Born into a merchant navy family, Gina, youngest of her parents 3 children, and the only daughter, Gina was very much the unwanted one. Though not abused, Gina was pretty much left out of everything, Enrico spent more on his two sons than he did on Gina, and Dominica wasn’t much different either.
Her education was at St. John’s High in South Sands, a Catholic school, where she received a good education during her school years, leaving school with good exam results. As her brothers turned 16, they followed the family footsteps and joined the navy. William Fittipaldi, the eldest, joined the navy; Angelo Fittipaldi joined up with a merchant shipping company. In 1996, when Fitt turned 16, she was signed up to Chemica Atlantico, a chemical shipping company. The ship that she was signed onto, the Celestia was a ship with a chequered past, having been stretched in 1980 after being built in 1976 and had seen better days but the company still continued to use it. Gina was given the position of becoming the assistant to the ships cook.
It took a few weeks for Gina to settle into the all male crew, however settle she did, and unlike her father, who was the captain, Gina gained the respect of the crew, probably because of female company in an all male environment. Because of the respect, Gina became known as “Fitt” to her fellow crewmates, ever since then the name stuck.
In the early hours of 9th November 1999, 2 days before her 19th birthday, out in the ocean off 200km off the coast of Terra Azure, Astyria Celestia suffered a power loss then breaks her keel and begins to roll over, this roll threw Gina out of her bunk.
Sensing that the ship was in danger, Fitt put her life jacket on then began her escape, and to do this Gina used a fire extinguisher to break the latch off the porthole window, allowing water to cascade into the ship. As soon as the cabin was full of water Gina swam out and once out of the ship the ripcord on the life jacket was pulled, catapulting Gina to the surface, the ship itself now lies in 150m of water.
When Gina surfaced she looked around in the moonlit night only to see the main hull slowly heel over and sink as by by this time the entire front end had already gone under whilst on the surface was a slick of diesel oil from the Celestia’s fuel tanks. Hearing someone shout, Gina turned around and saw one of her colleagues so she started to swim to a lifeboat.
As she swam, Gina spotted a small semi inflatable speed boat racing towards her the men aboard it letting rip with machine gun fire whilst in the distance, a dark, low slung shape of a submarine was silhouetted by the moonlight. The seaman who shouted Gina was mown down in a stream of bullets, dying instantly and falling into the water. As the boat came closer Gina tried to dive out of the way, but the boat caught her right leg and ankle, chewing them up and almost instantly the salt instantly getting into the wounds. Gina later resurfaced, and with the inflatable going back to the mother boat. Gina recalls the ship as being very low to the water, almost submarine like in profile), Gina swam to the remains of a lifeboat, she also grabbed a dead crewman and removed his survival suit and put it on herself. With the life suit on Gina was alone in the ocean. The first thing she did was use a belt of one of the dead crewmen to seal the leg of the suit to ensure that the blood was contained, she also stuffed what ever fabric she could around the leg as well to act as a blood soak though being in salt water the pain was almost unbarable until that was the nerve damage meant that the wounds to her leg went numb.
Come dawn, Gina looked around to survey her surroundings, of the 30 crew aboard the Celestia she was the only survivor. Lying on the water were numerous plastic containers, pop bottles and the likes of, a couple of sports bags containing some water filters and sterilising tablets that had come from the two of the lifeboats. 19 other corpses lay afloat on the water, along with a partly deflated inflatable lifeboat, (the floor, and 4 of the 9 side sections were deflated, but it was afloat). Gina swam round to pick up some of these fizzy drinks bottles, and a couple of belts off the dead crewmen, climbed aboard it, the partially inflated boat moulding to her shape. As the sun climbed higher into the horizon, Fitt began to succumb to the fact that she may never get picked up which gave her a deep fear of the unknown. The day went on without so much as a single passing ship; the distress beacon pinging away but nothing came.
