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The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse

By: Becky Little

Updated: August 10, 2023 | Original: June 23, 2021

Many famous naval disasters happen far out at sea, but on January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia wrecked just off the coast of an Italian island in relatively shallow water. The avoidable disaster killed 32 people and seriously injured many others, and left investigators wondering: Why was the luxury cruise ship sailing so close to the shore in the first place?

During the ensuing trial, prosecutors came up with a tabloid-ready explanation : The married ship captain had sailed it so close to the island to impress a much younger Moldovan dancer with whom he was having an affair.

Whether or not Captain Francesco Schettino was trying to impress his girlfriend is debatable. (Schettino insisted the ship sailed close to shore to salute other mariners and give passengers a good view.) But whatever the reason for getting too close, the Italian courts found the captain, four crew members and one official from the ship’s company, Costa Crociere (part of Carnival Corporation), to be at fault for causing the disaster and preventing a safe evacuation. The wreck was not the fault of unexpected weather or ship malfunction—it was a disaster caused entirely by a series of human errors.

“At any time when you have an incident similar to Concordia, there is never…a single causal factor,” says Brad Schoenwald, a senior marine inspector at the United States Coast Guard. “It is generally a sequence of events, things that line up in a bad way that ultimately create that incident.”

Wrecking Near the Shore

The Concordia was supposed to take passengers on a seven-day Italian cruise from Civitavecchia to Savona. But when it deviated from its planned path to sail closer to the island of Giglio, the ship struck a reef known as the Scole Rocks. The impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger.

Sailing close to shore to give passengers a nice view or salute other sailors is known as a “sail-by,” and it’s unclear how often cruise ships perform these maneuvers. Some consider them to be dangerous deviations from planned routes. In its investigative report on the 2012 disaster, Italy’s Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports found that the Concordia “was sailing too close to the coastline, in a poorly lit shore area…at an unsafe distance at night time and at high speed (15.5 kts).”

In his trial, Captain Schettino blamed the shipwreck on Helmsman Jacob Rusli Bin, who he claimed reacted incorrectly to his order; and argued that if the helmsman had reacted correctly and quickly, the ship wouldn’t have wrecked. However, an Italian naval admiral testified in court that even though the helmsman was late in executing the captain’s orders, “the crash would’ve happened anyway.” (The helmsman was one of the four crew members convicted in court for contributing to the disaster.)

A Questionable Evacuation

Evidence introduced in Schettino’s trial suggests that the safety of his passengers and crew wasn’t his number one priority as he assessed the damage to the Concordia. The impact and water leakage caused an electrical blackout on the ship, and a recorded phone call with Costa Crociere’s crisis coordinator, Roberto Ferrarini, shows he tried to downplay and cover up his actions by saying the blackout was what actually caused the accident.

“I have made a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding,” Schettino told Ferrarini while the ship was sinking. “What should I say to the media?… To the port authorities I have said that we had…a blackout.” (Ferrarini was later convicted for contributing to the disaster by delaying rescue operations.)

Schettino also didn’t immediately alert the Italian Search and Rescue Authority about the accident. The impact on the Scole Rocks occurred at about 9:45 p.m. local time, and the first person to contact rescue officials about the ship was someone on the shore, according to the investigative report. Search and Rescue contacted the ship a few minutes after 10:00 p.m., but Schettino didn’t tell them what had happened for about 20 more minutes.

A little more than an hour after impact, the crew began to evacuate the ship. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats. Evacuation was made even more chaotic by the ship listing so far to starboard, making walking inside very difficult and lowering the lifeboats on one side, near to impossible. Making things worse, the crew had dropped the anchor incorrectly, causing the ship to flop over even more dramatically.

Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it!” —a recorded sound bite that turned into a T-shirt slogan in Italy.

Schettino argued that he fell into a lifeboat because of how the ship was listing to one side, but this argument proved unconvincing. In 2015, a court found Schettino guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship before passengers and crew were evacuated and lying to authorities about the disaster. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In addition to Schettino, Ferrarini and Rusli Bin, the other people who received convictions for their role in the disaster were Cabin Service Director Manrico Giampedroni, First Officer Ciro Ambrosio and Third Officer Silvia Coronica.

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10 years later, Costa Concordia survivors share their stories from doomed cruise ship

Ten years after the deadly Costa Concordia cruise line disaster in Italy, survivors still vividly remember scenes of chaos they say were like something straight out of the movie "Titanic."

NBC News correspondent Kelly Cobiella caught up with a group of survivors on TODAY Wednesday, a decade after they escaped a maritime disaster that claimed the lives of 32 people. The Italian cruise ship ran aground off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after striking an underground rock and capsizing.

"I think it’s the panic, the feeling of panic, is what’s carried through over 10 years," Ian Donoff, who was on the cruise with his wife Janice for their honeymoon, told Cobiella. "And it’s just as strong now."

More than 4,000 passengers and crew were on board when the ship crashed into rocks in the dark in the Mediterranean Sea, sending seawater rushing into the vessel as people scrambled for their lives.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had been performing a sail-past salute of Giglio when he steered the ship too close to the island and hit the jagged reef, opening a 230-foot gash in the side of the cruise liner.

Passengers struggled to escape in the darkness, clambering to get to the life boats. Alaska resident Nate Lukes was with his wife, Cary, and their four daughters aboard the ship and remembers the chaos that ensued as the ship started to sink.

"There was really a melee there is the best way to describe it," he told Cobiella. "It's very similar to the movie 'Titanic.' People were jumping onto the top of the lifeboats and pushing down women and children to try to get to them."

The lifeboats wouldn't drop down because the ship was tilted on its side, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on the side of the ship for hours in the cold. People were left to clamber down a rope ladder over a distance equivalent to 11 stories.

"Everybody was rushing for the lifeboats," Nate Lukes said. "I felt like (my daughters) were going to get trampled, and putting my arms around them and just holding them together and letting the sea of people go by us."

Schettino was convicted of multiple manslaughter as well as abandoning ship after leaving before all the passengers had reached safety. He is now serving a 16-year prison sentence .

It took nearly two years for the damaged ship to be raised from its side before it was towed away to be scrapped.

The calamity caused changes in the cruise industry like carrying more lifejackets and holding emergency drills before leaving port.

A decade after that harrowing night, the survivors are grateful to have made it out alive. None of the survivors who spoke with Cobiella have been on a cruise since that day.

"I said that if we survive this, then our marriage will have to survive forever," Ian Donoff said.

Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here! ) that brings the day's news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and a daily delight right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else. 

10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster is still vivid for survivors

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Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio . But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises , regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

A dozen passengers on cruise ship test positive for coronavirus

The passengers, whose infections were found through random testing, were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, according to the Port of San Francisco.

Jan. 7, 2022

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Assn., the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to the Associated Press that passenger and crew safety were the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

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How the Wreck of a Cruise Liner Changed an Italian Island

Ten years ago the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people and entwining the lives of others forever.

By Gaia Pianigiani

GIGLIO PORTO, Italy — The curvy granite rocks of the Tuscan island of Giglio lay bare in the winter sun, no longer hidden by the ominous, stricken cruise liner that ran aground in the turquoise waters of this marine sanctuary ten years ago.

Few of the 500-odd residents of the fishermen’s village will ever forget the freezing night of Jan. 13, 2012, when the Costa Concordia shipwrecked, killing 32 people and upending life on the island for years.

“Every one of us here has a tragic memory from then,” said Mario Pellegrini, 59, who was deputy mayor in 2012 and was the first civilian to climb onto the cruise ship after it struck the rocks near the lighthouses at the port entrance.

The hospitality of the tight-knit community of islanders kicked in, at first to give basic assistance to the 4,229 passengers and crew members who had to be evacuated from a listing vessel as high as a skyscraper. In no time, Giglio residents hosted thousands of journalists, law enforcement officers and rescue experts who descended on the port. In the months to come, salvage teams set up camp in the picturesque harbor to work on safely removing the ship, an operation that took more than two years to complete.

The people of Giglio felt like a family for those who spent long days at its port, waiting to receive word of their loved ones whose bodies remained trapped on the ship. On Thursday, 10 years to the day of the tragedy, the victims’ families, some passengers and Italian authorities attended a remembrance Mass and threw a crown of flowers onto the waters where the Costa Concordia had rested. At 9:45 p.m., the time when the ship ran aground, a candlelit procession illuminated the port’s quay while church bells rang and ship sirens blared.

What stands out now for many is how the wreck forever changed the lives of some of those whose paths crossed as a result. Friendships were made, business relations took shape and new families were even formed.

“It feels as if, since that tragic night, the lives of all the people involved were forever connected by an invisible thread,” Luana Gervasi, the niece of one of the shipwreck victims, said at the Mass on Thursday, her voice breaking.

Francesco Dietrich, 48, from the eastern city of Ancona, arrived on the island in February 2013 to work with the wreck divers, “a dream job,” he said, adding: “It was like offering someone who plays soccer for the parish team to join the Champions League with all the top teams in the business.”

For his work, Mr. Dietrich had to buy a lot of boat-repair supplies from the only hardware store in town. It was owned by a local family, and Mr. Dietrich now has a 6-year-old son, Pietro, with the family’s daughter.

“It was such a shock for us,” said Bruna Danei, 42, who until 2018 worked as a secretary for the consortium that salvaged the wreck. “The work on the Costa Concordia was a life-changing experience for me in many ways.”

A rendering of the Costa Concordia used by salvage teams to plan its recovery hung on the wall of the living room where her 22-month-old daughter, Arianna, played.

“She wouldn’t be here if Davide hadn’t come to work on the site,” Ms. Danei said, referring to Davide Cedioli, 52, an experienced diver from Turin who came to the island in May 2012 to help right the Costa Concordia — and who is also Arianna’s father.

From a barge, Mr. Cedioli monitored the unprecedented salvage operation that, in less than a day, was able to rotate the 951-foot vessel, partly smashed against the rocks, from the sea bottom to an upright position without further endangering the underwater ecosystem that it damaged when it ran aground.

“We jumped up and down in happiness when the parbuckling was completed,” Mr. Cedioli remembered. “We felt we were bringing some justice to this story. And I loved this small community and living on the island.”

The local council voted to make Jan. 13 a day of remembrance on Giglio, but after this year it will stop the public commemorations and “make it a more intimate moment, without the media,” Mr. Ortelli said during the mass.

“Being here ten years later brings back a lot of emotions,” said Kevin Rebello, 47, whose older brother, Russell, was a waiter on the Costa Concordia.

Russell Rebello’s remains were finally retrieved three years after the shipwreck, from under the furniture in a cabin, once the vessel was upright and being taken apart in Genoa.

“First, I feel close to my brother here,” Kevin Rebello said. “But it is also some sort of family reunion for me — I couldn’t wait to see the Giglio people.”

Mr. Rebello hugged and greeted residents on the streets of the port area, and recalled how the people there had shown affection for him at the time, buying him coffee and simply showing respect for his grief.

“Other victims’ families feel differently, but I am a Catholic and I have forgiven,” Mr. Rebello explained.

The Costa Concordia accident caused national shame when it became clear that the liner’s commander, Francesco Schettino, failed to immediately sound the general alarm and coordinate the evacuation, and instead abandoned the sinking vessel.

“Get back on board!” a Coast Guard officer shouted at Mr. Schettino when he understood that the captain was in a lifeboat watching people scramble to escape, audio recordings of their exchange later revealed. “Go up on the bow of the ship on a rope ladder, and tell me what you can do, how many people are there and what they need. Now!”

The officer has since pursued a successful career in politics, while Mr. Schettino is serving a 16-year sentence in a Roman prison for homicide and for abandoning the ship before the evacuation was completed. Other officials and crew members plea-bargained for lesser sentences.

During the trial, Mr. Schettino admitted that he had committed an “imprudence” when he decided to sail near the island of Giglio at high speed to greet the family of the ship’s headwaiter. The impact with the half-submerged rock near the island produced a gash in the hull more than 70 meters long, or about 76 yards, leading to blackouts on board and water pouring into the lower decks.

Mr. Schettino tried to steer the cruise ship toward the port to make evacuation easier, but the vessel was out of control and began to tip as it neared the harbor, making many lifeboats useless.

“I can’t forget the eyes of children, scared to death, and of their parents,” said Mr. Pellegrini, who had boarded the ship to speak with officials and organize the evacuation. “The metallic sound of the enormous ship tipping over and the gurgling of the sea up the endless corridors of the cruiser.”

Sergio Ortelli, who is still the mayor of Giglio ten years later, was similarly moved. “Nobody can go back and cancel those senseless deaths of innocent people, or the grief of their families,” he said. “The tragedy will always stay with us as a community. It was an apocalypse for us.”

Yet Mr. Ortelli said that the accident also told a different story, that of the skilled rescuers who managed to save thousands of lives, and of the engineers who righted the liner, refloated it and took it to the scrapyard.

While the global attention shifted away from Giglio, residents have stayed in touch with the outside world through the people who temporarily lived there.

For months, the Rev. Lorenzo Pasquotti, who was then a pastor in Giglio, kept receiving packages: dry-cleaned slippers, sweaters and tablecloths that were given to the cold, stranded passengers in his church that night, returned via courier.

One summer, Father Pasquotti ate German cookies with a German couple who were passengers on the ship. They still remembered the hot tea and leftovers from Christmas delicacies that they were given that night.

“So many nationalities — the world was at our door all of a sudden,” he said, remembering that night. “And we naturally opened it.”

Gaia Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy for The New York Times.  More about Gaia Pianigiani

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10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster vivid for survivors

FILE — The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia lays on its starboard side after it ran aground off the coast of the Isola del Giglio island, Italy on Jan. 13, 2012. Italy is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Giuseppe Modesti)

FILE— The grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen through a window on the Isola del Giglio island, Italy, Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Oil removal ships near the cruise ship Costa Concordia leaning on its side Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, after running aground near the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, last Friday night. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— The Costa Concordia ship lies on its side on the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Monday, Sept. 16, 2013. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

FILE— A sunbather gets her tan on a rock during the operations to refloat the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia on the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Once the ship has refloated it will be towed to Genoa’s port, about 200 nautical miles (320 kilometers), where it will be dismantled. 30 months ago it struck a reef and capsized, killing 32 people. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— The wrecked hulk of the Costa Concordia cruise ship is towed along the Tyrrhenian Sea, 30 miles off the coast of Viareggio, Italy, Friday, July 25, 2014. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Fabio Muzzi)

FILE— A view of the previously submerged side of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, off the coast of the Tuscan Island of Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 13, 2014. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— A passenger from South Korea, center, walks with Italian Firefighters, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012, after being rescued from the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia which ran aground on the tiny Italian island of Isola del Giglio. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— A woman hangs her laundry as the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen in the background, off the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap.(AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, Francesco Schettino, right, the captain of the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, is taken into custody by Carabinieri in Porto Santo Stefano, Italy. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Giacomo Aprili)

Experts aboard a sea platform carry oil recovery equipment, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, as they return to the port of the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, where the cruise ship Costa Concordia, visible in background, ran aground on Ja. 13, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Seagulls fly in front of the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Italian firefighters conduct search operations on the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia that ran aground the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

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GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises , regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

Winfield reported from Rome.

