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22 great photos:

http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Cruise+ship+runs+aground+off+of+Italy/G3214

I saw this ship several times as it was a regular visitor here in Malta. The picture shows it in the Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta in 2008.

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Observation of a non-engineer: all these cruise ships look prodigiously top-heavy to me.

Quite high as well... ...as you san see it towers over the 47m high bastions of Valletta built in the mid-16th century

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The ship starts out ok- all the food is stored at the bottom.

As the cruise goes on, passengers up top eat more and more, and the ship becomes top heavy, and you can see the results

Is the guy in shot 15 the Dai Lama

The main headline in the Sunday Mirror today (a low-life, left-wing "red-top" tabloid newspaper for those unfamiliar with the gutters of the British press) was:



Erm, apart from the Iceberg and the 1,500 people drowning in a freezing ocean

I don't understand why everyone was in such a panic to get off the ship, considering (1) 60% (?) of the ship was above water, (2) it was resting in shallow water, (3) it was not burning, and (4) it was right at the shoreline with tons of help undoubtedly on the way. Some people nearly died in mishaps involving in trying to launch lifeboats down that 45 degree angle.

There are two more people confirmed dead - 5 in all.

Check the article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia_disaster

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Natural selection? Darwin award contenders!!

Reading the reports, it looks like error piled on top of error piled on top of error. Complete cluelessness. I'd hate to be the company that owns the boat once all the lawsuits start...

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The ship is owned by Carnival Cruise Lines (NYSE: CCL).

There's probably some kind of legal firewall between each of their ships and the parent company, in anticipation of disasters like this, like maybe the ship itself is a wholly-owned subsidiary, etc.

I don't know.

With all the millions $$$ of radar and charts these vessells now have, how on earth can you run into rocks on a route you take each week?

Sounds like total incompetence from start to finish, and yes the legal suits will be many.

Passengers spoke of faulty evacuation procedures and unprepared staff who told them nothing was wrong — until the ship began tipping over.

After questioning him for several hours, the Italian police detained the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, and the first officer, the police said.

Asked on television on Sunday about allegations that the captain had left the ship before the last passenger had been rescued, Francesco Verusio, the prosecutor in Grosseto, said that that had happened. “Unfortunately, I must confirm that circumstance,” he added.

Before his detention, Captain Schettino had told Italian television that the ship had hit a reef that was not on its navigation charts.

Gianni Onorato, the president of the Costa cruise company, a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise lines, said the ship had been sailing its “regularly scheduled itinerary” from Civitavecchia to Savona, Italy, when it struck “a submerged rock.”

Coast Guard officials were more cautious. “The captain probably sailed too close to the shore, but we need to wait for the results of the investigation,” Commander Nicastro said.

However, Cristiano de Musso, a cruise company spokesman, said the ship had not deviated from the course it follows “52 times a year.”

Passengers described scenes of chaos as they tried to evacuate. Ms. Grasso said waiters instructed diners to remain seated even as the ship began listing. The captain initially told passengers that the ship had an electrical problem, according to media reports.

Once she boarded a lifeboat, Ms. Grasso said, the helmsman appeared ill equipped to bring the scores of travelers on his vessel to safety: he kept banging into the ship, unable to steer the lifeboat to the shore, until a passenger shoved him aside and took the lead.

“No crew member was trained for an evacuation,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/world ... gewanted=2

If I had to follow the same route 52 times a years with a load of bratty passengers, I would run the ship onto the rocks just to break the monotony

That was a major, MAJOR disaster for a ship. Not only was the captain in s**t but the ship wasn't designed right... Ships SHOULD are built to stay upright when taking in water.

I bet that'll will be the perfect example when I go back to Nautical College of how not to navigate.

News reports are saying that for a fact, the captain deviated from the course plotted into the computer navigation.

Its believed that he did so because some of the crew wanted to wave and show off to people on shore, so the captain tried to bring the ship in closer.

Scrambling to abandon ship, when its pretty much just run aground, with the coast so close you can almost touch it. Panic makes people act irrationally. Maybe "Titanic" was what popped into people's minds. Or "Poseidon Adventure". This is more akin to the Andrea Doria (stayed afloat 11 hours before sinking; the Titanic went down in 2.5).

