The Scene had been chaos.

At around 14:00 hours a storm had blown up, coming out of the east, driving the SS Ragamuffin ahead of it at a frantic pace and lashing the sea to foam around the smallish cruise ship. Aboard the vessel were about 500 18 - 25 year old teachers and recent high school graduates, as well as 50 or so crew members and staff. The ship threatened to capsize in the raging swells that crashed over the deck but the captain kept her nose to the waves and she stayed afloat...

Until she hit the reef.

According to the GPS the reef shouldn't have been there, they were supposed to be in deep ocean about 500 miles out off the coast of California on their way to Hawaii, but there it was, plain for everyone to feel, a coral reef, and it had torn the hull of the ship to shreds.

There was running, shouting, the crew trying to lower lifeboats into the storm tossed water and watching them be crushed against the ships side by the pounding surf. The Ragamuffin called out a mayday but all that came back to the radio room was static. People jumped into the water and swam for the dubious safety of some sandbars that they saw off along the reef a few hundred meters to starboard, but none of them made it: eaten by sharks or pummeled into unconsciousness by the waves and drowned.

The Ship went down, and the last two lifeboats were released direct from the deck: with the few people left struggling desperately to get aboard. They say Captain Connors stayed at the ship's wheal to the last, fighting with the automatic controls to buy even a few more seconds to get the people in her charge to safety.

And then, over the course of five miraculous minutes, the storm vanished.

Of all the people aboard the SS Ragamuffin only 16 survived, two crew members, two teachers, and 12 students. In two life boats the teachers and crew members searched the water, saving 6 of the twelve students from the frenzied sharks and still tossing surf, then rendezvoused and waited for the rough seas to abate.

About 20 minutes later, one of the crew members, Miss Shauna Jefferson called out the good news as she scanned the horizon with her binoculars. "LAND!!! I SEE LAND!!!" she shouted over the sound of the waves lapping against the boats pointing towards a thin band of brown and green on the horizon.

Breaking out the oars the survivors pulled for shore with a will, knowing that this was their first best hope of living till they could be rescued.

As the two boats crawled through the now lightly lapping seas they took stock of who had made it: and were shocked to discover that of the hundreds of people on board only students and teachers from ONE school had survived: Lawndale High.

Let me now give the terse biographies of the 16 survivors, and explain their relationships to one another.