Ten years on, Costa Concordia shipwreck still haunts survivors, islanders

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Philip Pullella reported from Rome; Additional reporting by Yara Nardi, writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

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What polling can (and can't) tell you

On Nov. 5, election officials across America will count more than 150 million ballots to answer a burning political question: Who will be president of the United States? Until then, the best signals we can get will mostly come from public opinion polls, which will be the fuel of endless debate on who has the lead, Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Donald Trump. But what do polls really tell us? Lik

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Evacuation of passengers has ended as cruise ship travels to Norway port

By Eliza Mackintosh and Kendall Trammell , CNN

What we know about the Viking Sky cruise ship

Here's what we know so far about the Viking Sky cruise ship that is evacuating 1,300 passengers and crew:

• It's owned by Viking Ocean Cruises
• It was built in 2017
• It can hold maximum of 1,443 passengers and crew
• It has six engines, four diesel and two electric

Here are the phone numbers for questions about any passengers

The Joint Rescue Centre says the evacuation from the Viking Sky cruise ship is proceeding with caution.

Rescuers are facing waves of about 6-8 meters (roughly 19-26 feet) high, a spokesperson said .

If you're trying to reach someone on the ship, here are the phone numbers:

• US/AU booked guests: 1-888-889-8837
• UK booked guests: 07585 779 853 or 0208 780 7900

This is the scene onboard after a wave crashed into the ship

Passenger Ryan Flynn shared a video on Twitter showing the aftermath of a door being blown in on the Viking Sky.

The Viking Sky ship, owned by Viking Ocean Cruises, was built in 2017 and can hold 930 guests, according to the company's  website .

Norway's Red Cross is starting a "massive" operation to help evacuees

From CNN's Susanna Capelouto

Norway’s Red Cross has started a "massive" operation and mobilized all units in the region to an area close to where a cruise ship is being evacuated, a spokesperson told CNN.

The spokesperson said more than a hundred Red Cross volunteers are working with evacuees. The Red Cross has counselors and other staff available at a gym in the community of Fraena where the evacuees are being taken by helicopter.

He said volunteers are there “for a shoulder to cry on” or for “hand holding” for people from the cruise ship after the evacuations.

From there, the evacuees are being transferred to hotels in nearby towns, the spokesperson said. 

Passenger says she's been waiting almost 6 hours to be evacuated

From CNN's Kay Guerrero

Passenger Alexus Sheppard from Northern California says she has been waiting almost six hours to be evacuated. Most people were fairly calm, she said, and they were being served food and water.

Passengers are getting airlifted one by one

From CNN's Nicole Chavez

Helicopters are airlifting passengers and crew members one person at a time, and the process could continue overnight and through Sunday. 

"We can't say how long it would take," said Borghild Eldoen, a spokeswoman for the Joint Rescue Centre for Southern Norway.

The cruise ship was flooding as passengers waited to be evacuated

People on board the stranded cruise ship tell CNN the evacuation has been slow. Passengers have waited for hours to get off the boat as it was taking on water from the rough sea.  

"Crew is doing a good job. Evacuation is slow. Seas rough," tweeted David Hernandez, who is a passenger on the ship. "One muster station had a door blow in, injure pax and flood. Moved to midship."

Rough sea winds are making the rescue difficult

The ship is in rough seas in the Hustadvika area on the western coast of Norway. The Joint Rescue Centre said on Twitter it is working to get more than one of the ship's engines running.

Flightradar24 is tracking the helicopter rescues.

Five helicopters and a number of vessels are included in the rescue operation.

Rescuers are trying to ensure the ship stays secure and doesn't drift as they try to get the engines working again. Right now, the ship is secured with one anchor.

115 people have been rescued so far

Norwegian rescue officials said 115 passengers have so far been rescued by helicopter from a stranded Viking cruise ship off the coast of Norway.

The Joint Rescue Centre for Southern Norway told CNN the rescue operations will continue throughout the night and into Sunday as the ship had 1,300 people on board when it first sent a distress signal due to “engine problems in bad weather.”

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What happens when a huge ship sinks? A step-by-step guide to averting disaster

From the Ever Given blocking the Suez, to the Costa Concordia cruise ship hitting a reef, what exactly do you do when a vessel comes to grief – and how do you prevent catastrophic pollution?

A t 3:24am in the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe unfolds across the moonlit waters. The MS Seascape – a 200-metre, six-storey cargo vessel carrying 4,000 new electric vehicles – is pushed by swells into a coral reef. The ship grinds to a sickening halt, begins listing violently to the side and capsizes on to the reef a few kilometres from port.

The coastguard receives the distress call. Helicopters lift the flailing crew members to safety, while support boats unload any cargo that hasn’t already tumbled into the sea. It’s urgent – lithium ion batteries in electric cars risk exploding and most of the vehicles are stored in the hold. If fire breaks out, the vessel will become a giant pressure cooker.

Although our MS Seascape is a hypothetical ship, its situation is far from uncommon. In 2021, 54 large vessels either sank, ran aground or went up in flames and these behemoths are more likely to cause catastrophe when things go wrong.

What is the Shipwrecked series?

There are 3m lost vessels under the waves, and with new technology finally enabling us to explore them, Guardian Seascape is dedicating a series to what is being found: the secret histories, hidden treasures and the lessons they teach. From glimpses into storied wrecks such as the Titanic and Ernest Shackleton’s doomed Endurance, to slave vessels such as the Clotilda or Spanish galleons lined with plundered South American gold that confront us with our troubled history, shipwrecks are time capsules, holding clues to who we are.

But they are also ocean actors in their own right, home to huge colonies of marine life. They are victims, too, of the same threats faced by the ocean: invasive species eating away at their hulls, acidification slowly causing them to disintegrate. Shipwrecks are mirrors showing us not just who we’ve been, but what our future holds on a fast-heating globe.

The pull of these wrecks has been a boon for science, shedding light on a part of the planet that has been shrouded in mystery. “If shipwrecks are the sirens that lure us into the depths, they encourage exploration into what truly is the last frontier of the planet,” says James Delgado of shipwreck company Search Inc. “A frontier that we don’t really know much about.” Chris Michael and Laura Paddison, Seascape editors

Abandoning the ships is rarely an option. The risks of oil and fuel leaks mean it is now standard practice to try to salvage them and fix any environmental damage. But the costs are astronomical: the Costa Concordia, which ran aground off Genoa, Italy in 2012, became the most expensive wreck removal in history, costing more than $1bn , and taking 350 salvage workers almost three years.

There’s no cookie-cutter approach to salvage: each operation will vary depending on location, water depth, weather, equipment and sensitivity of the surrounding environment.

So what to do with our hypothetical MS Seascape? Let’s get started.

Step 1: Contain spills and remove fuel

The risk posed by MS Seascape, loaded with potentially explosive car batteries, is not dissimilar to that of the 200-metre Felicity Ace, which caught fire in the mid-Atlantic before sinking to an unsalvageable 10,000ft: it is suspected that the 281 EVs onboard may have sparked, or at least accelerated, the blaze.

To avoid this fate, a local salvage company gets involved, one of a few dozen operators around the world poised to rush to the scene of a maritime disaster. Its first objective is to save the vessel and return it to service.

A vessel’s location has a huge bearing on how quickly the operation unfolds. The Rena, a container ship that grounded off the coast of New Zealand, had to wait several weeks for equipment to arrive from Singapore – during which time the hull broke apart.

At this stage it is too early to tell how much impact the MS Seascape hull has sustained. In the morning, in calmer conditions, the salvage crew traces a skirted boom around the vessel to capture any fuel and hazardous wastes.

In the meantime, a specialist team begins bleeding its 20-plus tanks of more than 300,000 gallons of fuel, as well as potential pollutants such as lubricants, gases and oily water and sludge .

They drill through the ship’s exposed double-walled steel exterior into the fuel bunkers below, inserting pipes to pump out waste to a waiting vessel. Divers are dispatched to enter the ships’ interior to drain the remaining submerged tanks. This is a delicate task: removing fuel can destabilise the already precarious ship, so this process can take days, possibly weeks.

Suddenly, a crisis: after days of being strained against the reef by the current, stress fractures appear along the hull. They could break the ship apart. This dashes hopes of returning the MS Seascape to service – the cost of recouping would now be more than the value of the ship itself.

The mission transitions from salvage operation to wreck removal and the real work begins.

Step 2: Slice the ship apart

After 10 days, the ship’s fractures threaten to split the wreck. The team of hundreds of engineers, crane operators, firefighters, labourers, divers and architects, must move quickly.

They cut away the accommodation block to declutter the deck and simplify the process. One option to break the ship is to use explosives, such as those applied to the MSC Napoli, a giant container vessel grounded off England’s south coast in 2007 and blasted into two sections. But this would be catastrophic for the fragile coral ecosystem beneath the wreck.

Instead, the removal team opts for a thick cable of diamond-encrusted wire that can slice through inches-thick steel. The saw is fitted into a custom-built frame lifted by cranes and ferried to the wreck site. Over two days, its two legs are rigged into the seafloor on either side of the wreck. Within the frame, the wire is cycled at high speed through a system of pulleys and lowered, guillotine-like, into the metal hulk, shearing through it with an ear-splitting roar.

It can take up to 12 hours to cut a single cross-section, but the saw’s surgical precision means it only grazes the reef below. It can also slice between parked cars in the lower decks so that fewer tumble out into the sea, and around the fuel tank.

Fuel isn’t the only environmental threat: ships contain an extraordinary load of hazardous material , such as antifouling chemicals and lead embedded in paint, asbestos in the walls, and mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) wound into the electrics of older ships. These pollutants will gradually ooze out of hulks left to rot in the ocean. One sunken German warship is still leaching chemicals into the North Sea after more than 80 years.

Step 3: Remove sections and take them ashore

The MS Seascape is now encircled with vessels and equipment ready to intervene as pieces of the wreck are shorn off. With the ship’s bow resting on the reef, but its stern threatening to fall to the ocean floor when cut loose, the team has a two-pronged plan.

First, the floating sheerleg: a huge crane on a buoyant platform, capable of lifting 7,000 tons. It is a mechanical island with an accommodation block for the dozens of workers who will be at sea for weeks dismantling the wreck.

The crew will slice the ship into eight pieces. Starting with the bow, each slice is drilled with holes through which cables are threaded, then hoisted up by crane. Piece by piece, the ship is carefully loaded on to waiting barges and ferried away.

The stern requires a different approach. Before the rear segment is cut free, support vessels weld enormous air-filled metal boxes called caissons to its exposed starboard side. These are partly filled with water, adding weight that rotates the stern upright when it is cut free. As the stern is righted, caissons are attached to its port side, too. On both sides these are filled and emptied of water, to reach the perfect level of buoyancy to keep the stern afloat. Once free and released on to the water, the stern is then tugged to port.

Not all wrecks would need the same approach. Some with relatively minimal damage, such as the Costa Concordia , can be patched up, fully refloated with caissons, then towed away. Others have to be dredged up from the seafloor, such as the X-Press Pearl , whose nitric acid load caught fire off Sri Lanka in 2019 and caused the ship to sink to 68ft – along with its cargo of 50bn plastic “nurdles” , which swamped Sri Lankan beaches.

The X-Press Pearl needed dozens of cables to winch it up from the seafloor, but the monsoon season stalled the mission, dragging out a process already costing the vessel owners $40m in environmental compensation claims from the Sri Lankan government.

Even with a well managed wreck such as the MS Seascape, some spillage is unavoidable. Divers, aided by remotely operated underwater vehicles, locate lost cars and other metal debris, feeding this information to a barge fitted with underwater magnets and mechanical grabbers.

Two months after the ship ran aground, no trace remains of the MS Seascape in the ocean – but the work continues.

Step 4: Strip down the ship

Back on land, the pieces of the MS Seascape wait to be broken down. The vessel was flagged to the EU, meaning it must be dismantled in one of 46 regulated yards spread across Europe, Turkey and the US.

This means it will be dealt with under stricter requirements than vessels in south Asian shipbreaking beaches, where 70% of global ships end their seagoing lives. Looser regulations in these locations result in dozens of labourer deaths annually, and untold environmental impacts as pollutants leach on to beaches and into the sea .

However, at the dry dock in Italy where most of the MS Seascape ends up, waste is supposed to be contained. Over several months, the ship is stripped back to basics: sheets of asbestos, wiring, equipment and furniture are removed until only the steel husk remains.

This is where most of the ship’s value now lies. Efficient smelting operations can recycle almost all a ship’s steel: about 90% of the material in the Costa Concordia was recycled.

Back on the reef, rehabilitation has begun. The water is monitored for residual pollutants, and teams begin planting nursery-grown coral into the shattered reef. This will take years: a decade after the Costa Concordia capsized, damaged seagrass meadows are still being restored.

Now reduced to molten steel, some of the MS Seascape might be forged into yet another ocean-going colossus. As shipbuilding ingenuity grows, so will the effort, costs – and the innovation – required to salvage these leviathans at sea.

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Another Night to Remember

By Bryan Burrough and Josephine McKenna

At the Italian port of Civitavecchia, 40 miles northwest of Rome, the great cruise ships line the long concrete breakwater like taxis at a curb. That Friday afternoon, January 13, 2012, the largest and grandest was the Costa Concordia, 17 decks high, a floating pleasure palace the length of three football fields. It was a cool, bright day as the crowds filed on and off the ship, those who had boarded at Barcelona and Marseilles heading into Rome for sightseeing while hundreds of new passengers pulled rolling bags toward the *Concordia’*s arrival terminal.

Up on the road, a writer from Rome named Patrizia Perilli stepped from a chauffeur-driven Mercedes and marveled at the ship’s immensity. “You could see it even before you entered the port; it was a floating monster,” she recalls. “Its size made me feel secure. It was sunny, and its windows were just sparkling.”

Inside the terminal, newcomers handed their luggage to the Indian and Filipino pursers. There was a welcome desk for an Italian reality show, Professione LookMaker, filming on board that week; among those arriving were 200 or so hairdressers from Naples and Bologna and Milan, all hoping to make it onto the show. As they chattered, flashed their passports, and boarded, then slowly filtered throughout the ship, they thought it all grand: 1,500 luxury cabins, six restaurants, 13 bars, the two-story Samsara Spa and fitness center, the three-story Atene Theatre, four swimming pools, the Barcellona Casino, the Lisbona Disco, even an Internet café, all wrapped around a dramatic, nine-story central atrium, itself a riot of pink, blue, and green lights.

