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Princess Chatter Archive / Re: Carnival owned cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off Italy
« on: April 24, 2012, 06:04:59 AM »
The story is damning in its details of Schettino’s actions, many reported for the first time. They include:
One passenger’s claim, though it is elsewhere unconfirmed, that he saw the captain and a friend “polish off a decanter of red wine while eating” prior to the catastrophe.
That the captain was going too fast for the conditions and seemed to be navigating by eyesight rather than with the aid of maps and radar, when he saw a set of rocks off the Tuscan coast prior to the crash. “What he failed to notice was another rock, nearer to the ship,” that was largely underwater, the story says. “An officer later told investigators he heard the captain say, ‘(expletive)…I didn’t see it!’ ”
The captain, who was casually talking on the phone when the ship approached the rocks, wrongly ordered the ship to turn to starboard, rather than port, to avoid the mostly submerged rock when he finally did see it. That caused the ship’s stern to swing around and slam into it, ripping open a 230-foot-long gash below the waterline.
When crew members spoke with the Coast Guard, Schettino ordered them to say that there was only a blackout on board and they did not need any immediate assistance. Schettino’s apparent refusal to “promptly admit the Concordia’s plight — to lie about it, according to the Italian Coast Guard — was not only a violation of Italian maritime law but cost precious time, delaying the arrival of rescue workers by as much as 45 minutes,” the story says.
When the ship began listing to starboard, the captain dropped its massive anchors to prevent it from tipping further, but played out too much line — so the anchors never caught and were of no help. It was a “jaw-droppingly stupid mistake,” according to a veteran American captain and nautical analyst, John Konrad, quoted in the story.
The captain, who made it ashore in a lifeboat he claims to have fallen into, begged in a phone call with a Coast Guard officer not to be sent back to the ship to look for survivors. That shocked the officer, who in return threatened Schettino by saying, “Tell me how many people are still on board and what they need. Is that clear? ... I’m going to make sure you get in trouble. I’m going to make you pay for this.”
http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/05/11040687-costa-concordia-captains-blunders-detailed-in-vanity-fair
One passenger’s claim, though it is elsewhere unconfirmed, that he saw the captain and a friend “polish off a decanter of red wine while eating” prior to the catastrophe.
That the captain was going too fast for the conditions and seemed to be navigating by eyesight rather than with the aid of maps and radar, when he saw a set of rocks off the Tuscan coast prior to the crash. “What he failed to notice was another rock, nearer to the ship,” that was largely underwater, the story says. “An officer later told investigators he heard the captain say, ‘(expletive)…I didn’t see it!’ ”
The captain, who was casually talking on the phone when the ship approached the rocks, wrongly ordered the ship to turn to starboard, rather than port, to avoid the mostly submerged rock when he finally did see it. That caused the ship’s stern to swing around and slam into it, ripping open a 230-foot-long gash below the waterline.
When crew members spoke with the Coast Guard, Schettino ordered them to say that there was only a blackout on board and they did not need any immediate assistance. Schettino’s apparent refusal to “promptly admit the Concordia’s plight — to lie about it, according to the Italian Coast Guard — was not only a violation of Italian maritime law but cost precious time, delaying the arrival of rescue workers by as much as 45 minutes,” the story says.
When the ship began listing to starboard, the captain dropped its massive anchors to prevent it from tipping further, but played out too much line — so the anchors never caught and were of no help. It was a “jaw-droppingly stupid mistake,” according to a veteran American captain and nautical analyst, John Konrad, quoted in the story.
The captain, who made it ashore in a lifeboat he claims to have fallen into, begged in a phone call with a Coast Guard officer not to be sent back to the ship to look for survivors. That shocked the officer, who in return threatened Schettino by saying, “Tell me how many people are still on board and what they need. Is that clear? ... I’m going to make sure you get in trouble. I’m going to make you pay for this.”
http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/05/11040687-costa-concordia-captains-blunders-detailed-in-vanity-fair
