Last voyage for Costa Concordia cruise ship

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by daiquiri, Jan 14, 2012.

  1. NorwegianSun
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    NorwegianSun New Member

    I googled and found a blog about the Costa Europa accident on February 26, 2010 in Sharm el-Sheikh, as well as an article in Italian language. The Captain of the Costa Europa during the accident was not Schettino but Giancarlo Cha.
     
  2. IEWinkle
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    IEWinkle Retired Naval Architect

    Not as worth watching as I thought it should have been. It did confirm the blackout as 10 minutes after the impact which would correspond to both engine rooms having been heavily flooded by then. It showed a number of watertight doors in what appeared to be the crew accommodation under the passenger decks left open in the early stages of the crisis and it seems that there was no organised attempt to clear these spaces and seal the bulkheads. The biggest technical mistake was showing a distribution of only 6 transverse bulkheads along the ship's length with 3 flooded - there should have been about 15 with 3 or possibly 4 flooded!
     
  3. Yobarnacle
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    Yobarnacle Senior Member holding true course

    switched on manually
    The two red lights are used in other situations. Example red, white, red means restricted in ability to manuever because of operations or a vessel constrained by her draft in a narrow channel. Anchor lights with out of command 2 reds, is displayed when aground.
    Displaying appropriate lights is a human decision based on situation. Can't be automated.
     
  4. Wynand N
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    Wynand N Retired Steelboatbuilder

    Read this thread with interest.
    Im not a commercial sailor thus I cannot amplify on the rules of the road and technical stuff, but what I or any other fool for that matter would know is simple protocol - protecting peoples life - should have been implemented.

    When this ship struck the rock and water was discovered flooding the engine room, the captain should have immediately commenced the saving of passengers by getting them on the lifeboats whilst the ship was still upright and very near to land (stones throw) and loss of life would have been zero - even if such action was done as a precautionary measure to assess real damage and then to try to save the ship.

    IOW, he is an first class idiot and murderer of innocent people, unfit to command any floating vessel and should face the music that's coming his way. The fact that he absconded from the ship whilst people aboard with his top officers confirms the fact that he is a champion ar*e hole.
     
  5. Starbuck1
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    Starbuck1 Junior Member

    Here is a summary of what I think we know about what happened. Pardon the length of this.

    (1) Cause. Captain overrode safety alarms and more junior officers and hand steered in the dark for a close pass-by because he'd done it successfully 3-4 times before. He held course toward the island 30-60 seconds too long, didn't figure out he was off course, and hit the island at 2130 while BS'ing with other people on the bridge and his mentor on the cell phone. Mentor/former boss heard the impact. Unbelievably stupid and careless.
    (2) Damage. Ripped open 160-200 feet of aft port side hull opening all five main engineering spaces to the sea, which quickly flooded, killing all power to props and ship except the emergency generator. Still had steering. With 5 of 16 WT compartments ripped open, all aft of amidships, this "three compartment" ship was doomed. The Chief Engineer informed the captain 5-8 minutes after striking the island that they had lost it. The captain's behavior and (in)actions are appalling and inexplicable to any maritime professional.
    (3) Course: The ship coasted to a stop at 22:10 in a slow turn to starboard, just past the eye of the 12 knot NNE wind. The 100,000 square feet of "sail area" of its topsides then pivoted the ship around its sinking stern and it drifted back to Porto Giglio with the wind on the port quarter. The loss of waterplane area, the free surface of the 5 large flooded compartments combined with the vast sail area, CE at +50', gave it a starboard list at this point.
    (4) Second Grounding: At 2246m at a speed of about 0.7 knots, the stern grounds first since it is about 20' below its normal lines, and the ship pivots to its final position against the island, with a list of about 20º and down by the stern. Some further damage is done to the starboard side but we don't know how much. The captain finally declares a mayday 1 hour late, and abandon ship begins. Amazingly, over the next 40-60 minutes in spite of the 20º+ list, 23 of 26 lifeboats are successfully launched and loaded, evacuating about 4000 of 4300 passengers. During this time the list increases to about 30 degrees and the stern sinks to the level of the boat deck, the 3rd passenger deck. All this can be seen on the AIS charts and night photos of the ship and the one poor published cross-section.
    (5) Capsize: (My best scenario so far, with help from others, it is hard to figure, I'd love more ideas about it.) Grounding at the stern, the ship is resting on the narrow taper by the aft thrusters and props, close to the centerline, not its broad bottom or starboard bilge. The bow is still floating but losing buoyancy as it floods from below as WT bulkheads are overtopped, biased to starboard. The lowest passenger deck, 3 decks above the waterline has an open mooring deck at the stern for line handling. This leads into two long corridors running the length of the ship, P & S, plus a large stairwell. With the stern sunk down to the boat deck (5th deck above the WL) this is open to the sea with 10-20 PSI pouring water into the starboard side cabins and spaces, which vent, and trapping air under the port side decks due to the list, creates a growing instability that rolls the ship around the narrow stern bearing point. Within an hour, capsize to starboard, initially to about 85º, but as the rest of the ship fills and sinks, settling to 70º to match the bottom. The surviving 300 or so crew and passengers walk off the sloping sides or are lifted off by helicopters.