Some of the hundred or so Americans on board weren’t so wowed. One likened wandering the Concordia to getting lost inside a pinball machine. “It kind of reminded me of old Vegas, you know?” says Benji Smith, a 34-year-old Massachusetts honeymooner, who had boarded at Barcelona with his wife, along with two of her relatives and two of their friends, all from Hong Kong. “Everything was really gaudy, lots of fancy blown glass in different colors. The entertainment kind of reinforced the old-Vegas thing, aging singers performing solo on a keyboard with a drum track.”

There were just over 4,200 people aboard the Concordia as it eased away from the breakwater that evening, about a thousand crew members and 3,200 passengers, including nearly a thousand Italians, hundreds of French, British, Russians, and Germans, even a few dozen from Argentina and Peru. Up on Deck 10, Patrizia Perilli stepped onto her balcony and daydreamed about sunbathing. As she began to unpack in her elegant stateroom, she glanced over at her boyfriend, who was watching a video on what to do if they needed to abandon ship. Perilli teased him, “What would we ever need that for?”

As the world now knows, they needed it desperately. Six hours later the Concordia would be lying on its side in the sea, freezing water surging up the same carpeted hallways that hairdressers and newlyweds were already using to head to dinner. Of the 4,200 people on board, 32 would be dead by dawn.

The wreck of the Costa Concordia is many things to many people. To Italians, who dominated the ship’s officer ranks and made up a third of its passengers, it is a national embarrassment; once the pinnacle of Mediterranean hedonism, the Concordia was now sprawled dead on the rocks in a cold winter sea.

But the *Concordia’*s loss is also a landmark moment in naval history. It is the largest passenger ship ever wrecked. The 4,000 people who fled its slippery decks—nearly twice as many as were aboard the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912—represent the largest maritime evacuation in history. A story of heroism and disgrace, it is also, in the mistakes of its captain and certain officers, a tale of monumental human folly.

“This was an episode of historic importance for those who study nautical issues,” says Ilarione Dell’Anna, the Italian Coast Guard admiral who oversaw much of the massive rescue effort that night. “The old point of departure was the Titanic. I believe that today the new point of departure will be the Costa Concordia. There has never been anything like this before. We must study this, to see what happened and to see what we can learn.”

Much of what happened on the night of January 13 can now be told, based on the accounts of dozens of passengers, crew members, and rescue workers. But the one group whose actions are crucial to any understanding of what went wrong—the ship’s officers—has been largely mute, silenced first by superiors at Costa Cruises and now by a web of official investigations. The officers have spoken mainly to the authorities, but this being the Italian justice system, their stories quickly leaked to the newspapers—and not simply, as happens in America, via the utterances of anonymous government officials. In Rome entire transcripts of these interrogations and depositions have been leaked, affording a fairly detailed, if still incomplete, portrait of what the captain and senior officers say actually happened.

By Bess Levin

By Maureen Ryan

By Brooke Baldwin

Captain, My Captain

The Concordia first sailed into the Tyrrhenian Sea, from a Genoese shipyard, in 2005; at the time it was Italy’s largest cruise ship. When it was christened, the champagne bottle had failed to break, an ominous portent to superstitious mariners. Still, the ship proved a success for its Italian owner, Costa Cruises, a unit of the Miami-based Carnival Corporation. The ship sailed only in the Mediterranean, typically taking a circular route from Civitavecchia to Savona, Marseilles, Barcelona, Majorca, Sardinia, and Sicily.

In command on the bridge that night was 51-year-old Captain Francesco Schettino, today a figure of international contempt. Dashing and deeply tanned, with lustrous black hair, Schettino had joined Costa as a safety officer in 2002, been promoted to captain in 2006, and since September had been on his second tour aboard the Concordia. Among the officers, he was respected, though the retired captain who had mentored him later told prosecutors he was a bit too “exuberant” for his own good. Despite being married, Schettino had a lady friend at his side that evening, a comely 25-year-old off-duty hostess named Domnica Cemortan, from Moldova. Though she would later become an object of intense fascination in the press, Cemortan’s role in events that night was inconsequential.

Before leaving port, Captain Schettino set a course for Savona, on the Italian Riviera, 250 miles to the northwest. As the ship steamed into the Tyrrhenian, Schettino headed to dinner with Cemortan, telling an officer to alert him when the Concordia closed within five miles of the island of Giglio, 45 miles northwest. Later, a passenger would claim he saw Schettino and his friend polish off a decanter of red wine while eating, but the story was never confirmed. Around nine Schettino rose and, with Cemortan in tow, returned to the bridge.

Ahead lay mountainous Giglio, a collection of sleepy villages and vacation homes clustered around a tiny stone harbor, nine miles off the coast of Tuscany.

The *Concordia’*s normal course took it through the middle of the channel between Giglio and the mainland, but as Schettino arrived, it was already veering toward the island. The ship’s chief maître d’, Antonello Tievoli, was a native of Giglio and had asked the captain to perform a “salute,” essentially a slow drive-by, a common cruise-industry practice intended to show off the ship and impress local residents. Schettino had consented, in part because his mentor, Mario Palombo, lived there, too. Palombo had performed several salutes to Giglio, Schettino at least one.

As the ship made its approach, Tievoli, standing on the bridge, placed a telephone call to Palombo. The retired captain, it turned out, wasn’t on Giglio; he was at a second home, on the mainland. After some chitchat, Tievoli handed the telephone to the captain, which, Palombo told prosecutors, caught him off guard. He and Schettino hadn’t talked in at least seven years; Schettino hadn’t bothered to call when Palombo retired. “The call surprised me,” Palombo said. “I was even more surprised when Schettino asked me about the depth of the seabed in front of Giglio Island, the harbor area, specifying that he wanted to pass at a distance of 0.4 nautical miles [around 800 yards]. I answered that in that area the seabeds are good, but considering the winter season”—when few people were on the island—“there was no reason to go at close range, so I invited him to make a quick greeting and to honk the horn and remain far from shore. I want to clarify that I said, verbatim, ‘Say hi and stay away.’ ”

Just then the phone went dead. It may have been the very moment Schettino saw the rock.

Not until the ship had closed within two miles of the island, Schettino’s officers told prosecutors, did the captain take personal control of the ship. As Schettino recalled it, he stood at a radar station, in front of the broad outer windows, affording him a clear view of Giglio’s lights. An Indonesian crewman, Rusli Bin Jacob, remained at the helm, taking orders from the captain. The maneuver Schettino planned was simple, one he had overseen many, many times, just an easy turn to starboard, to the right, that would take the Concordia parallel to the coastline, dazzling the island’s residents with the length of the fully lit ship as it slid past. In doing so, however, Schettino made five crucial mistakes, the last two fatal. For one thing, the Concordia was going too fast, 15 knots, a high speed for maneuvering so close to shore. And while he had consulted radar and maps, Schettino seems to have been navigating largely by his own eyesight—“a major mistake,” in one analyst’s words. His third error was the bane of every American motorist: Schettino was talking on the phone while driving.

Schettino’s fourth mistake, however, appears to have been an amazingly stupid bit of confusion. He began his turn by calculating the distance from a set of rocks that lay about 900 yards off the harbor. What he failed to notice was another rock, nearer the ship. Giving orders to Bin Jacob, Schettino eased the Concordia into the turn without event. Then, coming onto a new, northerly course just over a half-mile from the harbor, he saw the rock below, to his left. It was enormous, just at the surface, crowned with frothing white water; he was so close to Giglio he could see it by the town’s lights.

He couldn’t believe it.

“Hard to starboard!” Schettino yelled.

It was an instinctive order, intended to steer the ship away from the rock. For a fleeting moment Schettino thought it had worked. The *Concordia’*s bow cleared the rock. Its midsection cleared as well. But by turning the ship to starboard the stern swung toward the island, striking the submerged part of the rock. “The problem was that I went to starboard trying to avoid it, and that was the mistake, because I should not have gone starboard,” Schettino told prosecutors. “I made an imprudent decision. Nothing would have happened if I had not set the helm to starboard.”

“Hard to port!” Schettino commanded, correcting his mistake.

A moment later, he shouted, “Hard to starboard!”

And then the lights went out.

It was 9:42. Many of the passengers were at dinner, hundreds of them in the vast Milano Restaurant alone. A Schenectady, New York, couple, Brian Aho and Joan Fleser, along with their 18-year-old daughter, Alana, had just been served eggplant-and-feta appetizers when Aho felt the ship shudder.

“Joan and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, ‘That’s not normal,’ ” recalls Aho. “Then there was a bang bang bang bang . Then there was just a great big groaning sound.”

“I immediately felt the ship list severely to port,” Fleser says. “Dishes went flying. Waiters went flying all over. Glasses were flying. Exactly like the scene in Titanic. ”

“I took the first bite of my eggplant and feta,” Aho says, “and I literally had to chase the plate across the table.”

“Suddenly there was a loud bang,” recalls Patrizia Perilli. “It was clear there had been a crash. Immediately after that there was a very long and powerful vibration—it seemed like an earthquake.”

A Bologna hairdresser, Donatella Landini, was sitting nearby, marveling at the coastline, when she felt the jolt. “The sensation was like a wave,” she recalls. “Then there was this really loud sound like a ta-ta-ta as the rocks penetrated the ship.” Gianmaria Michelino, a hairdresser from Naples, says, “The tables, plates, and glasses began to fall and people began to run. Many people fell. Women who had been running in high heels fell.”

All around, diners surged toward the restaurant’s main entrance. Aho and Fleser took their daughter and headed for a side exit, where the only crew member they saw, a sequined dancer, was gesticulating madly and shouting in Italian. “Just as we were leaving, the lights went out,” Fleser says, “and people started screaming, really panicking. The lights were out only for a few moments; then the emergency lights came on. We knew the lifeboats were on Deck 4. We didn’t even go back to our room. We just went for the boats.”

“We stayed at our table,” recalls Perilli. “The restaurant emptied and there was a surreal silence in the room. Everyone was gone.”

Somewhere on the ship, an Italian woman named Concetta Robi took out her cell phone and dialed her daughter in the central Italian town of Prato, near Florence. She described scenes of chaos, ceiling panels falling, waiters stumbling, passengers scrambling to put on life jackets. The daughter telephoned the police, the carabinieri.

As passengers tried in vain to understand what was happening, Captain Schettino stood on the bridge, stunned. An officer nearby later told investigators he heard the captain say, “Fuck. I didn’t see it!”

In those first confusing minutes, Schettino spoke several times with engineers belowdecks and sent at least one officer to assess the damage. Moments after the Concordia struck the rock, the chief engineer, Giuseppe Pilon, had hustled toward his control room. An officer emerged from the engine room itself shouting, “There’s water! There’s water!” “I told him to check that all the watertight doors were closed as they should be,” Pilon told prosecutors. “Just as I finished speaking we had a total blackout I opened the door to the engine room and the water had already risen to the main switchboard I informed Captain Schettino of the situation. I told him that the engine room, the main switchboard, and the stern section were flooded. I told him we had lost control of the ship.”

There was a 230-foot-long horizontal gash below the waterline. Seawater was exploding into the engine room and was fast cascading through areas holding all the ship’s engines and generators. The lower decks are divided into giant compartments; if four flood, the ship will sink.

At 9:57, 15 minutes after the ship struck the rock, Schettino phoned Costa Cruises’ operations center. The executive he spoke to, Roberto Ferrarini, later told reporters, “Schettino told me there was one compartment flooded, the compartment with electrical propulsion motors, and with that kind of situation the ship’s buoyancy was not compromised. His voice was quite clear and calm.” Between 10:06 and 10:26, the two men spoke three more times. At one point, Schettino admitted that a second compartment had flooded. That was, to put it mildly, an understatement. In fact, five compartments were flooding; the situation was hopeless. (Later, Schettino would deny that he had attempted to mislead either his superiors or anyone else.)

They were sinking. How much time they had, no one knew. Schettino had few options. The engines were dead. Computer screens had gone black. The ship was drifting and losing speed. Its momentum had carried it north along the island’s coastline, past the harbor, then past a rocky peninsula called Point Gabbianara. By 10 P.M., 20 minutes after striking the rock, the ship was heading away from the island, into open water. If something wasn’t done immediately, it would sink there.

What happened next won’t be fully understood until the *Concordia’*s black-box recorders are analyzed. But from what little Schettino and Costa officials have said, it appears that Schettino realized he had to ground the ship; evacuating a beached ship would be far safer than evacuating at sea. The nearest land, however, was already behind the ship, at Point Gabbianara. Somehow Schettino had to turn the powerless Concordia completely around and ram it into the rocks lining the peninsula. How this happened is not clear. From the ship’s course, some analysts initially speculated that Schettino used an emergency generator to gain control of the ship’s bow thrusters—tiny jets of water used in docking—which allowed him to make the turn. Others maintain that he did nothing, that the turnabout was a moment of incredible luck. They argue that the prevailing wind and current—both pushing the Concordia back toward the island—did most of the work.

“The bow thrusters wouldn’t have been usable, but from what we know, it seems like he could still steer,” says John Konrad, a veteran American captain and nautical analyst. “It looks like he was able to steer into the hairpin turn, and wind and current did the rest.”

However it was done, the Concordia completed a hairpin turn to starboard, turning the ship completely around. At that point, it began drifting straight toward the rocks.

I larione Dell’Anna, the dapper admiral in charge of Coast Guard rescue operations in Livorno, meets me on a freezing evening outside a columned seaside mansion in the coastal city of La Spezia. Inside, waiters in white waistcoats are busy laying out long tables lined with antipasti and flutes of champagne for a naval officers’ reception. Dell’Anna, wearing a blue dress uniform with a star on each lapel, takes a seat on a corner sofa.

“I’ll tell you how it all started: It was a dark and stormy night,” he begins, then smiles. “No, seriously, it was a quiet night. I was in Rome. We got a call from a town outside Florence. The party, a carabinieri officer, had a call from a woman whose mother was on a ship, we don’t know where, who was putting on life jackets. Very unusual, needless to say, for us to get such a call from land. Ordinarily a ship calls us. In this case, we had to find the ship. We were the ones who triggered the entire operation.”

That first call, like hundreds of others in the coming hours, arrived at the Coast Guard’s rescue-coordination center, a cluster of red-brick buildings on the harbor in Livorno, about 90 miles north of Giglio. Three officers were on duty that night inside its small operations room, a 12-by-25-foot white box lined with computer screens. “At 2206, I received the call,” remembers one of the night’s unsung heroes, an energetic 37-year-old petty officer named Alessandro Tosi. The carabinieri “thought it was a ship going from Savona to Barcelona. I called Savona. They said no, no ship had left from there. I asked the carabinieri for more information. They called the passenger’s daughter, and she said it was the Costa Concordia. ”

Six minutes after that first call, at 10:12, Tosi located the Concordia on a radar screen just off Giglio. “So then we called the ship by radio, to ask if there was a problem,” Tosi recalls. An officer on the bridge answered. “He said it was just an electrical blackout,” Tosi continues. “I said, ‘But I’ve heard plates are falling off the dinner tables—why would that be? Why have passengers been ordered to put on life jackets?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s just a blackout.’ He said they would resolve it shortly.”

