."

Like many of the friends who gathered at Annette's home before heading off to the river boat, Simon never lived to see the morning.

It was fate that was to save Annette's life when, just after 1.40am on 20 August, she found herself up on deck enjoying the warm summer's night.

"Because of where I was on the boat, I saw everything. I was on the deck facing the direction we were going and a friend, Howard, was facing the direction we were coming from.

"He pointed to the dredger, the Bowbelle, and said, 'Annette, look at that. It's going to hit us.' I looked over my shoulder and saw it as it slammed into us.

"I instinctively dived off the boat, went underneath, and, as I came up, mine was the only head in the water. I remember it being completely silent. I could see The Marchioness was vertical and had already half-sunk. Then I was pulled back underwater and was taken by the current.

"I had this euphoric feeling that I was drowning. I know it sounds a peculiar thing to say but, for anybody who has lost someone in a drowning accident, it isn't a bad way to go.

"The current carried me through the arches of Southwark Bridge, I went under again and as I did I can remember thinking: 'I can't die before my Mum and Dad.' Then I popped up again and there were heads everywhere in the water and lots of screaming."

A strong swimmer, Annette reached the banks of the Thames and, with other survivors, was taken to hospital in one of a fleet of ambulances and then on to the Howard Hotel, which is right on the Embankment. The police were using the hotel as an information centre and as a place where they could question survivors.

"The next thing I really recall was that I was in the hotel and there was a phone call from my father, who was trying to find out more information about the accident. The police in Oxfordshire had already been to my parents' house and told them: 'Your daughter is missing, presumed dead.' Why on earth was that allowed to happen - it was a big enough shock to kill them off."

Many terrible mistakes were made that night - about which more later - making the anniversary painful for the survivors and the families of the victims.

But what makes it particularly distressing this year is that next month filming begins on a television dramatisation of the disaster.

Although not due to be screened on ITV until next year, what concerns many of the survivors is not the fact that it is being made, but the failure of the programme makers to contact many of the survivors who are, understandably, fearful about how television will portray them.

Annette is among those who view the programme with apprehension.

"None of the survivors that I am still in contact with has been approached. Surely the courteous thing to have done would have been to write to all of us to warn us that this was happening." Not even Jonathan Phang, Antonio's business partner, who actually organised the party, has been contacted. Both Phang and Annette got in touch with the programme makers to find out more information, without success.

"They did send somebody to have lunch with me," says Annette, "but I found nothing out and all they wanted to know was if I had any photographs of people who had died. They promised they would send letters to everyone - but that still hasn't happened.

"It makes me think that nobody has learned anything from all the upsets that followed the disaster."

The "upsets" she refers to are the catalogue of unforgivable events that followed the accident.

Victims' hands were cut off, inexplicably, for "identification purposes", and vital organs were removed without the permission of relatives. Survivors were subjected to endless examinations by insurance assessors; relatives seeking compensation even had to provide detailed receipts for the clothing worn by the dead. It took 10 years for an inquiry to be held and even though the Crown Prosecution Service announced a verdict of unlawful killing, nobody was prosecuted.

The question of identification is still one that haunts Annette, and her version of what happened gives an extraordinary insight into the mismanagement of events that followed the tragedy.

As many of the dead were her clients, she offered to help police identify the bodies. This offer was declined.

"I wish to God I had been allowed to see the bodies because maybe mistakes wouldn't have been made and it wouldn't have taken so long. Various families had asked me to take care of the identification on their behalf. And now we know why I wasn't allowed to see the bodies - - half of them had their hands cut off by the coroner's office. Because of the nature of my business I can be very descriptive. I could say what people were wearing down to what the buckles on their belts were like. But the identification was shambolic.

"At the inquiry, I was asked to look at the identification records of a close Australian girlfriend. They stated she was white: she wasn't, she was black; they said she didn't have pierced ears: she did; they said she was 5ft 9in tall: she was 5ft 5in. It broke my heart. Why didn't they just let me identify her in the first place? I had to choose the coffin and pay for it to be sent back. But to this day, I still don't know whether I sent the right body home to her family in Australia."

The ensuing days and months continued to be a nightmare for Annette. Initially her home in Chelsea became a meeting point for survivors and relatives of the deceased and she acted as a conduit between the authorities and the sufferers.

"The police even put a telephone line into my apartment so that they could be in direct contact with me. I can't remember how many funerals I went to - five a day sometimes. It did dominate my every waking thought for many years - my mother has said in the past that she has 'lost' part of her daughter.

"It has obviously left its mark on me. I have great difficulty flying or taking a train, not just a boat. I couldn't cross a bridge for years and I've not actually been back on the Thames since."

For years she would go to parties where everyone would know her as "Annette who survived the Marchioness disaster", making her feel too vulnerable to become physically intimate with anybody. "When I did eventually have a personal relationship with someone, my fear of losing them was so great that I would cling, cling, cling. If I was sleeping with somebody, I would be grabbing hold of them and I would have nervous stomach contractions in my sleep."

What ultimately saved Annette was her work. A one-time beauty queen - she was crowned Miss ATV when she was in her teens - she had gone on to become house model for Parisian fashion designer Louis Feraud for four years. At the time of the tragedy, she had had several years' experience as a model-agency booker and was about to set up her own male modelling agency with Antonio de Vasconcellos.

Although Antonio died on the Marchioness, Annette was persuaded to go ahead and on 2 October 1989, "sodamtuff '" opened for business as originally planned. Says Annette: "The name and logo had been thought up by Simon Senior and I wanted to keep the name in honour of him and others that I had loved and lost.

"It seemed so appropriate because life can be tough. I don't know if I'm ever going to be the agent I was - I still can't book a flight or a train on behalf of any of my men, which is a direct result of the Marchioness."

Today the agency is one of the most respected and successful male model agencies in the country. Obviously it is a glamorous, at times self-absorbed business, but Annette says she can't forget that the people she works with are more important than the world she moves in. The Marchioness disaster taught her that.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, there were snide suggestions that, because those who died were mostly rich, beautiful and privileged, they were somehow more dispensable than others.

Annette is particularly concerned that the TV drama should not perpetuate such views.

"My worry is they will be portrayed as vacuous, beautiful people. I hope the world has moved on from that attitude."