The Sinking of the Concordia

[Eddie Teach]

Fake captain? Tell me more, I don't know much about the cruise ship business.

My understanding is cruise ships have a real captain that runs the boat and a fake one who's job is to have dinner with the passengers.

Maybe they call the real captain the pilot?

[Sheilbh]

That explains your upper class bohemian mannerisms. 

His family owns a fucking castle. Maybe his dad just felt the call of the sea.

What?

My dad, and both his brothers, joined the merchant navy (as deckboys) because it was the reliable route out of Liverpool.

[Tamas]

That explains your upper class bohemian mannerisms. 

His family owns a fucking castle. Maybe his dad just felt the call of the sea.

What?

My dad, and both his brothers, joined the merchant navy (as deckboys) because it was the reliable route out of Liverpool.

I think Marty is projecting. He is just as much left-leaning as you are, but has probably had zero direct experiences of the plights he wishes to correct by other people's tax money.

[Jacob]

That explains your upper class bohemian mannerisms. 

His family owns a fucking castle. Maybe his dad just felt the call of the sea.

What?

My dad, and both his brothers, joined the merchant navy (as deckboys) because it was the reliable route out of Liverpool.

He's probably confusing you with a character in one of his fantasy novels; next he'll say your family has a long history of slaying dragons.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Possibly thinking of Captain Haddock and Marlinspike Hall 

The reality is somewhat more prosaic IIRC.

[dps]

Comparisons between this incident and the sinking of the Titanic are stupid.  Leave if to Timmay to post an article full of them.

I was about to post something like this (only more coherent). Yeah, 5 people die (with a possible death toll of up to 20) as the ship crashes into a reef off the coast in the Mediterranean - that's exactly the same as Titanic. 

Next in the news: a truck crashes into a building. "That's exactly like 911."

The comparison that sprang to my mind when I heard about the cruise ship was to the US Navy destroyers that ran aground in California back in the 20's.  The loss of life in that incident was a higher than with the cruise ship (though not nearly at the level of the Titanic), but it's comparable in the "run aground" bit.

[Berkut]

So basically a cruise ship ran into Italy, right?

[Pedrito]

Strange thing is, Italy did not sink.

Yet.

L.

[Winkelried]

Strange thing is, Italy did not sink.

Yet.

L.

[sbr]

[Crazy_Ivan80]

the cats strike again

[jimmy olsen]

WTF!

http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/16/10164356-captains-favor-to-head-waiter-to-blame-for-cruise-ship-disaster

By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

La Repubblica newspaper has published what it says is a telephone conversation between the port authority and the captain of the Costa Concordia on the night the cruise ship veered off course and crashed into rocks off the coast of Tuscany, NBC News reports.

The transcript of the conversation is in the hands of prosecutors.

The captain, Francesco Schettino, had sailed perilously close to the coast so that the Costa Concordia's head waiter could salute his family on land, according to other media reports.

Here is the translation of the conversation between him and the port authority shortly after the accident, according to NBC News:
advertisement

00:32am
The port authority asks the captain, Francesco Schettino, how many people are left on board. He says 200-300, therefore claiming unrealistically that 4,000 people were evacuated in only 40 minutes. It quickly becomes clear he has already abandoned ship.

Schettino: "Now I'll go back up", he claims. "I came out to check out to figure out what was happening."

PA (Port Authority):"Will you be the last on board?"

Schsttino:"I will be the last on board."

00:42am
PA asks how many people still need to be evacuated.

Schettino:"I called and they told me there are about 100 people. I am coordinating the operations. But I can't go back on it. We have abandoned the ship."

PA:"Captain, did you really abandon the ship??"

Schettino:"No, no, I am here, I am coordinating the evacuation."

PA:"Captain, this is an order, now I am in charge. Get back on that ship and coordinate the operations. There are already casualties."

Schettino:"How many?"

PA:"You should tell me that! What do you want to do, go home? Now you get back on that ship and tell us what can be done, how many people are still there and what do they need."

Schettino:"OK, OK, I am going."

(The captain will not get back on the ship)

Meanwhile, Italian coast guard officials late Monday raised number of missing from Friday's shipwreck to 29 -- four crew members and 25 passengers, a top coast guard official, Marco Brusco, said on state TV. That total is up from 16 cited by authorities earlier in the day. Bruno didn't immediately explain the rise. Six bodies have been recovered.
Get latest updates on breakingnews.com


Story updated 4:53 p.m. ET: The captain of the luxury cruise ship that capsized after hitting rocks off Italy had sailed perilously close to the coast to "make a bow" to people on a Tuscan island, according to media reports.