    The saving grace is that the vast highly subdivided internal volume of the ship took a long time to fill, and once grounded it prevented the ship from sinking by the stern and upending. By way too close of a margin.

    We've argued about wing tanks, fuel tanks and other side or double bottom tanks that could cause the rolling moment, but have no real information, same for damage to starboard bilge. No real data re the plans or designs below the passenger decks, just one poor cross section.
    Do any of you have more design info or other good scenarios? We sailors and ships engineers would like some design perspective. Thanks
     
  6. Yobarnacle
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    Yobarnacle Senior Member holding true course

    Shettino was unfit. We needn't worry about him getting another command. I think it rare that he got any command. There is ample opportunity for your true character to be found out at lower levels. You have to have letters of recommendation from captains you've worked for, to even be allowed to take each higher level of license exams, at least in the USa. I presume it's the same in other countries.
    Maybe the licensing authority in Italy should check who signed those letters, and take a good look at anybody else who recieved recommendation letters from those captains recommending Shettino.
     
  7. Arch99
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    Arch99 New Member

    Thank you Starbuck 1 for the concise summary and timeline. It seems clear that after the stupidity of the intial collision, and the further failure to deal seriously with the situation for more than an hour, it is only the miracle of the onshore wind and dumb luck which saved the people on the ship, with some late help from a few heroic crew members such as the visting captain. Without the wind, they would have been in deep water off a small island with little help available, sinking fast by the stern, and without the second grounding maybe unable to launch as many boats if the ship was upended.

    It would be interesting ( but probably frightening) to see a simulation of the effect of he same damage and rate of flooding, if the ship had not grounded. Perhaps one of the naval architects on this thread has the ability to do that?
     
  8. Hawkboat
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    Hawkboat Junior Member

    Once the assessment was made that the ship was lost, was it possible to drop anchor to stop the inertial drift and then abandon ship? If so, they could have had the luxury of an hour or two to evacuate a mostly upright ship anchored just South or North of Giglio Hr.
     
  9. Gian Milan

    Gian Milan Previous Member

    Barred the door, I will try to enter from the window.

    Introduction.

    In 1894, a time when the largest ship had a tonnage of only 13000 tonnes, the British Ministry of Commerce (Board of Trade) decreed a regulation that pondered the presence of lifeboats, whose capacity was calculated based on the volume: this volume depended on the tonnage of ships and not by the number of people transported. In 1912, this regulation, which was not updated according to technological progress, which resulted in a sharp increase in the size of ships, was obsolete as the tonnage of the largest vessels now exceeds 46000 tonnes, as happened to the Titanic. The regulation was to provide that the British ships with a tonnage exceeding 10000 tonnes were to be equipped with 16 lifeboats with a total capacity of 5500 ft3 (feet) that is equal to 155.7 cubic feet and a sufficient number of boats that tend to increase the 75% the capacity of the boats. The total capacity of the boats was thus set for a 9625 ft3 (272.5 m3). Because it was thought that a person occupies a volume of 10 ft3 (0.283 m3), we can deduce that it was the equivalent of 962 people.
    intelligenti pauca

    Conclusions

    The number of persons on board a cruise ship is increasing dramatically.
    Ships have exponentially increased their ability to embark passengers (economies of scale).
    In addition, larger is size of a boat, greater the attraction that it generates towards certain groups of clients.

    On this TD talking about refresh rules of design seems a blasphemy.

    WHY?
     
  10. Hawkboat
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    Hawkboat Junior Member

    Gian,
    The consensus seems to be that:

    1.) This accident was caused by idiocy, not a technical failing of the vessel or design rules.

    2.) Despite repetitive idiocy, the ship performed very well and sunk in a controlled manner, so not much call for a re-thinking of the rules.

    3.) What this accident really highlights a need to review the process of becoming a captain of a ship carrying so many people, and perhaps better training and screening of crew as well.

    Lives are precious, but in a world of finite resources, we have to make cold decisions about where best to expend our energy, and be wary of drawing the wrong lessons from events.
     
  11. Gian Milan

    Gian Milan Previous Member

    None can disagree with 1) and 3).

    I hope (I swear I hope) for 2) you're right.
    I hope that what they have written here many are determined by emotional idiocy and incompetence.


    The law of large numbers, also known as the empirical law of the case or Bernoulli's theorem, is a law that no one escapes.
    The growing number of cruise ships and cruise, over time, increases in the number of trips dsmisura, moorings, hazards, extraordinary events, human errors, collisions etc.etc.
    This law, so terrible, we will see who said some nonsense or not about increase safety.


    Thank you very much for having responded frankly.
    Equally frankly tell you that certainly we have a different concept of the value of human life.
    Obviously, we could fill pages about this subject.
    but as I wrote,
    intelligenti pauca.


