Last voyage for Costa Concordia cruise ship

I've been following this thread with avid interest since the beginning. I'm no boat/seamanship expert (though I grew up on the sea in Scotland amid familiarity with fishing boats) and registered just to post here as I am now full of questions and have a contribution.

I came here out of mistrust of the way the media were handling reporting of the event and that mistrust has just intensified since. Also since I figured experienced seamen's (and women's) opinions on what happened are worth a lot more than journalists'.

First the contribution.

(1) Newsnight, a UK critical news show, reported last night (the 17th) on the disaster with a map apparently derived from publicly available data from Lloyds List that shows the route of the Concordia on an earlier trip on 14 August last year. This appears to be the occasion of the earlier 'salute' to the island you can see on youtube, a link to which was posted earlier in this thread. Here is a screenshot showing the map that Newsnight featured:



It appears to show that the ship came just as close to the coast on that occasion, apparently with Costa's knowledge and blessing. If that is correct, it raises serious questions about the statements so far released from Costa that appear to pin the blame for the accident squarely on the Schettino and his decisions and conduct on the night of Friday the 13th.

However, is Newsnight correct with its map reconstruction? I already know enough from this thread that AIS tracks are not necessarily indicative of a ship's exact position, especially with a vessel of this size. And I have not seen any reference to a course like this one on 14 August from other news sources, or on here, except for the above-referenced video. It should be easy enough to verify what Newsnight is claiming for those with access to the data. Can anyone here say whether it is correct, or accurate?

My other comments/questions are the following.

(2) Why did the ship immediately begin to list, as reported by the media and passengers? Aren't modern ships designed not to list when they take on water? Even the Titanic didn't list appreciably; it apparently remained fairly level until the last moment when its stern lifted into the air, before it sunk below the waves, broken in two pieces.

(3) How come the night video that pictures the ship during the rescue, now available on the BBC website and elsewhere, shows the ship as lying almost completely flat on its side, with its bow thruster in plain sight out of the water? By the time you see the ship in the morning, it is already in a more upright position, and more deeply submerged. Did the liner shift in its position already during the night? I can not find mention of this anywhere.

(4) The media is putting a lot of attention on Schettino's post abandon-ship performance, but often praises his earlier decisions, including the decision to put the ship into shallower water to make rescue efforts easier. This seems to be bonkers to me. It's obvious (from the deaths, apart from much else) that the rescue was a shambles, principally because of the extreme list and capsize of the vessel. The rescue effort was NOT a success. A modern ship like this in calm coastal waters becoming holed by a rock should have resulted in a calm and orderly evacuation in the lifeboats with nary an injury, never mind any deaths. Clearly then the decision to put the vessel as close to land as possible, which was partly responsible for the chaotic evacuation, should be put in extreme question. Someone in the thread earlier mentioned that the captain was clearly thinking of the ship, not his passengers, and this seems right to me.

(5) Why is the media not putting more attention on the large delay between the holing of the ship and any radio report from the ship that it had encountered a serious problem and may need assistance? In fact, was there even an SOS? The alarm appears to have first been raised by passengers calling relatives on land who in turn alerted the carabinieri who in turn alerted the coastguard, who called the boat, which then continued to deny the problem.

(6) One video report shows the crew already having donned lifejackets, this relatively soon after the grounding, and a passenger approaching and asking why the crewmember is wearing a lifejacket, if the problem is just 'routine'. I believe the passenger and crewmember are both native Spanish speakers in this exchange. The crewmember appears evasive and eventually replies, 'just in case, just in case' before wandering off to avoid further awkward questions. Just what were the crew told prior to the abandon ship order?

(7) Why is there not more attention being put on the actions of Costa? First to blame the captain so early in the proceedings, second to have put such a person in such a command in the first place, which raises serious questions about Costa's other boats, and indeed, the entire cruise ship industry, and third, now, because of their insistence that the 'fly-by' was an unauthorised one-off, a claim which is apparently easily put to the lie by publicly-available satellite data?

(8) What are Costa's established procedures in a case like this and how much freedom do they have in establishing their own emergency directives in a case where a ship is taking on water? Are Costa's procedures primarily aimed at passenger safety or at protecting their (partly 'self-insured') investment? Did the Captain follow Costa procedures by not raising the alarm for some time and by turning the boat into the shore? Was the Company contacted during the initial period of lack of contact between the Ship and the Coastguard, and during the initial (hour or so) delay in calling abandon ship? It appears to me that a lot more attention should be put on Costa, not just the Captain.

 

It will all be sorted out in a couple of years, much to the glee of a large contingent of lawyers.