Francesco Schettino made the dangerous maneuver so that the Costa Concordia's head waiter could salute his family on land, according to reports.

Schettino denies charges of manslaughter and his lawyer has said his actions had saved many lives.

The father of the ship's head waiter told Reuters that his son had telephoned him before the accident to say the crew would salute him by blowing the ship's whistle as they passed by the island of Giglio, where both the waiter, Antonello Tievoli, and his 82-year-old father Giuseppe live.

"The ship obviously came too close," the elder Tievoli said, according to Reuters.

NBC's Tom Costello reports.

"I don't know if Antonello asked the captain to come near, but the responsibility is always the captain's."

Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted witnesses as saying that shortly before the accident, the captain called the head waiter to the bridge saying, "Antonello, come see, we are very close to your Giglio."

Schettino was detained on Saturday. He is accused of manslaughter and abandoning his ship before all those on board were evacuated. Prosecutors say he also refused to go back on board when requested by the coast guard.

Shortly before the ship hit the rocks, the waiter's sister, Patrizia Tievoli, had posted on Facebookthat: "In a short period of time the Concordia ship will pass very close. A big greeting to my brother who finally gets to have a holiday on landing in Savona," the Telegraph reported.

The sail-past was a private affair, part of a code of courtesy shared only by the crew, and there was no public announcement about it, according to Corriere della Sera.

After the head waiter reached the safety of dry land, he reportedly told friends and relatives on Giglio: "I would never have imagined that I'd end up disembarking on my own island like this," the Telegraph reported, citing the Corriere della Sera report.

Costa Cruises Chief Executive Pier Luigi Foschi on Monday blamed errors by Schettino for the disaster. He said at a news conference the company would provide its captain with any assistance he required, although he added, "But we need to acknowledge the facts and we cannot deny human error," he added.

"These ships are ultra-safe. It is an exceptional event, which was unforeseeable," he said, fighting back tears.

He said the ship deviated from its correct route and Schettino had contravened safety procedures. "The company disavows such behavior, which caused the accident," he said.

Foschi said company vessels were forbidden to come closer than 500 meters (547 yards) to the Giglio coast. Investigators say the liner, designed as a floating pleasure palace for over 3,000 paying customers, was about 150 meters (164 yards) offshore when it hit the rocks that tore a long gash in its thousand-foot hull.

Schettino denies being too close to the coast and says the rock he hit was not marked on charts.

His lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, issued a statement saying Schettino was "broken-up, troubled and saddened by the loss of life". But he believed he had saved many lives by carrying out a difficult emergency maneuver with anchors after the accident, which turned the ship closer to the shore.

A Facebook pagehas been set up in which people are venting their anger at Schettino. The page had more than 1,000 "likes" as of Monday.

Meanwhile, authorities are trying to prevent the tragedy from turning into an environmental crisis, as rough seas battering the stricken mega-ship raised fears that fuel might leak into pristine waters off Tuscany that are part of a protected sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales.

Waters that had remained calm for the first three days of the rescue turned choppy Monday, shifting the wreckage of the Costa Concordia a few inches and temporarily suspending divers' searches for people still unaccounted for.

Italy's environmental minister raised the alarm about a potential environmental catastrophe if any of the 500,000 gallons (2,300 tons) of fuel begins to leak into the pristine waters off Giglio, which are popular with scuba divers and form part of the protected Tuscan archipelago.

"At the moment there haven't been any fuel leaks, but we have to intervene quickly to avoid an environmental disaster," Corrado Clini told RAI state radio.

Story updated at 12 p.m. ET: While the hunt continues for missing passengers, including an American couple from Minnesota, Italian authorities have declared a state of emergency in a bid to prevent an environmental disaster. The country's environment minister says liquid has started to emerge from the stricken Costa Concordia, but it is not known whether the substance is the vessel's 500,000 gallons of fuel. Protective barriers are being put in place to contain a potential fuel leak, Reuters reports.

...

[Berkut]

So I wonder what you do with a ship that size - try to refloat it to get it out of there to where it can be repaired?

[jimmy olsen]

So I wonder what you do with a ship that size - try to refloat it to get it out of there to where it can be repaired?

How would you do that? I don't think a ship of any size could get near enough do the depth of the water.

[Ideologue]

That explains your upper class bohemian mannerisms. 

His family owns a fucking castle. Maybe his dad just felt the call of the sea.

What?

Oh, stop trying to deny it.  Mihali's at Harvard and you live in a castle.  It's like I don't even know you people.