    PS in my bad English, I would not be misunderstood. the matter of incompetence and emotion comes from the previous post!
     
  12. Hawkboat
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    Hawkboat Junior Member

    Well Gian, to be honest I don't have enough information to be sure on any of it, but what I wrote seems to be the consensus of people with more knowledge of this than I have. We have seen some excellent posts in this thread from ship's captains, naval architects and others.

    Don't assume I value life less than you. I would likely give my own life to save another. However, what I wrote is just reality - death is a part of life we can't avoid. It is impossible to prevent accidents from happening and to prevent ships from sinking. The term 'unsinkable' went to the bottom with the Titanic.

    So, all we can do is try and control how ships sink and provide reasonable means of escape and post accident survival. I do agree that ships carrying the equivalent of a small town or large village should get extra scrutiny, but I think the lesson from this accident is that our initial focus should be on the crewing and operation of these ships, not on their design.

    Finally, if google translate is right, your Italian comment insinuates that there is a lack of intelligence at play here. If so, I agree, but it is on the side of those wanting to plate passenger vessels with battleship armor and jump to conclusions that the available evidence doesn't support. Don't take it personal, you are not alone in such beliefs.
     
  13. IEWinkle
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    IEWinkle Retired Naval Architect

    I am interested to know how you can state the 5 of 16 WT compartments were flooded? Mat8iou on the Simulating Costa Concordia Thread is equally sure that it only had 12 compartments along its length.

    Given the fact that it approached the shore after some 1.5 hours with nothing more than what appears to have been sinkage, trim and a 'loll' of some 15 - 20 degrees - to port initially and only later to starboard (possibly after the impact with the shore), I find it unlikely that more than 3 (for which it would have been designed under SOLAS Regs) or at most 4 of its compartments were flooded.

    Such conditions would have allowed ample time to evacuate the passengers without the chaos after grounding if the captain and his officers had not ignored the obvious!

    With the less than professional actions of the crew it would seem that watertight (below the passenger decks) and external weathertight doors were left open which would undoubtedly have resulted in eventual foundering if it hadn't grounded.
     
  14. Starbuck1
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    Starbuck1 Junior Member

    Hawkboat, on gCaptain we've been debating whether they dropped or dragged an anchor to slow the ship or facilitate the 2210 turn, but the ships motion from the AIS doesn't seem to show that. There seems to be a gradual loss of speed with no special braking. It seems to stop and pivot on or near the sinking stern at 2210. We also don't know if they had or gave power to the anchor winch. They clearly did drop them when they were finally grounded. The anchors are sitting straight up, clean, with a pile of chain around them.
     

  15. Starbuck1
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    Starbuck1 Junior Member

    IEWinkle, thanks for the response. I'm using five compartments initially flooded because it matches both the side damage and the engineer's testimony.

    The one poor longitudinal cross section is below along with the passenger deck plans.

    The only cross section I’ve found of the Costa Concordia’s hull (http://www.cruiseplanet.co.jp/pdf/costaship/concordia.pdf) shows 16 watertight (?) compartments at the engine room level. I’ve assigned the engine rooms to the two directly below the stack, about 250 feet from the stern. Numbered bow to stern: #1 Bow Bulb, #2 Bow Thrusters, #3(?), #4(?), #5(?), #6(?), #7(?), #8(?), #9 (control/electrical room?)(holed), #10 (forward engine room?) (holed), #11 (aft engine room?) (holed), #12 (motors?)(holed), #13 (shafts)(holed), #14 (shafts), #15 (stern thrusters), #16 (rudders). This more or less matches the ER and bulkheads layout of Costa Victoria as well (see note below).

    The side view drawing shows several very low (1-2 decks) watertight (?) bulkheads so I don’t particularly trust it, but better than nothing. If these only go as high as they show, then the large compartments really compromise the engineering spaces quickly and easily.

    The hole shown in the photos on the port side of the ship extends from the ninth lifeboat of thirteen, aft to the large rock embedded in the hull under the last lifeboat. The ninth lifeboat is just forward of the middle stairwell. The thirteenth is directly above the 13th compartment and where the shafts enter the hull, about 160 feet forward of the stern. So five compartments were opened to the sea, as the engineer’s testimony indicated, including probably all of the main engineering spaces. The engineer said it was a “3 compartment” ship, so they knew immediately it would sink and reported that to the captain. The motors to the pumps would not start, which is not surprising since the generators and controls were mostly underwater within 5 minutes.

    Plans of a similar but smaller sister ship, Costa Victoria, (76K GT) on the SAM Electronics Gmbh site (ER Controls supplier) appear to show a similar ER and bulkhead layout. Forward of the engine spaces are mostly tanks. SMIT says 17 tanks with fuel. Probably no fuel in double bottom tanks since there was no initial leakage.
    http://www.sam-electronics.de/dateien/pad/broschueren/1.001.pdf

    I can only attribute the grace of time to the vast number ((3,000+?) internal spaces and the huge internal volume. Even the main engine rooms would each not have been more than 2-3% of the total internal volume, if that.
     
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