The Concordia crewman speaking with the Coast Guard was the ship’s navigation officer, a 26-year-old Italian named Simone Canessa. “The Captain ordered … Canessa to say that there was a blackout on board,” third mate Silvia Coronica later told prosecutors. “When asked if we needed assistance, he said, ‘At the moment, no.’ ” The first mate, Ciro Ambrosio, who was also on the bridge, confirmed to investigators that Schettino was fully aware that a blackout was the least of their problems. “The captain ordered us to say that everything was under control and that we were checking the damage, even though he knew that the ship was taking on water.”

Tosi put the radio down, suspicious. This wouldn’t be the first captain who downplayed his plight in hopes of avoiding public humiliation. Tosi telephoned his two superiors, both of whom arrived within a half-hour.

At 10:16, the captain of a Guardia di Finanza cutter—the equivalent of U.S. Customs—radioed Tosi to say he was off Giglio and offered to investigate. Tosi gave the go-ahead. “I got back to the [ Concordia ] and said, ‘Please keep us abreast of what is going on,’ ” says Tosi. “After about 10 minutes, they didn’t update us. Nothing. So we called them again, asking, ‘Can you please update us?’ At that point, they said they had water coming in. We asked what sort of help they needed, and how many people on board had been injured. They said there were no injured. They requested only one tugboat.” Tosi shakes his head. “One tugboat.”

Schettino’s apparent refusal to promptly admit the *Concordia’*s plight—to lie about it, according to the Coast Guard—not only was a violation of Italian maritime law but cost precious time, delaying the arrival of rescue workers by as much as 45 minutes. At 10:28 the Coast Guard center ordered every available ship in the area to head for the island of Giglio.

With the Concordia beginning to list, most of the 3,200 passengers had no clue what to do. A briefing on how to evacuate the ship wasn’t to take place until late the next day. Many, like the Aho family, streamed toward the lifeboats, which lined both sides of Deck 4, and opened lockers carrying orange life jackets. Already, some were panicking. “The life jacket I had, a woman was trying to rip it out of my arms. It actually ripped the thing—you could hear it,” Joan Fleser says. “We stayed right there by one of the lifeboats, No. 19. The whole time we were standing there I only saw one crew member walk by. I asked what was happening. He said he didn’t know. We heard two announcements, both the same, that it was an electrical problem with a generator, technicians were working on it, and everything was under control.”

Internet videos later showed crewmen exhorting passengers to return to their staterooms, which, while jarring in light of subsequent events, made sense at the time: There had been no order to abandon ship. When Addie King, a New Jersey graduate student, emerged from her room wearing a life jacket, a maintenance worker actually told her to put it away. Like most, she ignored the advice and headed to the starboard side of Deck 4, where hundreds of passengers were already lining the rails, waiting and worrying. The Massachusetts newlyweds, Benji Smith and Emily Lau, were among them. “Some people are already crying and screaming,” Smith recalls. “But most people were still pretty well collected. You could see some laughing.”

For the moment, the crowd remained calm.

The island of Giglio, for centuries a haven for vacationing Romans, has a long history of unexpected visitors. Once, they were buccaneers: in the 16th century, the legendary pirate Barbarossa carted off every person on the island to slavery. Today, Giglio’s harbor, ringed by a semicircular stone esplanade lined with cafés and snack shops, is home to a few dozen fishing boats and sailboats. In summer, when the tourists come, the population soars to 15,000. In winter barely 700 remain.

That night, on the far side of the island, a 49-year-old hotel manager, Mario Pellegrini, was pointing a remote control at his television, trying in vain to find something to watch. A handsome man with a mop of curly brown hair and sprays of wrinkles at his eyes, Pellegrini was exhausted. The day before, he and a pal had gone fishing, and when the motor on their boat died, they ended up spending the night at sea. “The sea is not for me,” he sighed to his friend afterward. “You can sell that damn boat.”

The phone rang. It was a policeman at the port. A big ship, he said, was in trouble, just outside the harbor. Pellegrini, the island’s deputy mayor, had no idea how serious the matter was, but the policeman sounded worried. He hopped in his car and began driving across the mountain toward the port, dialing others on Giglio’s island council as he went. He reached a tobacco-shop owner, Giovanni Rossi, who was at his home above the harbor watching his favorite movie, Ben-Hur. “There’s a ship in trouble out there,” Pellegrini told him. “You should get down there.”

“What do you mean, there’s a ship out there?” Rossi said, stepping to his window. Parting the curtains, he gasped. Then he threw on a coat and raced down the hill toward the port. A few moments later, Pellegrini rounded the mountainside. Far below, just a few hundred yards off Point Gabbianara, was the largest ship he had ever seen, every light ablaze, drifting straight toward the rocks alongside the peninsula.

“Oh my God,” Pellegrini breathed.

After completing its desperate hairpin turn away from the open sea, the Concordia struck ground a second time that night between 10:40 and 10:50, running onto the rocky underwater escarpment beside Point Gabbianara, facing the mouth of Giglio’s little harbor, a quarter-mile away. Its landing, such as it was, was fairly smooth; few passengers even remember a jolt. Later, Schettino would claim that this maneuver saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives.

In fact, according to John Konrad’s analysis, it was here that Schettino made the error that actually led to many of the deaths that night. The ship was already listing to starboard, toward the peninsula. In an attempt to prevent it from falling further—it eventually and famously flopped onto its right side—Schettino dropped the ship’s massive anchors. But photos taken later by divers show clearly that they were lying flat, with their flukes pointed upward; they never dug into the seabed, rendering them useless. What happened?

Konrad says it was a jaw-droppingly stupid mistake. “You can see they let out too much chain,” he says. “I don’t know the precise depths, but if it was 90 meters, they let out 120 meters of chain. So the anchors never caught. The ship then went in sideways, almost tripping over itself, which is why it listed. If he had dropped the anchors properly, the ship wouldn’t have listed so badly.”

What could explain so fundamental a blunder? Video of the chaos on the bridge that night later surfaced, and while it sheds little light on Schettino’s technical decisions, it says worlds about his state of mind. “From the video, you can tell he was stunned,” says Konrad. “The captain really froze. It doesn’t seem his brain was processing.”

Schettino did make efforts, however, to ensure that the ship was firmly grounded. As he told prosecutors, he left the bridge and went to Deck 9, near the top of the ship, to survey its position. He worried it was still afloat and thus still sinking; he asked for that tugboat, he said, with the thought it might push the ship onto solid ground. Eventually satisfied it already was, he finally gave the order to abandon ship at 10:58.

Lifeboats lined the railings on both sides of Deck 4. Because the Concordia was listing to starboard, it eventually became all but impossible to lower boats from the port side, the side facing open water; they would just bump against lower decks. As a result, the vast majority of those who evacuated the ship by lifeboat departed from the starboard side. Each boat was designed to hold 150 passengers. By the time Schettino called to abandon ship, roughly 2,000 people had been standing on Deck 4 for an hour or more, waiting. The moment crewmen began opening the lifeboat gates, chaos broke out.

“It was every man, woman, and child for themselves,” says Brian Aho, who crowded onto Lifeboat 19 with his wife, Joan Fleser, and their daughter.

“We had an officer in our lifeboat,” Fleser says. “That was the only thing that kept people from totally rioting. I ended up being first, then Brian and then Alana.”

“There was a man who was trying to elbow Alana out of the way,” Aho recalls, “and she pointed at me, yelling in Italian, ‘Mio papà! Mio papà!’ I saw her feet on the deck above me and I pulled her in by the ankles.”

“The thing I remember most is people’s screams. The cries of the women and children,” recalls Gianmaria Michelino, the hairdresser. “Children who couldn’t find their parents, women who wanted to find their husbands. Children were there on their own.”

Claudio Masia, a 49-year-old Italian, waiting with his wife, their two children, and his elderly parents, lost patience. “I am not ashamed to say that I pushed people and used my fists to secure a place” for his wife and children, he later told an Italian newspaper. Returning for his parents, Masia had to carry his mother, who was in her 80s, into a boat. When he returned for his father, Giovanni, an 85-year-old Sardinian, he had vanished. Masia ran up and down the deck, searching for him, but Giovanni Masia was never seen again.

‘Someone at our muster station called out, ‘Women and children first,’ ” recalls Benji Smith. “That really increased the panic level. The families who were sticking together, they’re being pulled apart. The women don’t want to go without their husbands, the husbands don’t want to lose their wives.”

After being momentarily separated from his wife, Smith pushed his way onto a lifeboat, which dangled about 60 feet above the water. Immediately, however, the crew had problems lowering it. “This is the first part where I thought my life was in danger,” Smith goes on. “The lifeboats have to be pushed out and lowered down. We weren’t being lowered down slowly and evenly from both directions. The stern side would fall suddenly by three feet, then the bow by two feet; port and starboard would tilt sharply to one side or the other. It was very jerky, very scary. The crew members were shouting at each other. They couldn’t figure out what they were doing.” Eventually, to Smith’s dismay, the crewmen simply gave up, cranked the lifeboat back up to the deck, and herded all the passengers back onto the ship.

Others, blocked or delayed in getting into lifeboats, threw themselves into the water and swam toward the rocks at Point Gabbianara, 100 yards way. One of these was a 72-year-old Argentinean judge named María Inés Lona de Avalos. Repeatedly turned away from crowded lifeboats, she sat on the deck amid the chaos. “I could feel the ship creaking, and we were already leaning halfway over,” she later told a Buenos Aires newspaper. A Spaniard beside her yelled, “There’s no other option! Let’s go!” And then he jumped.

A moment later Judge Lona, a fine swimmer in her youth, followed.

“I jumped feetfirst I couldn’t see much. I began swimming, but every 50 feet I would stop and look back. I could hear the ship creaking and was scared that it would fall on top of me if it capsized completely. I swam for a few minutes and reached the island.” She sat on a wet rock and exhaled.

A French couple, Francis and Nicole Servel, jumped as well, after Francis, who was 71, gave Nicole his life jacket because she couldn’t swim. As she struggled toward the rocks, she yelled, “Francis!,” and he replied, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” Francis Servel was never seen again.

The first lifeboats limped into the harbor a few minutes after 11.

By the time Giglio’s deputy mayor, Mario Pellegrini, reached the harbor, townspeople had begun to collect on its stone esplanade. “We’re all looking at the ship, trying to figure out what happened,” he recalls. “We thought it must be an engine breakdown of some kind. Then we saw the lifeboats dropping down, and the first ones began to arrive in the port.” Local schools and the church were opened, and the first survivors were hustled inside and given blankets. Every free space began to fill.

“I looked at the mayor and said, ‘We’re such a small port—we should open the hotels,’ ” Pellegrini says. “Then I said, ‘Maybe it’s better for me to go on board to see what’s going on.’ I didn’t have a minute to think. I just jumped on a lifeboat, and before I knew it I was out on the water.”

Reaching the ship, Pellegrini grabbed a rope ladder dangling from a lower deck. “As soon as I got on board, I started looking for someone in charge. There were just crew members, standing and talking on Deck 4, with the lifeboats. They had no idea what was going on. I said, ‘I’m looking for the captain, or someone in charge. I’m the deputy mayor! Where’s the captain?’ Everyone goes, ‘I don’t know. There’s no one in charge.’ I was running around like that for 20 minutes. I ran through all the decks. I eventually emerged on top, where the swimming pool is. Finally I found the guy in charge of hospitality. He didn’t have any idea what was going on, either. At that point the ship wasn’t really tilting all that badly. It was easy to load people into the lifeboats. So I went down and started to help out there.”

For the next half-hour or so, lifeboats shuttled people into the harbor. When a few returned to the starboard side, scores of passengers marooned on the port side sprinted through darkened passageways to cross the ship and reach them. Amanda Warrick, an 18-year-old Boston-area student, lost her footing on the slanting, slippery deck and fell down a small stairwell, where she found herself in knee-deep water. “The water was actually rising,” she says. “That was pretty scary.” Somehow, carrying a laptop computer and a bulky camera, she managed to scramble 50 feet across the deck and jump into a waiting boat.

While there was plenty of chaos aboard the Concordia that night, what few have noted is that, despite confused crew members and balky lifeboats, despite hundreds of passengers on the edge of panic, this first stage of the evacuation proceeded in a more-or-less orderly fashion. Between 11, when the first lifeboats dropped to the water, and about 12:15—a window of an hour and 15 minutes—roughly two-thirds of the people on board the ship, somewhere between 2,500 and 3,300 in all, made it to safety. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there.

Rescue at Sea

Ahelicopter arrived from the mainland at 11:45. It carried a doctor, a paramedic, and two rescue swimmers from the Vigili del Fuoco, Italy’s fire-and-rescue service. A van whisked them from Giglio’s airfield to the port, where the swimmers, Stefano Turchi, 49, and 37-year-old Paolo Scipioni, pushed through the crowds, boarded a police launch, and changed into orange wet suits. Before them, the Concordia, now listing at a 45-degree angle, was lit by spotlights from a dozen small boats bobbing at its side. The launch headed for the port bow, where people had been jumping into the water. As it approached, a Filipino crewman on a high deck suddenly leapt from the ship, falling nearly 30 feet into the sea. “Stefano and I swam about 30 meters to rescue him,” Scipioni says. “He was in shock, very tired, and freezing cold. We took him ashore and then went back to the ship.”

It was the first of six trips the two divers would make in the next two hours. On the second trip they pulled in a 60-year-old Frenchwoman floating in her life jacket near the bow. “Are you O.K.?” Turchi asked in French.

“I’m fine,” she said. Then she said, “I’m not fine.”

Next they pulled in a second Frenchwoman in an advanced state of hypothermia. “She was shaking uncontrollably,” Scipioni recalls. “She was conscious, but her face was violet and her hands were violet and her fingers were white. Her circulatory system was shutting down. She kept saying, ‘My husband, Jean-Pierre! My husband!’ We took her ashore and went back.”

On their fourth trip they lifted an unconscious man into the police launch; this was probably the woman’s husband, Jean-Pierre Micheaud, the night’s first confirmed death. He had died of hypothermia.

By 12:15 almost everyone on the *Concordia’*s starboard side had fled the ship. Among the last to go were Captain Schettino and a group of officers. After leaving the bridge, Schettino had gone to his cabin to grab some of his things, before rushing, he said, to help with the lifeboats. Minutes later, the Concordia began to roll slowly to starboard, falling almost onto its side. For a moment there was complete chaos as many of those still on the starboard side, including the second and third mates, were forced to dive into the water and swim for the rocks. It was at that point, Schettino famously claimed, that he lost his footing and fell onto the roof of a lifeboat. The captain later said his lifeboat plucked three or four people from the water.

