Captain's conduct blasted as divers find more dead
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120116/D9S9NLAO1.html
By NICOLE WINFIELD and GREGORIO BORGIA
GIGLIO, Italy (AP) - Maritime authorities, passengers and mounting evidence pointed Sunday toward the captain of a cruise liner that ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan coast, amid accusations that he abandoned ship before everyone was safely evacuated and was showing off when he steered the vessel far too close to shore.
Divers searching the murky depths of the partially submerged Costa Concordia found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, bringing the confirmed death toll to five. At least 15 people were still missing, including two Americans.
The recovered bodies were discovered at an emergency gathering point near the restaurant where many of the 4,200 on board were dining when the luxury liner struck rocks or a reef off the tiny island of Giglio. The Italian news agency ANSA reported the dead were an Italian and a Spaniard.
Still, there were glimmers of hope: The rescue of three survivors - a young South Korean couple on their honeymoon and a crew member brought to shore in a dramatic airlift some 36 hours after the grounding late Friday.
Italian firefighters scuba divers approach the cruise ship Costa Concordia leaning on its side, the day after it ran aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012. A helicopter on Sunday airlifted a third survivor from the capsized hulk of a luxury cruise ship 36 hours after it ran aground off the Italian coast, as prosecutors confirmed they were investigating the captain for manslaughter charges and abandoning the ship. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
FULL story at link.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The captain of a Carnival Corp. cruise liner may have made “very serious judgment mistakes” before and after his ship capsized off Italy’s Tuscan coast, killing at least 5 people, the ship’s operator said.
Costa Crociere, the Carnival line that runs the ship, said “it seems” Captain Francesco Schettino sailed too close to the island of Giglio and didn’t follow company emergency procedures, according to a statement in Italian yesterday. Schettino was arrested and accused of manslaughter, abandoning the ship and causing the wreck late on Jan. 13.
Rescuers are still searching for as many as 17 people missing from the Costa Concordia. About 60 people were injured after the ship carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew hit submerged rocks in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The ship’s insurers may face total costs of about 405 million euros ($512 million), said one person with knowledge of the policies.
“In terms of physical damage, this will be one of biggest claims around,” said Eamonn Flanagan, an insurance analyst at Shore Capital Group Ltd. in Liverpool, England.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-15/carnival-ship-captain-held-in-italy-as-death-toll-reaches-5.html
The captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, Francesco Schettino is taken into custody in Grosseto, Italy
I've never heard of that before, but it makes sense that something like this exists. I have been on the cruise ships on Lake George, LOL, but they're already close enough to shore to see the people who live along the lake and they often exchange greetings. 
I saw the gigantic rock embedded in the bottom of the ship, so this explains what happened. 
That's bad enough, but the fact that he abandoned the ship and left his passengers is a whole lot worse. He deserves whatever they throw at him... 
He channeled Condi Rice (no-one "could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile"
when he said the rocks were not on the chart. What an incredible fool! All you have to do is haul out a chart and look at it to see he's lying. Next he'll say, 'I didn't hit any rocks.' with that bigass rock sticking out of the huge hole in the ship.
He's been arrested, but what about the person/people who hired him? How could they have possibly put this obvious dickhead in such a position of authority? Questions need to be put to them too.
Who was on the bridge and when, what orders had been left, were there any systems failures, and so on. I suspect this will have taken a combination of idiocy (like "get really close to the island to say 'hi'" , and incompetence (like "I thought that alarm just meant we were close, not on a collision course" , at least.
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