Last voyage for Costa Concordia cruise ship

Transcript Court Hearing

If you haven't read the full transcript of the Preliminary Court Inquiry into Costa Concordia Disaster, here it is thanks to gCaptain.com ... very interesting.

One aspect I still would like to understand is the role Costa Crociere played in the one hour between hitting the rock and the abandon ship order. There must have been some frantic communication between the captain and his superiors. It must have taken some time to reach the Costa Crociere managers and then some more to decide what to do. Valuable time that could have been used to save lives. For those lost lives there are more people responsible than just the captain, who of course is fully responsible for wrecking the ship in the first place.

The other question I have is if the ship would have stayed afloat if they wouldn't have turned it and ran it onto an uneven ground, which is something Schettino claims saved thousands of lives.

 

Thanks to both. Welcome to the forum, armando12 and NorwegianSun. I suspected so but had never actually seen one and did not know actual appearance.

 

The ONLY explanation for the pivot turn at top of Concordias track is thrusters. The bow moved not the stern, so bow thrusters. Probably stern thruster electrical power was lost when main engines were lost.
vessel designers strive for redundancy and power options. Example, many vessels I've operated had a generator that started with batteries and another that started with air pressure.
It's possible one or more thrusters were diesel powered or hydraulic off of a diesel or had that as backup option.
But bow thrusters were in use during that turn.
Perhaps powered by prayer.

 

Steering

My understanding ist that the Costa Concordia like many other modern cruiseships doesn't have a rudder anymore and instead turns the propellers to steer the ship. So the blackout must have resulted in a complete loss of steering except for the bow thrusters that seemed to kick in eventually to turn it around.

 

What I heard and read in the Dutch media from the Smit guys is that she's not on a sandy spot at all . . ! !

She's resting on three rock points on a slope that streches till 30 m further from shore, then there is a 70 m deep abyss.

Ship is metastable in that position (not truly indefinite stable). Wind and/or waves and/or blowing a wrong hole in the hull and letting trapped air out and/or pumping out the 2,600 tons of fuel and not proper refilling the tanks with water at the same time or pumping air in the tanks if this increases stability (depends on the spot) - could end this metastability which could make here sliding down the rocky slope and then going into the abyss. Rescue operations were stopped several times for this reason to check out the movement of the ship. They were just lucky the ship ended up on this three rock points that stoped her on the slope . . . .

Cheers,
Angel

P.S.

Typo: ‘‘24,000 tons of fuel’’ must be ‘‘2,400 tons of fuel’’. It's actually 2,400 tons of heavy fuel oil and 200 tons of diesel. So enhanced it to ‘‘2,600 tons of fuel’’.

 

The port stabilizer is visible in photos of the grounded Coasta Concordia.

 

So you don't think the drawing in post 506 which clearly shows propeller and rudder is an accurate repesentation of the class that the Costa Concordia belongs to?

Sounds like a number of folks are assuming that because many cruise ships have steerable pods that therefore the Costa Concorodia also does.

 

Speed over ground and heading data is shown on the video animation with commentary http://vimeo.com/35351659 Both are significant. It's clear that bow thrusters turned the vessel.

 

Grounding on sand and grounding on large rocks are different situations. If a vessel with a flat bottom such as large ships grounds on a relatively flat sand bottom it generally sits relatively upright even if it floods. I've seen many photos of ships sitting upright on sand. If a vessel grounds on large rocks and floods (or the tide goes out, not the case here) it's final attitude wil be determined in part by where the rocks are supporting it.

 

that's post#506, we're at #520 now . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

Enlarged post#515 a bit . . :idea:

 

i have no information to support this supposition, but because Concordia doesn't have azimuthing pods, I believe the azimuth engine controls are probably connected to drop down thrusters. probably the stern thrusters. Tunnel thrusters work in a narrow bow, but not in a fat arsed stern.

 

Regarding Yo's above post, then I'm wondering what we see above and below the shaft . . .

Someone, please make a cut out and blow it up a bit, I don't have the proper tools on this laptop . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

How do they pump out fuel oil ? Pressure the tanks with Steam ?

 

These indicated in red? Looks like stern thrusters to me.