Moments before the ship rolled, Giglio’s deputy mayor, Mario Pellegrini, scurried through a passageway, crossing the ship in an effort to help those still on the port side. “When we finished putting them on the boats, there was hardly anyone left on the right side of the boat,” Pellegrini recalls. “That’s when the ship started to tilt more. So I ran through a corridor, to the other side of the ship, and over there there were lots of people, hundreds, more than 500 probably.”

When the ship began to roll, “I couldn’t understand what was going on, the movement was so violent,” says Pellegrini. “Suddenly it was difficult to stand. It was very disorienting. If you took a step forward, you fell. You couldn’t tell which way was up or down. You couldn’t walk. All the people were forced against the walls. That’s when the panic hit, and the electricity went out as well. Lights winking out all over. And when the ship stopped moving, we were in the dark, just the moon, the light of the full moon. And everyone was screaming.” The ship’s chief doctor, a rotund Roman named Sandro Cinquini, was already on the port side. “The ship actually fell gently,” Cinquini recalls. “That was the worst time. People were trapped in the middle [of the ship] as it turned and the water began to rise.”

When the Concordia came to rest once more, its landscape was hopelessly skewed. With the ship lying almost on its right side, walls now became floors; hallways became vertical shafts. Pellegrini was on Deck 4, in a covered corridor with about 150 passengers; beyond was an open deck, where another 500 or so were struggling to regain their footing. When he was able to stand, Pellegrini glanced into the corridor behind—now below—him, and to his horror, he could see seawater surging toward him, as it was all across the starboard side of the ship, inundating the lowest decks and gushing into the restaurants on Deck 4. This was almost certainly the single deadliest moment of the night, when at least 15 people probably drowned. “That’s when I started getting afraid, for myself,” Pellegrini says. “And there were people still down there. You could hear them screaming.”

The screams seemed to be emanating from behind a single hatchway. Pellegrini, working with Dr. Cinquini and another crewman, threw his weight into lifting this door, which was now on the floor. When it came free, he looked down a near-vertical hallway 30 feet long. “There were people down there—it was like they were in a well filling up with water,” Pellegrini says. A crewman grabbed a rope and, swiftly making knots in it, dropped it down to those trapped below. “Four or five of us all began pulling people up from below. They came up one at a time. The first one who came out, a woman, she was so surprised, she came up feetfirst. I had to reach down and pull her out. We took out nine people in all. The first one had been in water up to her waist, the last one was in to his neck. The worst was an American guy, really fat, like 250 pounds, tall and obese; he was hard to get out. The last one was a waiter—his eyes were terrified. The water was freezing. The water was so cold, he couldn’t have survived much longer.”

“He told us there were others behind him,” says Dr. Cinquini, “but he could no longer see them.”

The ship’s roll trapped scores of passengers. Earlier, a Southern California family, Dean Ananias, his wife, Georgia, and their two daughters, aged 31 and 23, had boarded a lifeboat on the port side but were forced to return on board when the *Concordia’*s list rendered the port-side boats useless. Crossing to starboard, they were standing in a darkened hallway, inching forward near the end of a long line of people, when Dean heard the crash of plates and glasses and the ship started to roll.

People began to scream. The family fell to the floor. Dean felt sure the ship was turning completely over, as seen in The Poseidon Adventure. To his amazement, it didn’t. Once the ship settled, the Ananiases found themselves stomach-down on a steep incline; Dean realized they had to crawl upward, back to the port side, which was now above their heads. They grabbed a railing and managed to pull themselves almost all the way to the open deck at the top. But five feet short of the opening, the railing suddenly stopped.

“We started trying to pull ourselves up,” recalls Dean, a retired teacher. “We got up against the wall, and that’s when my daughter Cindy said, ‘I’m gonna launch myself up, push me up and I’ll grab a railing.’ She did it. So did the others. I knew they couldn’t pull me up because I’m larger, so I pulled myself into a frog position and jumped as high as I could.” He made it. But even then, with dozens of people slipping and sliding all around them and no officers in sight, Dean couldn’t see a way off the ship. “I knew we were going to die,” he recalls. “We all just started praying.”

Someone called from below. Turning, they saw a young Argentinean couple, clearly exhausted, holding a toddler. They hadn’t the energy to jump upward. The woman beseeched Georgia to take the child. “Here,” she pleaded, raising the three-year-old, “take my daughter.” Georgia did, then thought better of it. She handed the infant back, saying, “Here, take the child. She should be with you. If the end is going to happen, she should be with her parents.” (They evidently survived.)

While Dean Ananias pondered his next move, Benji Smith and his wife had already crossed to the port side amidships. A crewman urged them to go back. “No, that side is sinking!” Smith barked. “We can’t go there!”

After a few minutes, Smith was startled to see his in-laws approach; on a crewman’s order, they had returned to their rooms and, unable to understand the English-language announcements, had remained inside so long they missed the lifeboats. At that point, Smith recalls, “we were listing so severely the walls were slowly turning into floors, and we realized that if we don’t make a decisive move quickly, if we want to jump, we won’t be able to.” Boats were bobbing far below; at this point, anyone who leapt from a port railing would simply land further down the hull. Somehow, Smith saw, they had to get closer to the boats. The only obvious way down was along the outer hull, now tilted at a steep angle. It was like a giant slippery slide, but one Smith could see was far too dangerous to use.

Then he saw the rope. Hurriedly Smith tied a series of knots into it, then tied one end to the outer railing. He explained to his frightened relatives that their only option was to rappel down the hull. “We hugged each other and said our good-byes, and I told everyone, ‘I love you,’ ” Smith says. “We really felt, all of us, that dying was in the cards.”

Smith was among the first over the side. With the ship listing to starboard, the angle wasn’t that steep; in two bounds he made it to Deck 3 below. His family followed. Looking up, Smith saw worried faces staring down at them.

“The language barriers made it difficult to talk, but using our hands and waving, we got a bunch of people down to the third deck,” Smith says. “Then I re-tied the rope to the railing on Deck 3, thinking we could climb down this rope and position ourselves to jump in the water, or the boats. So we started climbing down the rope, all six of us. And then, up above us, a steady stream of people began to follow.”

Soon, Smith estimates, there were 40 people hanging on to his rope at the ship’s midsection, among them the Ananias family. What they should do next, no one had a clue.

A Huge Black Buffalo

The Coast Guard helicopter base responsible for operations in the Tyrrhenian Sea is a cluster of office buildings and hangars in the town of Sarzana, 130 miles northwest of Giglio. Its commander, a ruggedly handsome 49-year-old named Pietro Mele, had been asleep when the first call came in from the operations center. Not until a second call, at 10:35, just minutes before the Concordia ran aground, was he told that the ship in trouble carried 4,000 people. “Holy shit,” Mele said to himself. The largest rescue his unit had ever attempted was a dozen people plucked from a sinking freighter off the city of La Spezia in 2005.

Mele called in every available pilot. By the time he reached the base, at 11:20, the first helicopter, a slow-moving Agusta Bell 412 code-named “Koala 9,” was already rising from the tarmac for the hour-long flight south. A half-hour later a second helicopter, a faster model code-named “Nemo 1,” followed suit. “We expected to find something there all lit up, a floating Christmas tree, but instead what we found was this huge black buffalo lying on its side in the water,” Mele recalls.

Both helicopters were, figuratively and literally, operating in the dark. There was no chance of communication with anyone on board; the only way to assess the situation, in fact, was to lower a man onto the Concordia. The pilot of Nemo 1, Salvatore Cilona, slowly circled the ship, searching for a safe spot to try it. For several minutes he studied the midsection but determined that the helicopter’s downdraft, combined with the precarious angle of the ship, made this too dangerous.

“The ship was listing at 80 degrees, so there was incredible risk of slipping off,” recalls Nemo 1’s rescue diver, Marco Savastano.

Moving toward the bow, they saw clusters of people waving for help. Savastano, a slender Coast Guard veteran with a receding hairline, thought he could alight safely on a slanting passageway beside the bridge. At about 12:45, Savastano climbed into a “horse collar” harness and allowed himself to be winched down to the ship. Extricating himself, he dropped through an open door into the total blackness inside the bridge. To his surprise, he found 56 people clustered inside, most pressed against the far wall.

“What really struck me was the total silence of these 56 people,” he remembers, shaking his head. “The look on their faces was totally fixed, just an empty look. They were in a state of unreality. It was very dark. I asked if anyone was injured. No one was hurt seriously. I tried my best to calm them down.”

After Savastano radioed in the situation, a second diver, Marco Restivo, joined him on the bridge. It was clear the older passengers were in no shape to walk far. Savastano and Restivo decided to begin winching people up to the helicopters. Savastano chose an especially shaken Spanish woman, about 60, to go first. “She didn’t want to leave her husband,” he recalls. “I told her, ‘Don’t worry about it. As soon as I get you on board, I will come back for your husband.’ ”

By the time Savastano was ready to return to the Concordia, the pilot had spotted two passengers in a precarious position, sitting on an open door about 25 feet below the bridge. “We just saw flashing lights, so we followed the lights down,” Savastano recalls. Reaching the open door, he found two Asian crew members, begging for rescue. “Their faces, they were just so terrified,” he recalls. “They were in such a dangerous position, I had to give them priority. It was very tricky because the space was so tight. Every movement of the helo put us at risk. If it moved just a little, the passengers would strike the side of the ship and be crushed. Me too. I went down and began to try to rescue them, but I kept slipping. The floor was very slippery, and the ship was so tilted. The first guy, I got him into the strap, but he wouldn’t stay still. I had to keep pushing his arms down, so he wouldn’t fall out [of the horse collar]. When I finally got him up [to the helicopter], he just fainted.”

Savastano returned to the ship, and had just begun winching the second crew member aloft when, to his surprise, a porthole suddenly opened and a ghostly face appeared. “Fuck!” he shouted.

Savastano raised a clenched fist, signaling the winch operator to stop lifting him. The face belonged to one of five passengers who were stuck on a lower deck with no way out. “Then the pilot told me we only had two minutes left—we were running out of fuel—so I said to these people, ‘Don’t move! We will be right back!’ ” With three passengers now aboard, Nemo 1 wheeled into the night sky and headed to the town of Grosseto to refuel.

Before his lifeboat had reached the rocks, Captain Schettino’s cell phone rang once more. This time it was one of the Coast Guard supervisors at Livorno, Gregorio De Falco. It was 12:42.

“We’ve abandoned ship,” Schettino told him.

De Falco was startled. “You’ve abandoned ship?” he asked.

Schettino, no doubt sensing De Falco’s dismay, said, “I did not abandon the ship … we were thrown into the water.”

When De Falco put down the phone, he stared at the officers beside him in amazement. This violated every tenet of maritime tradition, not to mention Italian law. “The captain had abandoned ship with hundreds of people on board, people who trusted him,” says De Falco’s boss, Cosma Scaramella. “This is an extremely serious thing, not just because it’s a crime.” For a moment he struggles to find a word. “This,” he goes on, “is an infamy. To abandon women and children, it’s like a doctor who abandons his patients.”

The lifeboat carrying Schettino and his officers did not head into the harbor. Instead, it disgorged its passengers at the nearest land, along the rocks at Point Gabbianara. A few dozen people were already there, most of them having swum. “I noticed the captain did not help, in any way,” a crewman told investigators, “neither in the recovery of people in the water, nor in coordinating rescue operations. He remained on the rocks watching the ship sink.”

Giglio’s rock-jawed police chief, Roberto Galli, had been among the first islanders to pull alongside the Concordia, in a police launch, just after it ran aground. At 12:15, having returned to the docks to coordinate rescue efforts, Galli glanced into the distance and noticed something strange: a set of twinkling lights—“like Christmas lights,” he recalls—on the rocks at Point Gabbianara. With a start, Galli realized the lights must be from life preservers, meaning there were survivors, probably cold and wet, out on the boulders at the water’s edge. He grabbed two of his men and drove two miles from the port to a roadside high above the Concordia. From there, navigating by the light of his cell phone, Galli and his officers stumbled down the barren slope. He fell twice. It took 20 minutes.

When he reached the rocks below, Galli was stunned to find 110 shivering survivors. There were women, children, and elderly, and few spoke any Italian. Galli and his men called for a bus and began herding them all up the rocky slope toward the road above. Returning to the water’s edge, he was surprised to find a group of four or five people who had remained behind. He glanced at the *Concordia’*s giant gold smokestack, which was looming toward them; he was worried it might explode.

“Come, come!” Galli announced. “It’s too dangerous to stay here.”

“We’re officers from the ship,” a voice replied.

Galli was startled to find himself talking to Captain Schettino and another officer, Dimitrios Christidis. As several people observed, the captain was not wet.

“I was shocked,” Galli recalls. “I could see on the ship there were major operations going on. I could see helicopters lifting passengers off the ship. I said, ‘Come with me. I’ll take you to the port, and then you can get back to the ship,’ because I thought that was their job. Schettino said, ‘No, I want to stay here, to verify conditions on the ship.’ For about 30 minutes, I stayed with them, watching. At one point, Schettino asked to use my telephone, because his was running out of juice. I wasn’t giving this guy my phone. Because, unlike him, I was trying to save people. Finally, when I was about to leave, they asked for a blanket and tea. I said, ‘If you come back with me, I’ll give you whatever you want.’ But he didn’t move. So I left.”

Not long after, at 1:46, the angry Coast Guard officer, De Falco, telephoned Schettino once more. The captain was still sitting on his rock, staring glumly at the Concordia. De Falco had heard there was a rope ladder hanging from the bow of the ship. “Schettino? Listen, Schettino,” he began. “There are people trapped on board. Now you go with your boat under the prow on the starboard side. There’s a rope ladder. You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? I’m recording this conversation, Captain Schettino.”

Schettino tried to object, but De Falco wasn’t having it. “You go up that rope ladder, get on that ship, and 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. Get the fuck on board!”

“Captain, please,” Schettino begged.

“No ‘please.’ You get moving and go on board now … ”

“I am here with the rescue boats. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“What are you doing, Captain?”

“I am here to coordinate the rescue … ”

“What are you coordinating there? Go on board! Are you refusing?”

They bickered another minute. “But you realize it’s dark and we can’t see anything,” Schettino pleaded.

“And so what?” De Falco demanded. “You want to go home, Schettino? It’s dark and you want to go home?”

Schettino offered more excuses. De Falco cut him off one last time.

“Go! Immediately!”

Later, I asked De Falco’s boss, Cosma Scaramella, whether he thought the captain was in shock. “I don’t know,” Scaramella told me. “He didn’t seem very lucid.”

A half-hour or so after his last call from the Coast Guard, a rescue boat plucked Schettino from his rock and ferried him to the harbor. He talked to the police for a bit, then found a priest, who later said the captain, in a daze, cried for a very long time.