The first night alone at sea was quite frightening for Gina, as she wasn’t sure what lay for her in the morning, and she was frightened to go sleep for fear of slipping into unconsciousness and then death. After a night that was totally still, not much in the way of moonlight, as there was quite a bit of cloud cover. During the night, Gina resorted to singing with herself, if anything to take her mind off the situation and to keep her fighting on. These lyrics were made up of what ever thoughts came into her head, Usually, these were song lyrics inspired by what ever she is thinking of at the time, mainly to keep her spirits up. During the day, Gina was also taking note at the direction of the sun throughout the day, so she could gather a fix on which way she was drifting, (which turned out to be away from the site of the sinking, heading Northeast, away from land).
The morning of the second day, (Fitt’s 19th Birthday), began much like the other morning, except it was raining, so Fitt took the condenser apart and let it fill with water, it may not have been the nicest water in the world but it was water. Having an empty bottle and a knife at hand, Gina sliced the top off one bottle to make a funnel, then placed it over another bottle in order to collect rainwater. Once the bottle was full, Fitt added a sterilising tab and placed the top back on, then later on drunk the water. That evening, Gina was ready to give up hope; she was cold, tired and had practically had enough. Her physical strength to to keep going was fading and the EPRB was pinging at longer intervals now as the battery was beginning to fail, and so taking longer to power up the capacitor that flashes the strobe. Gina by this time was weak and nauseous, almost incoherent but she carried on through the night.
The following morning Gina looked up to the east and could make out the lines of a warship silhouetted by the morning sun, the warship was an Auroran patrol Frigate that had detected the distress frequency transmission from Fitt’s EPRB and come over to take a peek at what was giving off the radio blip. As it neared Gina, a Lynx helicopter was dispatched and once airborne it flew over. As it flew over the water the crew had spotted Gina, slowly moving her arms. Soon after, a Zodiac boat was dispatched to bring Fitt in. Once aboard the warship, Fitt was sent straight to the medical centre where surgeons began working on Fitt’s leg, however it had to be amoutated.
As the medical team operated on Gina, the ship sailed to the last known location of the Celestia, to retrieve any bodies on the surface. Some 18 hours later, Fitt woke up in sickbay aboard the warship standing over her was one of the medical staff and the captain. Fitt was hooked up to an IV Nutrient feed to help Fitt recover as she was very weak, many feared she may not survive, however she did, gradually getting stronger thanks to the cocktail of medical nutrients and medical steroids that were being put into her system, however she was in a lot of pain, to which Fitt puts down to the propeller of the Terra Azuran boat that ran over her.
When the Naval ship reached Haven, the capital city of Khayr Var a few days later, Fitt was put into the forces hospital on the colony, where she continued to recover. Gina stayed in Port Haven for a couple of weeks whilst she recovered sufficiently to be transfered home. Once recovered Gina was transferred onto a Ministry of Defence flight from Port Haven back home to South Sands.
Gina returned to the Aurora Confederacy only to find that she was not to be included in her father’s will, with everything being sent to her brothers, and all items purchased by her father for Gina, were also to go to them, this left Gina with almost nothing except what she had purchased herself. Arriving home, though her mother and two brothers were made aware of the loss of the Celestia and that Gina was the only survivor, NO ONE in her family came to meet her, only a few relatives of fellow crewmen, yet to this day Fitt has never spoken to the rest of her family, instead being closer to the rest of the crew relatives than her own family.
In 2000, with her residual limb recovered to the point it could bare weight, Gina received her artificial leg which gave her some mobility back and so with practice she was able to walk again. When she took those first steps, someone was there to meet her in the rehabilitation centre, it was the captain of the warship that had rescued Fitt, to this day they remain in contact.
With compensation and the wages of life at sea, plus a business loan (now paid off) Fitt went into business in something safer, trucking. her contract with her truck was hauling foodstuffs to places in the north of the country, some of it to outlying communities that can only be resupplied in winter when the northern ocean freezes over allowing access to those communities