Lucky escape?

Back in 1978/79, as part of my degree course, I was working for a year as an English assistant in French school. I decided to pay my parents in London a surprise visit in the February half-term. I was on a ferry from Dieppe to Newhaven in the middle of the night, in dense fog. I struck up a conversation with an Australian nurse in the cafe, over a coffee. After a while we decided to go up to the lounge deck. When we got there, as I opened the door and looked in I felt there was a very eery green light in there, and something told me not to go in. We went back to the cafe and had another coffee. About 10 minutes later there was a huge shudder, the ship lurched and all the cutlery etc fell off the tables. Everyone looked shocked, but nothing was said-I wondered if we had somehow hit the dock in the fog-even though there had been none of the usual announcements regarding imminent arrival/docking etcetera. For ages all we heard was an announcement asking for a pupil ( a boys name I think) to return to his school party. We were told nothing whatsoever until they announced we were docking back in Dieppe. When we disembarked we all saw a huge gaping hole ripped out of the front of the boat, from top to bottom. It transpired we had collided with an oil tanker mid-Channel¬! 3 people were sadly killed..one being the pupil whose name was being called..and I believe he was in the area where the Australian girl and I had been going to sit, but had been put off by the horrible atmosphere there. Maybe this saved our lives.