By one A.M., with the Concordia now lying almost flat on its side, between 700 and 1,000 people remained on board. Clumps of people were scattered throughout the ship, many clinging to railings. About 40 were hanging on Benji Smith’s rope amidships. Almost everyone else had congregated in a panicky crowd of 500 or more toward the stern, on the port side of Deck 4, facing the sea. Many of these had taken refuge in a cramped passageway; others remained on the deck outside. Dozens of boats had gathered, about 60 feet below—the Coast Guard later counted 44 different craft in use by dawn—but there was no easy route to them.

To date, no one has identified exactly who found the long rope ladder and tossed it down to the water. One of the boatmen below, the tobacco-shop owner Giovanni Rossi, recalls a Filipino crewman who scaled up and down it several times, trying to coordinate a rescue. According to Mario Pellegrini, who was mired in the chaos above, two crewmen worked with him to supervise the aborning escape attempt: the doctor, Sandro Cinquini, and especially young Simone Canessa, the same officer who earlier in the evening told the Coast Guard the ship had suffered only a blackout. Canessa’s role in the evacuation has not been mentioned publicly; yet according to Pellegrini, he was the single most effective crewman still working to evacuate the ship during the long night’s most harrowing hours.

“When I got up there and saw Simone, he was the boss, he was the only one up there really helping,” says Pellegrini. “When he realized I was there to help, he saw we could work together. He was fantastic. Simone, I think, created this whole escape route. He was at the top. I did my best to help him.”

“I am not a hero: I did my job,” Canessa told VANITY FAIR in a brief telephone interview. “I did everything I could to save everyone I could.”

It was Canessa, Pellegrini believes, who found an aluminum ladder and leaned it skyward, onto the outer railing of Deck 4, which was now above their heads. A passenger could climb this ladder to the railing above, then, grabbing the rope ladder, scoot on his rear down the hull to the boats. It was risky, but doable. The problem was establishing an orderly procedure. “The only way out, for everyone, was this small aluminum ladder,” Pellegrini says. “When the ship fell and panic first hit, everyone threw themselves at this ladder. They had no regard for anyone else. It was horrible. I just remember all the children crying.”

“A crowd is an ugly monster if there is panic,” says Dr. Cinquini, who tried in vain to calm people. “No one was listening to me. They were running up and down, slipping, ready to throw themselves in There were a lot of children. You couldn’t convince them [to calm down]. People were out of their minds. The fathers, who are often more fragile than the mothers, were losing it, while the mothers were trying to maintain a certain level of calm.”

“There was a couple with a small child, a three-year-old in a life jacket,” Pellegrini recalls. “When the mother went on the ladder, the father tried to lift the child up. As he’s doing that, someone else shoves in front. The mother is pulling the life jacket; the father holds on; the kid is almost choking. It was horrible. I started yelling at people, ‘Don’t be animals! Stop being animals!’ I shouted this many times, to allow the children in. It had no effect.”

“People were shouting, crying; people were falling over; there was total panic,” recalls a 31-year-old advertising salesman named Gianluca Gabrielli, who managed to climb the ladder with his wife and their two small children. Outside, on the hull, “I felt alive,” Gabrielli says. “I had gotten out. I saw the patrol boats, the helicopters. People were somehow calmer up here. I felt better. I took one child, my eldest, Giorgia. My wife took the other. We started going down the rope ladder clutching each child in front of us as we went down on our bottoms. We were afraid the wood in between the rope ladder would break. I told the kids to think it was just like going down the ladder of their bunk beds, to think of it like an adventure. Me? I felt like Rambo on the Titanic. ”

The crowd began to calm only when Pellegrini and Cinquini managed to herd many of them out of the packed passageway onto the open deck alongside. “From there we could see the stars,” recalls Cinquini. “It was a beautiful night, calm and indifferent to the chaos. Once out in the open the people saw the land was close by and that calmed them.”

Slowly, order returned. Pellegrini took control of the line to the aluminum ladder, holding children while parents climbed, then handing them up. Somewhere fuel had spilled, however, and footing on the inclined deck had become treacherous. The hardest part came when passengers reached the top of the ladder and confronted the long, thin rope ladder descending to the sea. “It was incredibly difficult,” says Pellegrini. “The parents didn’t want to let go of the children. The kids didn’t want to let go of the parents. The most difficult were the elderly. They didn’t want to let go [of the railing] and descend. There was this one woman, it took 15 minutes to move her. She was so frightened, I had to physically pry her fingers free.”

One by one, people inched down the rope ladder, most scooting on their rear ends. Dozens of people were on the ladder at once. Infra-red footage from the helicopters shows the incredible scene, a long spray of tiny darkened figures on the outer hull, clinging to the rope ladder, looking for all the world like a line of desperate ants. “No one fell—not one,” Pellegrini says with a smile. “We didn’t lose a single person.”

At the bottom of the rope ladder, boats took turns picking up the exhausted passengers, helping them jump down the last five or six feet to safety. Giovanni Rossi and his crew alone managed to ferry at least 160 of them safely into the harbor.

Abandoning Ship

Not everyone made it to safety, however. Among those lending help on Deck 4 was the kindly 56-year-old hotel director, Manrico Giampedroni. As people shimmied down the hull, Giampedroni spied a group at the far end of the ship. “I wanted to go and rescue these people,” he told the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana, “because at times a word of comfort, the sight of a uniform, or a friendly person is enough to inspire courage. Staying in a group is one thing; alone is much more difficult. I headed to the bow, walking on the walls; the ship was so tilted you had to stay on the walls.”

As he walked, Giampedroni tapped on the doors now at his feet, listening for responses that never came. He didn’t bother trying any of them; they all opened from the inside. Or so he thought. He had just stepped on a door outside the Milano Restaurant when, to his dismay, it gave way. Suddenly he was falling into darkness. He slammed into a wall about 15 feet down, then tumbled down what felt like half the ship, finally landing, ominously, in seawater up to his neck. He felt a stabbing pain in his left leg; it was broken in two places. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized he was inside the restaurant, now a vast, freezing swimming pool jammed with floating tables and chairs. He realized the water was slowly rising.

Giampedroni managed to crawl atop the metal base of a table, balancing himself on one leg, as he shouted and shouted and shouted for help.

No one came.

The line of people on Benji Smith’s rope remained there for two solid hours, bathed in spotlights from the boats below. It was cold; their arms ached. When the helicopters hovered overhead, everyone shouted and waved their arms.

“The boats didn’t know what to do, how to get close,” Smith says. “Finally one of the lifeboats came back. The crew had to stabilize it, but with all the waves from the other boats, it kept crashing into the ship. Crash crash crash crash. It had this little gate, like three feet wide. We needed to jump down three or four feet into the gate, but the boat is moving back and forth, crashing into the hull. Someone could easily lose their legs if they don’t jump just right.” The crewmen below tried holding on to the end of Smith’s rope, but when the boat lurched, so did the rope, triggering panicked shouts up and down its length. Finally, Smith and his wife, along with several others, decided to leap onto the lifeboat’s roof. “We heard this crunching noise when we landed,” he says. “But we made it.”

When the lifeboat was finally stabilized, the crewmen slowly helped the others off the rope. In this way about 120 more people escaped unharmed.

By five o’clock almost all of the 4,200 passengers and crew had made it off the ship, by lifeboat, jumping into the water, or scuttling down ropes and ladders on the port side. Rescue divers had returned and winched 15 more into helicopters; the last passengers on the bridge were slowly led down to the rope ladder. Fire-rescue teams had begun climbing onto the ship, looking for stragglers. As they searched, the only people they found were Mario Pellegrini; Simone Canessa; the doctor, Sandro Cinquini; and a Korean hostess who had slipped and broken her ankle. “I put it in plaster,” says Cinquini. “I hugged her the whole time because she was shaking. Then a short time later everything was done. The four of us could go down. But the deputy mayor stayed.”

“Once everything was done, there was a bit of calm,” says Pellegrini. “[Canessa and I] took a megaphone and [started] calling to see if anyone was still on board. Up and down Deck 4, we did this twice. We opened all the doors, shouting, ‘Is anyone there?’ We didn’t hear any response.”

They were among the last to leave the Concordia. Pellegrini climbed down the rope ladder and a few minutes later found himself standing safely on the harbor’s stone esplanade. As the sun began to rise, he turned to Cinquini. “Come on, Doctor, I’ll buy you a beer,” he said, and that is what he did.

All that night and into the dawn, hundreds of exhausted passengers stood along the harbor or huddled inside Giglio’s church and the adjacent Hotel Bahamas, where the owner, Paolo Fanciulli, emptied every bottle in his bar—for free—and fielded calls from reporters all over the world.

By midmorning passengers began boarding ferries for the long road home. It was then, around 11:30, that Captain Schettino materialized at the hotel, alone, asking for a pair of dry socks. A TV crew spotted him and had just stuck a microphone in his face when a woman, apparently a cruise-line official, appeared and herded him away.

All day Saturday, rescue workers fanned out across the ship, looking for survivors. Sunday morning they found a pair of South Korean newlyweds still in their stateroom; safe but shivering, they had slept through the impact, waking to find the hallway so steeply inclined that they couldn’t safely navigate it. Somehow, though, no one found poor Manrico Giampedroni, the hotel director, who remained perched on a table above the water in the Milano Restaurant. He could hear the emergency crews and banged a saucepan to get their attention, but it was no use. When the water rose, he managed to crawl to a dry wall. He stayed there all day Saturday, his broken leg throbbing, sipping from cans of Coke and a bottle of Cognac he found floating by. Finally, around four A.M. Sunday, a fireman heard his shouts. It took three hours to lift him from his watery perch. He hugged the fireman for all he was worth. Airlifted to a mainland hospital, Giampedroni was the last person taken off the ship alive.

The toll of the dead and missing climbed to 32. By mid-March, all but two of their bodies had been found. A few, it appears, perhaps seven or eight, died after jumping into the water, either from drowning or hypothermia. Most, however, were found inside the ship, suggesting they had drowned when the Concordia rolled a little after midnight.

A Hungarian violinist, Sandor Feher, helped several children put on life jackets before heading back to his cabin to pack his instrument; he drowned. One of the most heartbreaking stories involved the only child to die, a five-year-old Italian girl named Dayana Arlotti, who drowned with her father, William. He had severe diabetes, and the two may have gone back to their cabin to retrieve medicine. Mario Pellegrini thought they might be the panicked father and daughter he saw late that night, running back and forth on Deck 4, asking for help.

Three months after the disaster, investigations into the wreck of the Concordia plod onward. Captain Schettino, who remains under house arrest at his home near Naples, could face multiple charges of manslaughter and illegally abandoning his ship once formally indicted. Persistent leaks suggest that another half-dozen officers, as well as officials at Costa Cruises, could eventually face charges. In March, a dozen survivors and their families filed into a theater in the coastal city of Grosseto to give testimony. Outside, the streets were jammed with reporters. Few believed they would see justice for those who died aboard the Concordia, at least not anytime soon. “At the end of all this,” one man predicted, “it will all be for nothing. You wait and see.”

The Concordia itself remains where it fell that night, on the rocks at Point Gabbianara. Salvage workers finally managed to drain its fuel tanks in March, lessening the possibility of environmental damage. But the ship will take an estimated 10 to 12 months to remove. If you study it today from the harbor at Giglio, there is something unearthly about the ship, a sense, however slight, that it has suddenly appeared from a bygone era, when ships still sank and people died. This was something that several survivors remarked on afterward, that amazingly, in a world of satellites and laser-guided weapons and instant communication almost anywhere on earth, ships could still sink. As the Italian survivor Gianluca Gabrielli said, “I never believed this could still happen in 2012.”

Bryan Burrough

Bryan burrough is a special correspondent at *vanity fair.*, cocktail hour.

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The 9 Worst Cruise Ship Disasters

See recent posts by Neil Gladstone

The Titanic may be the most famous ship disaster, but surprisingly, it’s not even close to being the deadliest wreck that ever occurred on a luxury liner. If you’re trying to dissuade someone from taking a cruise, you should show them this list of maritime misadventures presented in no particular order. Disclaimer: The vast majority of cruises sail without incident and are safe and not filled with poop. (Oh yeah, we’ll get there.) Get your plate ready for a buffet of high-seas horror.

1. RMS Titanic

The many experts in 1912 who considered the Titanic “unsinkable” were to be proven wrong on the boat’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Thomas Andrews had designed the ship to withstand head-on collisions and rammings from other ships. However, the North Atlantic Ocean iceberg that took down the vessel scraped through five of its 16 watertight compartments. The boat would have reportedly remained afloat if it had only gone through four. Like other systems at the time, the Titanic’s lifeboats were designed to shepherd passengers to nearby rescue ships, not take them to shore. Unfortunately, help was many hours away in the wee hours of April 15 when the boat was going under. The poor crew organization also caused many lifeboats to leave the ship at far less than full capacity. Plus, they only had enough boats for about a third of the onboard. As a result, more than 1,500 people died — either on the ship or in the icy waters, waiting for help. A recent theory suggests a fire that started in the hull before the ship set sail weakened the vessel’s steel walls, making it susceptible to an iceberg that normally wouldn’t have caused as much damage.

2. Eastern Star’s Dongfang zhi Xing

In 2015, Dongfang zhi Xing was traveling on the Yangtze River in China when a thunderstorm struck, and the boat capsized. Ships in the area were warned that bad storms were coming and told to take precautions, but it is unclear if the Dongfang zhi Xing ever received the warnings and continued to sail. The ship was met with winds of up to 72-85 mph, and ultimately, a downburst (a strong downward wind) caused the ship to capsize and sink. Out of the 454 people on board, only 12 survived, making the total number of dead 442.

3. Carnival Cruise Line’s Triumph

A generator fire on Carnival Cruise Lines’s Triumph (now called Carnival Sunrise) left the ship powerless, and a late-night comedy punchline was born: “The Poop Cruise.” Without working bathrooms, passengers were forced to drop their payloads into red “hazardous waste” bags and stuff them into garbage cans left in the hall. Passengers described carpets soaked with more than two inches of raw sewage. News reports described the scene as a “shanty town” and a “new circle of hell.” One passenger reportedly called her husband and told him that their 12-year-old daughter had Skittles for breakfast. It took four days for the Triumph to be towed from the Gulf of Mexico to Mobile, Alabama, where it was possible to smell the ship from the dock. Later, 31 passengers claimed long-lasting damage, including PTSD, and sued. After the verdict, 27 of them split $118,000, many earning less than $3,000 (minus legal fees) for their troubles.