 

Your questions are legitimate, imho. I have already written that the faults are spread on a much wider area of competencies, including the Costa comp. and the Coast Guard.
The captain, due to all the evident errors and omissions he has made, was a very cheap and handy piece of meat to throw at the hungry media predators.

I would add two more questions to the list:

(9) Is the registering (and then publicly releasing) of the phone conversations between a CG officer and the captain (with such a thick and somewhat theatrical underlining of who is in charge and right, and who is weak and wrong) a normal practice in cases like this, or was it done to repair the damage done by CG officials who have repeatedly closed their eyes during previous pass-byes (correctly spelled?) of Costa ships, and to try to protect the imagine of the CG in the future court trials?

(10) How did capt. Schettino arrive to command one of the most prestigious cruiser ships in the world, with such a little commanding experience?

 

Sorry to have 'edited' my questions, which threw your additional numbering out of line (ok; now edited) I also had that last question of yours in mind, but forgot to put it in. Not only does he appear to have little commanding experience (or any?) of another vessel, he was hired as a 'safety officer'. Is being a safety officer a normal point of call on a career path to becoming a captain of a ship with over 4000 souls on board? The obvious comparison to make is with airline captains, who have to undergo psychological testing, have university educations, and who have to merit extensive experience before taking command of airliners, often undertaken in national air forces. Why don't these kind of criteria apply to these cruise-ship captains? And incidentally, are their salaries commensurable (with airline captains)?

 

PS. I also think Schettino is just rather a stupid man who found himself in a situation for which he was not prepared and totally inadequate to handle, apart from (my suspicion) to make an immediate call to his employers to find out what to do instead of raising the alarm. He doesn't appear to be otherwise vindictive or malevolent. Just stupid and a bit pathetic, really. A showoff dimwit put in charge of a ship because that's the way Costa likes it.

 

AIS tracking is precise. No navigation system carries enough precision to allow a ship to pass that close to the coast. When operating close in , navigators reduce speed, use their eyes and fixed aids to navigation such as lighthouses or prominent land features to navigate or carry a local pilot.

Cruise ship emergency procedures are a good question. A cruise ship company doesn't want any bad publicity. When the captain presses the MAYDAY button this is very bad publicity. MAYDAY means..I REQUIRE IMMEDIATE ASSITANCE. Immediately MRCC and Port Authorities are involved. The whole world knows that your cruise ship is in trouble...stock prices fall, future bookings on company ships suffer.

My instinct is that the captain of a cruise ship thinks long and hard before declaring an emergency.

 

Yes, I can pretty easily imagine a situation where his first call was towards Costa's Operations Control, to inform them of the accident. From there they told him "treat this as a technical problem and do whatever you can to arrive to a nearest port. We'll think of the rest". It will be an interesting inquiry indeed, but at the end the most probable victims will be the capt. Schettino and his second, Dimitri the Greek. Commander De Falco from Livorno is alredy the winner, all the media today talk about him, unless some unexpected facts about his conduct come out from the investigations. That's why I am suspicious about his recording of the conversations with Schettino and giving them to the media.

 

If that is the case there have to be changes made in law to redirect blame to those really in charge.

Welcome, noetus. I agree with your and Daiquiri's assessment of said captain, now a scapegoat.

 

Probably he had to report that their stock possessions are about to plummet. You may call me a cynic.

 

I very much hope there is a public inquiry, because that is the only thing that would reveal the extent of the Company's complicity in this. If it ends up being just a court case of the Captain, innocent or guilty as charged, the Company's involvement and culpability will easily become buried. And your suggestion that the Coastguard was acting with foresight, for example recording the call with the Captain in order to forestall any possibility of blame on them, is very unsettling. Really? A media and politically savvy Coastguard?

 

As far as I know all calls to MRCC Maritime Rescue Coordination Center are recorded.

I am also curious why the Port Captain in the Port of Giglio didn't register a complaint when the Concordia first developed its FLY BY, Rubber necking fetish ?

 

US Coast Guard tapes distress calls. Imagine Itallian CG does too. It's for any investigation afterwards. Certainly DeFalco knows Schettino will be investigated. Is being investigated. DeFalco is a good cop. Coast Guards are water police among other duties.

 

Coast Guard will do its job. I surmise captain will be scapegoat for the cruise line.

 

And its too bad that EMSA CleanSeaNet is password protected.

http://cleanseanet.emsa.europa.eu/index.html


CleanSeaNet is the EU oil pollution monitoring agency

 

How can AIS be precise when the Navigation is not?

If you want to pay for the top level differential GPS data its guaranteed to 10cm in the sea and far better on the land.
Its the charts that are the problem