The strange and tragic story of the Costa Concordia

A little more than 11 years ago, in the early summer of 2015, I found myself in Genoa. I was there to research a travel story on the art museums and the architectural grandeur of Italy’s sixth-biggest city. Yet for much of the weekend, my eye was drawn not to Baroque palaces or Veronese paintings, but to the shipwreck which was dominating the waterfront.

You could not miss it. Whether you were standing on a lofty terrace above the medieval centre or down by the harbour, the Costa Concordia was impossible to ignore.

It was propped up at the port’s Superbacino dock, in the process of being scrapped. But it was not being dismantled fast enough for some of the locals, many of whom were audibly affected by the corpse at the quayside. Some of the people I spoke to expressed pride at their city having taken on such a significant job. Others were sad – sombre in their respect for lost life. Others still were appalled, openly grumbling about the eyesore ruining the view.

A grim snapshot

On the second day of my stay, I took a tour of the shipyard, and the wreck loomed even larger. Once a vision in white, operating for the Italian cruise line Costa Crociere, it wore its dereliction openly. Notably on its starboard flank, which had sunk to the seabed three years earlier. Rusted and stained, and with its cabins crushed by the weight of the entire 114,137-ton vessel pressing down upon it, it offered an uncompromisingly grim snapshot of what had transpired.

The Costa Concordia was a child of Genoa, constructed in the city’s Sestri Ponente shipyard in 2004 and 2005. Some observers had seen ill omens in its launch on September 2, 2005, when the traditional champagne bottle, released by the model Eva Herzigová, had failed to smash on the hull on the first swing. Now the vessel had returned to its maternity ward after less than seven years at sea, but as a black stain which had brought shame to Italian shipping.

Next year marks the 15th anniversary of the disaster, on January 13, 2012, but the catastrophe is already the subject of a new Netflix documentary. Its title – Shipwrecked: Nightmare At Sea – sounds a little like the name of a horror movie, but what happened to the Costa Concordia was indeed horrific.

Capsized and collapsed

In many ways, the events of that winter night need scant reintroduction, as the most infamous image – of the ship capsized, collapsed to the right, submerged almost up to the funnel in the cold Tyrrhenian Sea – retains its visual power. But the events that led to the Costa Concordia reaching this desperate situation deserve a repeat telling – not least because they represent a chain of incompetence which, even now, is thoroughly shocking.

Calamity came quickly. The vessel was barely two hours into a voyage that was supposed to last for a week when it ran into a submerged ridge on the east edge of Giglio – a mountainous clump of nine square miles, part of the Tuscan Archipelago, which sits 10 miles due west of the Italian mainland. It was carrying 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew.

The ship had left Civitavecchia – the main port for cruise departures from Rome – at 7.18pm, on an anti-clockwise tour of the Mediterranean that was scheduled to call upon destinations such as Marseille, Barcelona, Mallorca, Sardinia and Sicily. Instead, at 9.45pm, while sailing at 16 knots (18.5mph), the Costa Concordia collided with Isole Le Scole, a small (though not uncharted) reef.

The crash carved a 115ft (35m) gash into the port side of the hull, 26ft (8m) below the surface. Taking on water at an unsustainable rate, it limped on for an hour before coming to rest, listing to starboard, on a low-lying ledge – its engines and its generators disabled by the deluge. In the ensuing hours, 32 people – 27 passengers and five crew – met their deaths.

Incompetence and hubris

The ship was a victim of incompetence and hubris. In spite of sailing in the dark, in winter seas, the crew of the Costa Concordia were performing a “sail-by salute” – a longstanding but brash maritime practice of passing daringly close to a port or destination, often to wave hello to those on land.

Antonello Tievoli, the ship’s maître d’, came from Giglio, and had asked Francesco Schettino, the 51-year-old captain, to attempt the manoeuvre. Tievoli was on the bridge that fateful night. So too was Domnica Cemortan, a Moldovan dancer who was later reported to be Schettino’s mistress. Accusations would fly that the “sail-by” was a stunt designed to impress the 25-year-old.