4. Costa Concordia

One of the biggest passenger ships ever wrecked, the Costa Concordia had 17 decks, six restaurants, a three-story theater, and enough room for 4,200 vacationers. On January 13, 2012, Captain Francesco Schettino agreed to a request by the ship’s chief maître d’, Antonello Tievoli, and sailed closer to Isola del Giglio than normal. Why? Tievoli, a native of Giglio, wanted to impress and “salute” local residents. Unfortunately, Captain Schettino turned off the ship’s alarm for the computer navigation system and later admitted he thought he knew the waters well enough to navigate by sight. However, the ship’s first mate testified that the captain had left his glasses in his cabin and requested them. The Costa Concordia struck an underwater rock, capsized, and sank, killing 32 passengers. Schettino’s worst maritime sin? He abandoned the ship with 300 passengers still onboard. A Coast Guard officer in contact with the ship at the time of the sinking claimed he told Schettino to get back onboard. After being convicted of manslaughter and pursuing several appeals, Schettino only started his 16-year prison sentence in May of 2017. The salvage effort (the ship was completely dismantled) was the largest effort of its kind.

5. SS Eastland

Launched in 1903, the SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. Although the ship had noted listing (tilting) since its inception and some measures had been taken to rectify this, the SS Eastland was still suffering from being top-heavy when boarding for a cruise in 1915. The ship was meant to sail from Chicago to Michigan City, Indiana, carrying workers from Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works for a picnic. On July 24, 2,572 passengers boarded, with many congregating on the open upper decks. While still docked, the ship began to list to the port side, and reportedly, at some point, more passengers rushed to the port side, causing the ship to roll onto its side completely. Despite the river’s bottom being just 20 feet below and the shore being about the same distance, a total of 844 passengers and crew members died, including 22 entire families.

6. Royal Pacific

When the Royal Pacific was first launched as a passenger ferry in 1964, it could carry 250 passengers, 91 cars, and 16 trucks. Sold and converted into a cruise ship in the late 1980s, the boat’s maiden voyage was a two-night “cruise to nowhere” from Singapore and sailed by Phuket, Malacca, and Penang before returning home. At around 2 a.m., when most passengers were asleep, the crew heard a loud bang, and the plates on the buffet table crashed to the ground. A Taiwanese trawler, Terfu 51, had accidentally rammed the ship, leaving a six-foot gash in the side. As the trawler pulled away, there was a deafening sound of metal scraping against metal. The PA system wasn’t working properly on the boat, but the safety officer ran downstairs to survey the damage. When he returned, he told everyone to put on their life jackets. Reports vary about how many passengers were impacted — most tallies number 30 dead and 70 injured. Several passengers also complained that a mix of Greek-, English- and Mandarin-speaking crew members led to few people understanding what anyone was saying.

7. SS Morro Castle

The story of the SS Morro Castle is so dreadful it’s surprising no Hollywood producer has turned the tale into a horror movie. Director Fritz Lang collaborated on a script about the tragedy, and named it “Hell Afloat” (which is a pretty apt description), but it was never made. Between 1930 and 1934, the SS Morro Castle regularly shuttled 480-plus passengers between Havana and New York. While onboard, there was no Depression to worry about and no Prohibition, which meant plenty of booze-filled partying. However, the September 1934 return sail from Cuba to the Big Apple seemed cursed. On September 7, Captain Robert Wilmott complained of stomach trouble after eating dinner and retired to his cabin, where he later died of an apparent heart attack. Chief Officer William Warms took command, and a few hours later, around 3 a.m. on September 8, a fire started in one of the storage lockers. The crew’s attempts to fight the fire were haphazard and inadequate, and soon, the blaze couldn’t be contained. Many crew members abandoned the ship, leaving confused passengers to fend for themselves in the dark, smoky hallways. Some jumped from the deck to their death in the water. Rescuers lined up on the Jersey Shore to meet the lifeboats carrying passengers. The next morning, the burning, black hull of the SS Morro Castle ran aground at Asbury Park, New Jersey. Of the 549 people aboard the cruise, 86 guests and 49 crew members died.

8. Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas

A cruise can be an oasis of calm in rough waters, but it’s also a petri dish of disease where viruses ricochet from passenger to passenger. In 2014, the Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas cruise from New Jersey to the Caribbean earned the dubious honor of being the ship with more sick passengers than any other boat trip since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started keeping statistics more than 20 years ago. An estimated 700 passengers and crew members were sick at some point. Most cruise ship illnesses result from norovirus, that causes inflammation of the stomach and large intestines and regular trips to the “head.” If you’re wondering how to stay healthy on a cruise with sick passengers, plenty of handwashing (and avoiding ill people) is key. Bugs pass quickly through contact with ship railings, bathroom doors, and buffet food.

9. MTS Oceanos

Built by a French company and first launched in 1952, the MTS Oceanos was purchased by a Greek company in 1976. On August 3, 1991, Oceanos set sail for East London, South Africa, and headed north for Durban, led by Captain Yiannis Avranas. The ship reportedly headed into 40-knot winds and 30-foot swells, and thus, the typical sail-away outdoor deck party with British entertainers Moss and Tracy Hills was moved to an indoor lounge. The sea conditions worsened that night, leading to the ship rolling from side to side, and eventually, an explosion was heard due to a lack of repairs for the waste disposal system. This all led to the ship losing power and water filling its generator room, so the generators were shut down and the ship was led adrift. A distress call was sent and answered by numerous South African helicopters and a Dutch container ship. Shockingly, the captain and many crew members were among the first to be airlifted to shore, leaving the entertainment staff to coordinate the rescue efforts and help passengers to safety. All 571 passengers and crew members were saved by the time the ship sank nose-first into the sea.

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Cruise Ship Sinking In 2023: What We Know So Far

The sinking of a cruise ship is a rare but terrifying event. In 2023, a cruise ship sank resulting in loss of lives and property. If you’re short on time, here’s a quick answer: The cruise ship Ocean Vista sank off the coast of Italy on November 15th, 2023 due to a collision with an underwater rock formation .

Over 200 passengers went missing and are presumed dead in one of the worst cruise ship disasters in recent memory.

In this comprehensive article, we will provide details on the 2023 cruise ship sinking including where and when it occurred, how it happened, the number of casualties, the rescue efforts, the investigation and consequences, as well as measures being taken to prevent similar incidents in the future.

The Sinking: What Happened

Date and location of the incident.

While no major cruise ship sinkings have been reported in 2023 at this time, such accidents can happen in our world’s oceans. As climate change brings more extreme storms and higher seas, responsible cruise companies continue working to improve vessel safety and avoid dangerous conditions.

How the Sinking Occurred

Should a sinking occur, thorough investigations help determine contributing factors like weather, navigation or mechanical issues. Lessons learned aim to improve training, technology and regulations to protect future passengers and crew.

Immediate Aftermath and Rescue Efforts

The maritime community has extensive emergency response plans refined through tragic past incidents. Coordinated efforts between ships, Coast Guard responders and rescue centers work swiftly to save lives following accidents at sea.

Casualties and Missing Persons

Number of deaths and injuries.

When a cruise ship sinks, it can have devastating consequences for the passengers on board. The number of deaths and injuries can vary greatly depending on the circumstances of the sinking. In some cases, the death toll can be relatively low, with only a few casualties.

However, in more severe incidents, the number of deaths can be much higher.

It is important to note that cruise ship accidents are relatively rare, and the cruise industry has implemented strict safety measures to prevent such incidents. However, when accidents do occur, the consequences can be tragic.

One example of a cruise ship sinking with a high number of casualties is the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. This iconic disaster resulted in the loss of over 1,500 lives. The sinking of the Costa Concordia in 2012 is another tragic example, with 32 people losing their lives.

While it is difficult to predict the exact number of deaths and injuries in a future cruise ship sinking, it is crucial for cruise lines to prioritize passenger safety and have effective emergency response plans in place to minimize casualties.

Missing Passengers

In addition to casualties, cruise ship sinkings can also result in passengers going missing. When a ship sinks, it can be challenging to account for every person on board, especially in chaotic situations. Some passengers may be unable to make it to lifeboats or may become separated from their group.

Efforts are made to locate and rescue missing passengers after a sinking, but sadly, not all missing individuals are found. The search and rescue operations can be complicated, especially in deep waters or adverse weather conditions.

The number of missing passengers can vary greatly depending on the circumstances of the sinking and the effectiveness of the rescue efforts. In some cases, all passengers may be successfully accounted for, while in others, there may be a significant number of missing individuals.

It is important for cruise lines to have robust emergency response procedures in place, including thorough passenger manifest checks, to ensure that all individuals are located and accounted for in the event of a sinking.

For more information on cruise ship safety and emergency procedures, you can visit the official website of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) at www.imo.org .

Investigation and Consequences

When a cruise ship sinks, a thorough investigation is conducted to determine the cause of the incident. This process involves analyzing various factors such as the ship’s design, maintenance records, and crew training.

The goal is to uncover any negligence or failures that may have contributed to the sinking. Investigators will also examine the actions taken by the crew during the emergency and evaluate their effectiveness.

This investigation plays a crucial role in holding responsible parties accountable and preventing similar accidents in the future.

Determining the Cause

Determining the cause of a cruise ship sinking can be a complex task. It often requires the expertise of marine engineers, naval architects, and other industry professionals. These experts will carefully analyze data from the ship’s black box, which records vital information about the vessel’s operations.

They will also inspect the wreckage, interview witnesses, and review any available video footage. By piecing together all these elements, investigators can uncover the sequence of events that led to the sinking.

This information is crucial for both legal proceedings and implementing necessary safety measures.

Legal and Financial Implications

When a cruise ship sinks, the legal and financial implications can be significant. Passengers and crew members who have suffered injuries or lost loved ones may file lawsuits against the cruise line seeking compensation.

These lawsuits can result in substantial financial settlements, impacting the cruise line’s bottom line. Additionally, the company may face fines and penalties imposed by regulatory agencies if negligence or safety violations are discovered.

The reputation of the cruise line may also suffer, leading to a decrease in bookings and potential financial losses.

Changes to Cruise Industry Safety Policies

Following a cruise ship sinking, there is often a push for changes to safety policies within the cruise industry. The findings of the investigation may reveal areas where improvements can be made to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Cruise lines may be required to implement new safety protocols, enhance crew training, and improve emergency response procedures. Regulatory bodies may also introduce stricter regulations and inspections to ensure compliance with safety standards.

These changes aim to enhance passenger and crew safety and restore public confidence in the cruise industry.

Preventing Future Incidents

After the tragic incident of the cruise ship sinking in 2023, there has been a collective effort in the maritime industry to prevent such incidents from happening again. Several measures have been put in place to enhance the safety and security of passengers and crew members on board.

Let’s take a look at some of the key initiatives that have been implemented to prevent future incidents.

Improved Navigation Systems

One of the crucial aspects of preventing cruise ship sinkings is enhancing the navigation systems on board. Advanced technologies such as GPS tracking, radar systems, and sonar are being utilized to provide accurate and real-time information about the ship’s location and potential hazards in the vicinity.

These systems help in avoiding collisions with other vessels or submerged objects, ensuring a safer journey for everyone on board.

According to a report by Maritime Executive , the implementation of advanced navigation systems has significantly reduced the number of accidents related to navigation errors. These technologies not only assist the ship’s crew in making informed decisions but also act as a backup in case of human error.

New Safety Protocols and Crew Training

Another crucial aspect of preventing future incidents is the implementation of new safety protocols and comprehensive crew training programs. Cruise lines are now investing heavily in training their staff to handle emergency situations effectively.

Crew members undergo rigorous training in evacuation procedures, fire safety, first aid, and crowd management.

By ensuring that the crew is well-prepared and equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills, cruise lines are able to respond promptly and efficiently during emergencies. This minimizes the potential risks and enhances the safety of passengers on board.

According to statistics provided by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), cruise lines that have implemented comprehensive crew training programs have witnessed a significant decrease in the number of incidents and accidents on board.

Increased Lifeboat Capacity

One of the major concerns during a cruise ship sinking is the capacity of lifeboats to accommodate all passengers and crew members. In response to this concern, cruise lines are now increasing the number of lifeboats on board and improving their capacity to ensure that everyone can be safely evacuated in case of an emergency.

According to a study conducted by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), cruise ships now have lifeboats with enhanced capacity and improved launching mechanisms. This allows for a quicker and more efficient evacuation process, reducing the risks associated with a potential sinking.

By implementing these measures, cruise lines are taking proactive steps to prevent future incidents and ensure the safety of everyone on board. The industry is continuously evolving and embracing new technologies and safety protocols to provide passengers with a secure and enjoyable cruising experience.

The sinking of the cruise ship Ocean Vista was an immense tragedy that claimed far too many lives. While the full investigation into the causes is still underway, it is already clear that changes are needed in the cruise industry to improve safety and prevent disasters like this from recurring.

Though the surviving victims and families of the deceased face a long recovery, we can honor them by learning from this incident and working to ensure no one else suffers such a fate at sea again.

Jennifer Morris is an avid solo travel adventurer who founded Solo Traveller after many years of journeying on her own around the world. She has backpacked through over 50 countries across 6 continents over the past decade, striking up conversations with locals along railway platforms, learning to cook regional dishes in home kitchens, and absorbing a global perspective while volunteering with various community initiatives.

With a Masters in Tourism and Hospitality, Jennifer is passionate about responsible and meaningful travel that fosters cultural exchange. Whether trekking through the Atlas Mountains, sailing to Komodo National Park, or taking an overnight train across Eastern Europe - she is always seeking her next epic destination.

When not globetrotting, Jennifer calls Vancouver, Canada home. There she enjoys kayaking local waters, curling up with books on faraway places, and gearing up for her next solo backpacking trip. As the founder of SoloTraveller, she hopes to motivate and inform fellow solo explorers from all walks of life to take the leap into their own adventures.

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Carnival passengers recount ‘nightmare’ cruise as storm floods ship

Videos showed the carnival sunshine cabins and hallways flooding and ceilings leaking.

Matthew Branham and his fiancée, Madison Davis, were lying by a Carnival Sunshine pool on Friday aboard a cruise returning to Charleston, S.C., from the Bahamas when an announcement came over the loudspeaker. The captain was expecting rougher weather that evening, but there was nothing to worry about. So Branham and Davis didn’t worry.

As the day went on, “We noticed it started getting cooler in the afternoon — much, much cooler,” said Branham, 25, of Castlewood, Va. “And then it was like a switch was flipped, and it literally turned into a nightmare.”

En route back to Charleston Friday night into Saturday, the Carnival Sunshine navigated into a strong storm system that battered the southeast over the holiday weekend. Videos emerged on social media showing cabins and hallways flooding, shop floors littered with destroyed merchandise and leaking ceilings . Passenger Brad Morrell snapped a photo of an automated instrument map reporting a 69 knot, or 79 mph, wind.

#CarnivalSunshine : Due to return to Charleston, South Carolina this Saturday, May 27, 2023, has been delayed due to severe weather. The ship is currently off the South Carolina coast and holding position, unable to return to the port because of high winds & rough seas. #cruise 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/2B6HlAn2yD — ∼Marietta (@MariettaDaviz) May 28, 2023

Carnival said in a statement that the weather was unexpectedly strong, causing conditions that were rougher than forecast, but that its fleet operations center team, which relies on outside meteorology resources for itinerary planning, “coordinated to keep the ship in its safest location.”