Its amazing to see the ship lying as it is, and all those little speedboats zipping about it. Like the elephant in a net and the little mouse. Really gives one a sense of scale.

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What I don't get is that there was no Pilot on board... I always thought that when a ship is arriving in a port or Canal there should always be a pilot on board....


That's the reason a ship ran aground off New Zealand... The Capt. wanted to cut corners to be in port for his birthday and they ran aground.

Interesting that this happened 100 years after the Titanic. I realise it was April 1912. But still, very close.

At the risk of being accused of being a racist (where have we heard that before?), the captain and crews' reaction of abandoning ship before the passengers were off is reminiscent of the sinking of the Lusitania on the 7th of May 1915.

It sank in 18 minutes, having been torpedoed by a German U-Boat. 1198 people died. Survivors mentioned that the crew took all the lifejackets and the only lifeboats that could be launched to save themselves before the passengers could leave.

From then on many countries derided Italians as cowardly and, as usually happens after tragedies, a lot of cruel racist jokes were generated.

These jokes lasted after WW2. I will not lower the standard of this board by including these jokes, but I suspect that, having read the reports of the events with the Concordia, these jokes may start to flourish again.

There was nothing wrong with the ship, the Captain and some of his staff are idiots and cowards.

The ship fell over as it had no water left to float on! That happens when you run the thing bascially up onto the land mass and park it.

It got skewered like a kebab, it didn't sink and would probably still float if it had 10m more water underneath it.

No Pilot required, he wasn't docking at those docks. He should have been no where near them as he had left the shipping channel completely.

Perfectly calm, no storms and surely the sat nav was screeming all it alarms and depth warnings. They must have ignored them.

The radio dialogue between the coast guard and the Captain is quite shocking in his complete lack of care. "It's dark, what do you expect me to do?" What!?

If feel very sorry for those who died, crew and passengers, who stood on the wrong side preparing for the lifeboat as the ship rolled over and drowned them.

How can someone be that dumb and be a Captain? How can no one else of the crew stand up and stop him from commiting ship suicide? Then his idiot lawyer is quoted as saying "he saved thousands of lives".

Very sad.

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It is worth remembering that the Captain only did what any of the top execs of the company he works for would have done

The Captain will never Sail another Ship in his life. They are now playing the audio recordings from the Italian Coast Guard to the Captain telling him to get back on the Ship.

He replied with "It's too dark and we can't see anything" to which the Coast Guard replied " You might have saved yourself from the Sea but you will be in big trouble for leaving the Ship". This is 100% total incompetence. I agree with Gavin that comparing this to the titanic is ridiculous, the passengers could have almost jumped from Ship to Shore.

They are now talking about charging the Captain with Manslaughter. Great Pictures Doug.

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This is probably not true, but they are now reporting that the Captain tripped over and fell into the liferaft (cough!) and could not get back on board as the ship had leaned too far over.

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Tempus fugit

The first victim has been identified as Sandor Feher, one of the ship's violinists.

"Jozsef Balog, a pianist working with Mr. Feher on the ship, told the Blikk newspaper that Mr. Feher was wearing a lifejacket when he decided to return to his cabin to pack his violin. Mr. Feher was last seen on deck en route to the area where he was supposed to board a lifeboat."

"According to Mr. Balog, Mr. Feher helped put lifejackets on several crying children before returning to his cabin."

Wow when that tape gets played in court that Captain will and should, go to Jail for a long time.

What an Italian coward.

And it is not even as if he can say there were language issues.

It is similar to the MS Sea Diamond disaster in 2007 in Greece, in which three people died.

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"We've had a blackout, no need for help."
"Are you sure, we have report's of damage and falling objects?"
"I'm telling you it's just a blackout."

From the earlier radio conversation when the event first happened.
Then he "fell off the bridge and into a liferaft".


We've heard that this is the first time rescue servcices have been sent to a ship in distress without the ship asking for help.

It's also (apparently) the first time that when they arrived, (very early on), the Captain of the ship has not still been on board.

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