Tievoli was not held responsible in the court cases which followed. Five crew members, including two bridge officers and a helmsman, wereconvicted for their roles in the sinking. But most of the blame fell on the captain. Schettino would be tried on charges of manslaughter, causing a maritime disaster and causing injury to 150 people. On February 11, 2015, he was handed a 16-year sentence that he is still serving in Rebibbia prison in Rome.

His subsequent comments paint a picture of a man who was at best cavalier, at worst utterly unfit for the important position he held, and insensitive to the consequences of his actions. Schettino conceded that he had made a “judgment error”, and admitted that he had turned off the alarms for the ship’s GPS system, claiming that he was “navigating by sight, because I knew those seabeds well. I have done the move three or four times”. At his trial, which began in July 2013, he argued that his response in the crucial minutes following the collision – steering the vessel closer to the shore – had saved lives.

So are we sinking?

The transcript of the conversations on the bridge, revealed in the documentary, contradicted any suggestion of calm heads. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Schettino is heard asking the chief engineer: “So, are we sinking? I don’t get it.” His bafflement had only increased seconds later when he said: “I just need to know where this f-----g rock was.”

Just as damning was the accusation that – contrary to recognised maritime practice (and in some countries, maritime law) – he had abandoned the vessel and its passengers. Schettino finally gave the order to abandon ship at 10.54pm, 69 minutes after hitting the rocks. At 11.19pm, he left the bridge, leaving the second master to co-ordinate the evacuation.

He would claim afterwards that he had slipped and fallen into the lifeboat that took him ashore. But even if his departure was “accidental”, his refusal to return was deliberate. At 12.42am, he was called by the coastguard. The exasperated exclamation of Gregorio de Falco, the officer in question – “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” (“Get back on board, for f---’s sake!”) – became emblematic of the extent of the captain’s dereliction of duty.

A rapidly worsening angle

In the meantime, people were dying. Shortly after 10pm, in the absence of information from the bridge, passengers had begun calling the local police to report the seriousness of the scenario. Many headed to the muster points, only to be told to return to their cabins. Three of the dead reportedly drowned after jumping overboard as the vessel began to tilt.

This rapidly worsening angle would be a factor in several other deaths, leaving lifeboats on the elevated port side suspended in the air, and those on the starboard side caught under the capsizing ship. The evacuation took more than six hours – it was recorded as “complete” at 4.46am – but even at 3.05am, 600 survivors were still being rescued by a Giglio ferry.

There were miracles amid the madness. On the morning of January 15, a South Korean couple – Han Ki-Deok and Jeong Hye-Jin, who had been enjoying their honeymoon – were plucked from the wreck after 30 hours trapped in their cabin, two decks above the waterline. The newlyweds had been sleeping at the time of the impact, and had woken to find themselves stranded, unable to walk along the adjacent corridor as the ship capsized.

Others were not so fortunate. Eight bodies were found in the wreckage on February 22; another five missing people were discovered, trapped between the wreck and the seabed, on March 22. It would take more than two years before every victim was accounted for. The body of the last missing passenger, Maria Grazia Trecarichi, was not identified until October 2013. And it would take until November 2014 for the skeletal remains of Russel Rebello – a waiter of Indian origin, the final name on the missing list – to be discovered.

A silent tribute

By then, the Costa Concordia had been righted, refloated and towed to Genoa, to a mixed reception. Somehow, the ship’s infamy had only grown in the two years since it had sunk. On February 1, 2014, it had claimed a 33rd victim, the Spanish diver Israel Moreno, who had cut his leg on a sharp metal sheet during the salvage operation and, unable to free himself from the tangle of flotsam, had bled so profusely underwater that his life could not be saved.

It would take three further years for the wreck to be dismantled, but when the process was completed, on July 7, 2017, there was a collective sigh of relief. There is no memorial in the city. Instead, the last chunk of rock to be removed from the hull was lowered back into place on the Giglio shore, complete with a plaque which recorded the names of the dead – a silent, hidden tribute to a tragedy that many would prefer to forget.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]