Ruminations

Dreadfully Misunderstood

"You saved yourself, but I will make a lot of trouble for you."
Captain Gregorio De Falco, Tuscany

Divers approach the Costa Concordia
Picture: Gregorio Borgia

The Costa Concordia commander was said to have been busy with a paramour as the gigantic cruise ship sailed a tad too close to the Tuscan island of Giglio. Diligence was being paid to amour, with prudence in sailing such a large ship with its passengers and crew of 4,200 thrown to the winds of chance. The winds of chance curtsied to the opportunity afforded them of mischief and set about enticing the ship to sail just a little closer than it need have.

The Costa Concordia sailed straight into a reef beside that picturesque tourist location, gashing the hull, inviting a tsunami of sea water to share space within the giant ship with its thousands of passengers. What happened next was sheer compounded folly. Captain Francesco Schettino, now on trial in Grosseto, Tuscany, thought first and foremost of his reputation, so it would appear rather inopportune to signal to the Coast Guard that a catastrophe was in the making.

This aerial video image shot with an infrared camera and made available by the Italian Coastguard shows passengers lining up to slide down the belly of the luxury liner one-by-one using a rope to reach a lifeboat, bottom left
Picture: Italian Coastguard/AP

It took 53 minutes, almost an hour to pass before the Concordia was permitted by her captain to send out a first distress signal on January 13, 2012. The ship's officers were instructed by their captain with his ultimate authority to keep "giving us reassurances about the situation on board", testified Capt. De Falco. The ship, they insisted, had suffered a mere power blackout. They were in complete control of the situation.

A helicopter conducts rescue operations on the cruise ship Costa Concordia, after it ran aground off the island of Giglio
Picture: EPA/MAURIZIO DEGL' INNOCENTI

Reassuring, but somehow not entirely since police on the mainland informed the Coast Guard, which would include Capt. De Falco, based in the port of Livorno, which controls waters near Giglio, that a passenger's relative had contacted them with the information that passengers had been ordered to pull on life vests as furniture fell about them while the cruise liner began badly listing to one side. Additionally, a customs police board had rushed to the scene, also informing the Coast Guard that the ship had capsized.

The court was given the opportunity to listen to recorded telephone conversations between Capt. De Falco and Capt. Schettino during which Capt. De Falco repeatedly ordered Capt. Schettino to return back aboard his abandoned ship. Frustrated beyond endurance he informed Capt. Schettino that he was relieving him of his Concordia command. Capt. Schettino, on a life boat, had mumbled there were "at most about 10 people" remaining on the Concordia.

The Coast Guard knew that there were hundreds left aboard the ship. Were there women and children in the water, and might some have been leaping off the Concordia into the sea, asked Capt. De Falco of Capt. Schettino? Capt. De Falco, taking charge, ordered that rescuers be lowered from a helicopter to save dozens of people clinging to railings and other parts of the ship. Many others had dived into the sea desperate to escape when lifeboats could no longer be lowered resulting from the Concordia's tilt.

Autopsies confirmed that many of the thirty-two people who had died because they were not evacuated, drowned as water surged down corridors of the ship outside cabins and elevator shafts. In his defence, Capt. Schettino insisted he continued to direct the evacuation once he had himself reached land aboard the life raft he had helplessly fallen into, with no intention whatever to desert his ship and the passengers who depended upon his seamanship and responsibility.