Jeez, what a scuzz ball. He runs the ship onto rocks while buzzing too close to an island to “salute” a pal on shore. He didn’t use the ship’s navigation system, he navigated by eye because he “knew the waters well.” A full half hour later, when his engine room was already flooding, he doesn’t mention hitting the ricks to the coast guard. He just acknowledges an electrical outage that they are investigating. He doesn’t order an evacuation until more than an hour after the collision.
Then he leaves the ship. He deflects orders from the coast guard to get back about and manage the evacuation, and never did in fact go back aboard.
Oh yeah, and eventually he claims that he never intended to leave the ship, but he tripped and fell into a lifeboat by accident. Remarkably, the ship’s second and third officers must have tripped and fallen into the lifeboat with him. Perhaps they all tripped over each other while racing for the lifeboats.
The captain of the Concordia’s sister ship was on board by coincidence, actually stayed aboard and managed the evacuation, and has condemned Captain Schettino’s actions. Schettino’s former training officer says he repeatedly had to rein him in and he tried to drive the ship “like a Ferrari”.
The transcripts between him and the coast guard would be hilarious if people hadn’t died because of this cowardly asshole.
Coast Guard: There are already bodies?
Schettino: Really? How many?
CG: I don’t know. YOU TELL ME!
Later: GET BACK ON THE FUCKING SHIP!!!
This is great. It reminds me of an Eminem song: “What, you tripped, fell, and landed on his dick?”
I’m also fairly bewildered as to why the captain of a ship would agree to leave the shipping lanes in order to allow a waiter to wave to his family. I’m not buying that either.
That seems to be the insinuation, but even ignoring that, it seems that he was also drinking and sailing, (some reports mention that he was seen drinking just before the incident with the girl) I would think that some rules were broken just on this item alone.
He denied drinking at dinner, but there may be some photographic evidence as well as testimony from passengers. This will probably come out at his trial. And there will be a trial.
Filipino cook reports the guy ordered dinner for himself and his “friend” about 45 minutes after the collision “and I was surprised because our pots and pans were falling off the shelves.”
Meh. I can wait for actual facts. I’m sure much of what we’ve been told so far is either completely false or so misleadingly incomplete that it’s worse than completely false.
The captain has already testified in front of a judge that he went off course and close to the island in order to “salute” a friend there.
The captain has already testified before a judge that he was not using the ship’s navigation tools and was steering by eye because he knew the waters so well.
There is audio tape of a conversation between the coast guard and the captain 30 minutes after the collision in which he fail to mention hitting any rocks. If he did not already know that water was coming into his ship within that time, he was grossly derelict just for that.
We have audio tape of a coast guard commander ordering him to return to his ship, while the evacuation was still continuing, and the captain insisting that he could coordinate the emergency response from the lifeboat. Unless you are claiming that people are deliberately mis-translating the exchange, that’s pretty fucking definitive.