What Indeed Was He Thinking...?

The Costa Concordia, on its side near Giglio Porto, Italy is the largest passenger shipwreck by tonnage ever to be recorded.  It ran aground, all 950-feet of it, off the Tuscan island of Giglio last January under the expert guidance of its captain, Francesco Schettino.  The unfortunate occurrence in which the cruise liner crashed into giant granite undersea outcrops, marked the death of 32 people.

And its captain, a braggart, coward and noted womanizer, charged with manslaughter.  He, needless to say, counters with professions of innocence.  At the start of a routine week-long cruise of the Mediterranean Captain Schettino was set on a "sail-past" course of the port, a little bit of braggadocio in which he engaged, and which he quite obviously mismanaged.

The liner with its 4,2000 passengers and crew was mortally wounded, taking on water as a result of a giant hole opened in its hull.

The Costa Concordia cruise ship near the harbour of Giglio Porto. (Joern Haufe / AP Photo)

His reckless manoeuvring was compounded by charges of abandoning ship, ignoring the ages-old maritime custom of honour of a captain remaining with his ship.  And attending zealously to the safety and disembarkation of his passengers.  The charges are unfair and do not reflect reality, the captain contends.  The simple truth is, he contends, he haplessly tripped into a lifeboat.

The charges levelled against the man and to which he has yet to answer in a court of justice is of having abandoned ship after causing a shipwreck and responsibility for manslaughter.  Now attention has been turned to removing the carcase of a once-proud vessel, towing it to a demolition shipyard.  An immense enterprise, for the ship is the size of a large apartment block.

And the cost estimated to be in the range of $400-million.  A dozen countries have offered up the services of their marine rescue specialists.  A team of 450 of the world's most reliable salvage technicians will be involved in this project to persuade the ship from the seabed on which it reclines, so it can be towed to a site in Italy where it will be disassembled.

Pillars will be placed upon the granite seabed for a base the size of a football field to be built in sections to create an area on which to roll the ship without fracturing it.  Fifteen enormous steel tanks are to be bolted to its seaward side. "The biggest are 32 metres long.  They weigh 500 tons and to get them lined up exactly so that we can weld them on is no small feat."

"This operation is pushing the boundaries of marine technology.  There is no other job this size in the world", explained Capt. Peter Bouchard, a British master mariner.  Part of this formidably difficult task is filling sacks with close to 18,000 tons of cement which, as a result of access difficulty must be filled by hand by a team of 100 drivers working around the clock.

"With a ship of that size, you'd start to get nervous if you were within a couple of nautical miles of the island.  For him to get so close - I just can't comprehend what he was thinking", mused one of the salvagers.

The captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, leaves a Grosseto court on October 15. Schettino defended his actions at a pre-trial court hearing on Thursday that recalled the terrifying night of a cruise ship tragedy that claimed 32 lives.