"Seafarers outraged that captain jumped ship" by Karl Ritter | Associated Press, January 20, 2012
STOCKHOLM - Seafaring tradition holds that the captain should be last to leave a sinking ship. But is it realistic to expect skippers to suppress their survival instinct amid the horror of a maritime disaster? To ask them to stare down death from the bridge, as the lights go out and the water rises, until everyone else has made it to safety?
From mariners on ships plying the world’s oceans, the answer is loud and clear: Yes.
“It’s a matter of honor that the master is the last to leave,’’ said Jorgen Loren, captain of a passenger ferry operating between Sweden and Denmark and chairman of the Swedish Maritime Officer’s Association. “Nothing less will do in this profession.’’
Jim Staples, a captain for 20 years, who spoke Wednesday from a 1,000-foot cargo vessel he was captaining near New Orleans, said captains are duty-bound to stay with the ship until the situation is hopeless. When they bail early, everything falls apart.
“I’m totally embarrassed by what he did,’’ Staples said of Schettino. “He’s given the industry a bad name. He’s made us all look bad. It’s shameful.’’
Schettino should have remained on board “until the last passenger is accounted for,’’ said Abelardo Pacheco, a Filipino captain who was held hostage for five months in Somalia and now heads a seafarers’ training center in Manila.
“That is the responsibility of the captain,’’ Pacheco said. “That’s why all privileges are given to him, but he has together with that an equal burden of responsibility.’’
The Costa Concordia, carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, slammed into a reef Friday, after Schettino made an unauthorized detour from the ship’s programmed route.
A recording of his conversation with the Italian coast guard shows he left the ship before all passengers were off and resisted repeated orders to go back, saying the ship was tipping and it was dark.
Schettino said he ended up in a life raft after he tripped and fell into the water. He is being held in house arrest as prosecutors prepare criminal charges.
Maritime specialists said the tradition of a captain standing by his ship is not established in international maritime law. But some countries, including Italy, have included it in national laws.
Others respect it as “an unwritten rule or law of the sea,’’ said Captain Bill Wright, senior vice president of Marine Operations for the Royal Caribbean International cruise line.
Both literature and real life offer plenty of examples of shipmasters who paid the ultimate sacrifice to protect their passengers and crew.
The most famous, perhaps, is the captain of the Titanic, E.J. Smith, who evacuated the ship - women and children first - until there were no lifeboats left, and then perished with it.
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Related: Italy's Titanic
"Ship captain may have been told to deviate" by New York Times | January 26, 2012
GIGLIO, Italy - New evidence emerged yesterday that suggested that the captain of the Costa Concordia had been repeatedly ordered by superiors to deviate from its course on Jan. 13 and head toward picturesque Giglio Island off the Tuscan coast, where the 950-foot luxury cruise liner crashed and partly sank.
So once again the company lied?
In leaked telephone transcripts of the captain’s conversations with an unidentified official from Costa Cruises, recorded while the captain was in police custody after escaping the shipwreck, he is heard saying Costa Cruises managers had insisted on the changed course and that “anyone else in my place wouldn’t have been so nice as to go there.’’
The claims by the captain, Francesco Schettino, 51, have been challenged by Costa Cruises, a subsidiary of the Carnival Corp., which is the world’s largest cruise ship company.
Evidence supporting either account could have an important bearing on criminal and civil actions over the shipwreck and chaotic evacuation, which left at least 16 people dead and some 19 unaccounted for among the more than 4,200 passengers and crew.
Officials identified three more of the recovered bodies yesterday, all of them German.
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"Italian islanders worry about damage from cruise ship" January 31, 2012
GIGLIO, Italy - Residents of the Italian island of Giglio held a strategy meeting yesterday as fears mounted about threats to the environment and their prized tourism industry from the stricken Costa Concordia cruise ship lying off the coast.
Officials have ruled out finding anyone else alive more than two weeks after the ship hit a reef. Worries are now focusing on the impact the disaster could have on the pristine Tuscan region, especially if tons of fuel and chemical pollutants spill from the ship.
Uh-oh.
Ahead of the closed meeting, residents hung a banner demanding the removal of the half-submerged ship, which threatens some of the most unspoiled waters in the Mediterranean and a sanctuary for dolphins and other marine life.
About 500,000 gallons of heavy fuel and other pollutants are in danger of leaking out of the ship, threatening the livelihoods of local fishermen and residents who depend on tourism....
The gathering of residents came a day after Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy’s national civil protection agency, said it could take a full seven to 10 months to remove the massive ship. That means the damaged vessel, or at least parts of it, will still be off the coast for most, if not all, of the summer tourist season.
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Meaning you-know what:
"Oil spreads from cruise ship wreckage" by Associated Press | February 02, 2012
GIGLIO, Italy - A thin film of oil spread from the Costa Concordia cruise ship as waves battered the wreckage off Italy’s coast yesterday, adding to fears of an environmental disaster in the area’s sensitive, pristine waters. Authorities were trying to assess how serious and extensive the spread was but said it did not appear alarming....
Un-flipping-real!!!
The ship contains about 500,000 gallons of heavy fuel and other pollutants, and fears have grown that those chemicals could damage an environment that is home to dolphins, whales, and other marine life.
Authorities hope to pump fuel from the ship, but due to bad weather the effort was being suspended again yesterday. Floating barriers placed around the ship to protect the water were lifted by winds, allowing the oily film from the ship to spread throughout the bay. The Italian Port Authority said the leak consisted of a thin sheen of hydrocarbons.
As if it is nothing to worry about.
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Must not be since I've seen nothing since in my Globe.