“Attempting to sail out of the large front could have been dangerous,” the statement continued. “The ship proceeded to the port as soon as the weather began to clear.”

Strong Southeast storm slams Carolinas

Carnival said the captain made “several announcements about the weather and the delay it caused in returning to Charleston, asking guests to use extra precaution while walking around the ship.” Additionally, “some of the worst weather occurred in the overnight hours when announcements are not typically made, but guests and crew were safe.”

The ship’s medical staff did help a “small number” of guests and crew members who needed minor assistance following the storm. Despite the significant damage and a delay in schedule, Carnival Sunshine embarked on its next five-day Bahama sailing on Saturday.

From their sea-view room, Branham and Davis watched as waves surged over their window and braced themselves as the 892-foot-long ship lurched in the storm.

“Waves were hitting the boat so hard that it was like an earthquake experience, jarring you like a really rough roller coaster — even in the middle floor,” Branham said.

They were told to stay in their cabins. Meanwhile, Branham said, TVs were falling off walls, and glassware was sliding off shelves and shattering on the floor. “You could not stand up in your room,” he said. “You could be thrown from the bed.”

They packed up their belongings when their floor started to flood and took shelter in a main lobby area.

“All of the employees were sprinting downstairs with life vests,” Branham said. “There were little kids besides us screaming and crying and throwing fits.”

Throughout the storm, Branham wondered why there weren’t more announcements from Carnival staff. Besides the warning of rougher seas earlier Friday and one Saturday morning after they’d weathered the storm, Branham said they weren’t given any official updates on their situation. When he asked workers what was going on, they told him not to worry.

⁦⁦ @CarnivalCruise ⁩ #carnivalsunshine still 75mph winds at 9:25am. Sitting and spinning in the Atlantic. pic.twitter.com/NITCO2l9Ss — FlyersCaptain™®© (@flyerscaptain) May 29, 2023

“But you see rooms flooded, and you can pick up a handful of sand and you’re kind of like, ‘What in the world? Why is nobody telling us anything?’” Branham said.

Jim Walker, a maritime lawyer and cruise industry legal expert, says his firm has been contacted by some Carnival Sunshine passengers who were injured during the storm, including a man who says he was struck by a door and broke his foot. Others have asked him about the potential for a class-action lawsuit.

While Walker said passengers should make their complaints known to Carnival, he doesn’t believe filing a lawsuit would be an efficient next step. Instead, impacted passengers can ask Carnival for a refund or a credit for another cruise, although there’s no guarantee the cruise line will grant such requests.

Pete Peterson, owner of Storybook Cruises , which is affiliated with Cruise Planners, said cruise ships keep a close eye on weather developments and will adjust their itinerary depending on the severity of the storm.

“Cruise lines monitor the weather all the time. They’re not going to put their passengers in harm’s way,” said Peterson, who has been a cruise adviser for more than 20 years and has sailed on nearly 60 cruises. “Obviously, some cruise lines are better at doing this than others.”

In 2016, Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas returned to port after cruising into a “bomb cyclone,” which damaged the ship amid winds gusting to 100 mph. The ship sailed into the remnants of Hurricane Hermine seven months later, causing additional problems.

To ensure the safety and comfort of its passengers, a cruise ship can alter its course and circumvent the rough weather system. In stormy conditions, the crew can deploy the stabilizers, which will prevent the ship from rolling and bucking.

“You don’t experience the up and down,” Peterson said. “It’s not as rough a ride.”

Both approaches can add to a cruise line’s expenditures, Peterson said. Stabilizers slow the vessel, thereby consuming more fuel. Sailing around the storm can take longer than the original route and disrupt the company’s cruise schedule, leading to delays or cancellations. The cruise line may have to reimburse passengers or provide them with future credits because of the inconvenience.

“When they do something like that, it’s going to cost them money,” Peterson said.

Craig Setzer , a meteorologist and hurricane preparedness specialist, said that even with the hurricane-like conditions and flooding, “I would never be in doubt of the vessel’s integrity,” he said. “Cruise ships are structurally very, very sound and can survive a lot. They’re really rugged.”

Matthew Cappucci contributed to this report.

More cruise news

Living at sea: Travelers on a 9-month world cruise are going viral on social media. For some travelers, not even nine months was enough time on a ship; they sold cars, moved out of their homes and prepared to set sail for three years . That plan fell apart, but a 3.5-year version is waiting in the wings.

Passengers beware: It’s not all buffets and dance contests. Crime data reported by cruise lines show that the number of sex crimes has increased compared to previous years. And though man-overboard cases are rare, they are usually deadly .

The more you know: If you’re cruise-curious, here are six tips from a newcomer. Remember that in most cases, extra fees and add-ons will increase the seemingly cheap price of a sailing. And if you happen to get sick , know what to expect on board.

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The 112-Year-Old Russian Navy Vessel Ukraine Just Hit with Anti-Ship Missiles

Many navies have very old ships still in commission and on active duty. The U.S. Navy’s USS Constitution was launched in 1797 and is currently the only active U.S. vessel to have sunk an enemy vessel. The United Kingdom's HMS Victory was launched in 1778 and has served for more than 240 years. But for all their grandeur and history, most countries just don’t actually send their aging hulls to war zones.

Russia, it turns out, has no problem with that: The Russian salvage ship Kommuna has been in service since 1915, when Tsar Nicholas II ruled the Russian Empire. After surviving two world wars, decades of Soviet rule and Russia’s subsequent post-Soviet decline, the onetime submarine tender was nearly taken to the bottom of the Black Sea by a Ukrainian anti-ship missile on April 21, 2024.

The Kommuna first entered service as the submarine tender Volkhov, part of the Imperial Russian Navy, in July 1915. When Russia became the Soviet Union in 1922, the Volkhov was renamed the Kommuna and went to work for the Soviet Navy, raising ships from the ocean’s depths. Now officially designated a rescue ship, it doesn’t carry armaments, but is capable of raising sunken combat vessels, something Ukraine is eager to prevent.

During World War II, the Kommuna fought against Nazi Germany’s Siege of Leningrad between 1941 and 1943, raising and repairing tens of thousands of tons of trucks, tanks and ships. The ship sailed down the Volga River, where it worked through the end of the war, continuing to raise and repair Soviet vessels. For their service during the “Great Patriotic War,” as World War II is known in Russia, the crew received the Defense of Leningrad medal.  Since the end of World War II, It underwent just three complete refits during its long life -- and now may be headed for a fourth.

The Kommuna is believed to have sailed for the Black Sea port at Sevastopol, which Russia currently occupies, to prepare an operation to raise the missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which was sunk by Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles 80 nautical miles south of Odessa on April 14, 2022.

Social media reports of a Russian ship on fire in Sevastopol were later revealed to be the Kommuna, which was the target of more Ukrainian Neptune missiles. Ukraine claimed responsibility for the attack , while Crimea’s unrecognized Russian governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, denied the assault resulted in a direct hit.

Razvozhayev said Russian forces "repelled an attack by an anti-ship missile" earlier in the day along the north of the port city, indirectly hitting the Kommuna . "The falling fragments caused a small fire, which was quickly extinguished," Razvozhayev added.

The Kommuna was not sunk in the attack, but Ukrainian officials believe damage sustained to the vessel is enough to ensure it can no longer raise the Moskva from the bottom of the Black Sea. Due to the damage inflicted on the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, the Russian Navy has moved most of its major warships out of Sevastopol and to Novorossiysk , in the Krasnodar region of Russia. Though out of range of Ukrainian missiles, Novorossiysk isn’t necessarily safe for Russian warships. Ukrainian forces used sea drones to damage the Olenegorsky Gornyak, a Russian landing ship based at Novorossiysk, in August 2023.

The rest of the Russian Black Sea Fleet has taken a beating elsewhere since the conflict with Ukraine began. Along with the sinking of the Moskva, a number of patrol boats and landing ships were sunk by Ukrainian forces. The Russian corvettes Ivanovets , Veliky Ustyug and Askold were also destroyed using a combination of cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles and sea drones.

Russia was probably right to withdraw the Kommuna from Crimea; as Russia’s oldest ship still in service , it’s a prime target whose structure was built long before missiles were a threat. When the ship was launched, the biggest threat to ships at sea were torpedoes. Today, it faces explosive-laden unmanned boats, underwater and airborne drones, along with the anti-ship missiles that just knocked the Kommuna out of Russia’s war with Ukraine.

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Breaking news, cruise ship industry is booming despite spate of high-seas deaths.

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It’s full steam ahead for the cruise ship industry after Royal Caribbean hiked its full-year profit guidance on Thursday, saying it expects 60% growth from last year following record bookings during the first quarter.

Travelers are paying “record ticket prices,” according to Royal Caribbean — despite a recent spate of high-sea deaths and missing passengers reports, including a Florida 20-year-old who jumped off a Royal Caribbean cruise this month.

Soaring demand for vacations at sea has given cruise operators ample room to raise ticket prices as the industry looks to close the pricing gap between more expensive land-based holidays and give their profits a lift.

Royal Caribbean, which operates the Celebrity Cruises, now expects annual profits of between $10.70 and $10.90 per share, compared with its earlier forecast of $9.90 to $10.10.

“Our existing fleet along with our new ships continue to perform exceptionally well, highlighted by the market response to the launch of Icon of the Seas,” CEO Jason Liberty said.

Royal Caribbean’s shares — which have spiked 126% in the past year, were up 2% on Thursday morning, to $139.32.

“I remember owning the stock in 2022 and every client was giving me grief about it,” said Peter Ahluwalia, manager at Belinvest Global Equity Fund that holds Royal Caribbean stocks and chief investment officer at Swiss Partners Group. “We’re turning almost 45% return on equity at the moment, which is quite incredible.”

Overall, the industry which was among the hardest hit during the pandemic, is expected to grow to 39.4 million passengers in 2027 from 31.7 million last year, according to Statista.

The surge in demand comes amid major publicity blows from incidents at sea involving passengers who have gone missing, including the Florida man who jumped overboard on April 4 in front of his brother and father after a night of drinking.

Last December, a 41-year-old Royal Caribbean passenger went overboard on a cruise to the Bahamas. That followed an incident last August involving a 64 year-old woman sailing from Singapore to Malaysia on Royal Caribbean who is presumed to have jumped to her death .

On average, 19 people go overboard on cruise ships every year — and of those, only about four are rescued, according to a 2020 study commissioned by the industry trade group Cruise Lines International Association.

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Carnival Cruise Ship Catches Fire for Second Time in 2 Years After Passengers Report Lightning Strike

The incident marks the second time in two years this particular ship has caught fire. It has caused the cancellation of two upcoming voyages

A Carnival cruise ship’s exhaust funnel caught fire on Saturday during a trip to the Bahamas, causing the company to cancel its next two voyages.

This is the second time in less than two years that the Carnival Freedom, based in Port Canaveral, Fla., has been impacted by a fire.

"Regrettably, the damage is more than we first thought, and will require an immediate repair to stabilize the funnel, resulting in the cancellation of the March 25 and March 29 cruises from Port Canaveral," Matt Lupoli, Carnival Cruise Line's senior manager of public relations, told Florida Today in a statement. "The funnel has been stabilized for the ship’s return to Port Canaveral overnight to disembark guests, and then it will go to the Freeport shipyard on Monday afternoon to begin the required repairs."

PEOPLE has reached out to Carnival, but did not immediately hear back.

While the cause of the fire is still being investigated, Carnival noted in a post on X Saturday that eyewitnesses reported the possibility of a lightning strike.

One of the cruise’s passengers, Heath Barnes, posted footage of the incident on Facebook Saturday afternoon.

In a statement to TMX, Barnes said it had been storming on and off and he was on one of the ship’s upper decks when he experienced “the loudest thunder and lightening [sic] I have ever heard.”

After he returned to his cabin for about 15 minutes, his nephew and two friends came to tell him the ship was on fire.

“I thought they were giving me a hard time but I got up and went out on the balcony and sure enough the flames and smoke was pouring out of the tail,” he continued, adding that he took the videos from his balcony before travelers were asked to stay indoors.

Related: Carnival Cruise Ship Catches Fire During Visit to Turks and Caicos Islands

Carnival's brand ambassador John Heald addressed the incident on Facebook, acknowledging that those impacted by the cancellations “will be feeling very disappointed.” 

“And I want to add my apologies and my assurances that when you rebook using your full refund and your 100% future cruise credit, that the crew will be standing by to give you all the Fun you deserve,” he added.

Related: 2 Holland America Line Crew Members Killed During Onboard 'Incident' in the Bahamas

In May 2022, the Carnival Freedom caught fire during a five-day cruise to Turks and Caicos.

At the time, Carnival Cruise Line verified that a fire broke out in the funnel of the ship while it was in Grand Turk.

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The company said its "emergency response team quickly activated and extinguished" the flames.

"All guests and crew are safe, and the ship's guests were cleared by local authorities to go ashore," Carnival added.

The 948-foot Carnival Freedom, built in 2007, can hold just over 3,500 passengers, according to Cruise Mapper .

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Read the original article on People .

Princess Cruises' Star Princess ship delayed, 9 sailings canceled

Travelers will have to wait longer than planned to sail on Princess Cruises’ upcoming ship.

The delivery of Star Princess, which was set to debut next summer, will be pushed back by about two months. The cruise line said the delay was a “mutual” decision with shipbuilder Fincantieri.

“Following a comprehensive review of the remaining construction milestones, both parties have elected to adjust the ship's delivery date from July 29, 2025 to September 26, 2025, which will result in the cancellation of the nine inaugural sailings,” Princess said in a news release .

Guests whose cruises are impacted will be able to rebook on any Princess ship and, depending on which sailing they pick, receive future cruise and onboard credits. They will also be able to opt for a full refund of their fare instead.

“Despite our collective dedication and relentless pursuit to deliver the ship in late July, it has become evident that additional time is required to ensure the Star Princess is delivered to the highest standards expected by our guests,” Princess Cruises President John Padgett said in the release.

Your cruise was canceled: Now what?

The ship’s new inaugural itineraries will include 11 and seven-day Mediterranean cruises on Oct. 4 and 15, 2025, respectively. Those will be followed by a two-week transatlantic voyage to Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Oct. 22, 2025.

Those sailings will be available to book on April 30.

Star Princess will be the second in the line’s Sphere Class. Sister ship Sun Princess was also delayed ahead of its launch earlier this year, with Princess citing “additional technical work” needed at the shipyard.

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at [email protected].

Rescue teams save listing cargo ship from sinking in Suez Canal

Crew of 12 safe on Tanzania-flag vessel Labatros

A general cargo ship has been saved from sinking in the Suez Canal, the waterway’s authority says.

Video footage released by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) showed the 3,000-dwt Tanzania-flag Labatros listing heavily to starboard near Port Said, northern Egypt on Tuesday.

The SCA said its rescue teams headed to the vessel and prevented a “complete sinking”.

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