Where I’m getting it from is interviews with passengers reported in the Times. None of the crew seemed to know where any of the passengers should go. Some of the crew piloting the lifeboats drove them in circles until in one case, some passengers took over steering.
Perhaps the crew did get trained but they are such idiots it didn’t stick. However, on cruises I’ve been on the crew did drills not involving passengers, so their knowledge should be frequently refreshed.
Well, given that the very earliest stories noted tha the ship was on a pre-programmed route that required a manual override to depart and that the cruise company has been acknowledging human error from the very first, without any involvement by the Italian government, I suspect that your speculation is going to go nowhere. If there was an uncharted rock, the cruise company should be all over that information to reduce the possibility of lawsuit claims, (counterbalanced by its own claims against the Italian maritime authorities for bad charts).
You seem to be reaching pretty far, here.
The idiot captain who disregarded standard safe-apporach distance guidelines designed to minimize the risk of hitting uncharted rocks.
What do I win?
If the ship was away from its intended course, whether the rock was charted or not does not matter. Typically you board a pilot when approaching land, even familiar ports. I haven’t heard anything about any pilot on board. (Which is not surprising given that the close approach was probably not planned.) Pilots know where rocks are. Captains can’t be expected to, which is why they stick to approved channels.
BTW, I was on a cruise ship which got stuck in the Orinoco River. A pilot was on board, but this was the first trip of the year and so the bottom had shifted. Things do happen, I think able captains try to be as safe as possible.
Neither you nor I know what was going on. You don’t know what the master’s plan was nor why he was doing what he was doing. All you have is snippets being fed to you, including by someone so intemperate as to record himself threatening to make someone look bad. It is entirely possible that the master had, for rational (even if ultimately incorrect) reasons decided that he was best off now assisting and controlling on water rather than on board.
Do you know that a mistaken crewmember hadn’t told him that the bow was now clear and everyone was off? I don’t.
You can’t train for shock. Few people know how they will behave in a real emergency. It seems to me the master did very well for many hours.
I’ve been involved in the aftermath of maritime casualties for about 22 years. I don’t know what happened in this instance. The master could have been an incompetent cowardly fool. I don’t know. What I do know is that immediately after incidents like this nobody has the full picture, and that it is SOP to turn the master into a villain, and that is what is going on here.
There will be a dry investigation report published a few months or years in the future about what happened. I’ll wait for it to come out before I draw conclusions.
Which guidelines are those?
You sure about all of that? I thought I read that the captain left the ship after the vast majority of the passengers had been evacuated.
I could very well be wrong.
(Sorry, this was a response to tomndeb’s post on page 2. I’m a little behind, it seems.)
Was it away from its intended course?
The rest of your post is know nothing crap. You take pilots typically going into harbours, where it is compulsory, but very seldom otherwise. Masters don’t “stick to approved channels” they take vessels all over the world using charts to know where they can and can’t go. There are common routes but outside certain regulated places channels aren’t “approved”.
It sounds to me like the master engaged in what is increasingly sounding like a common practice of close “fly bys” of islands and he has been somewhat incautious. I’m withholding judgment on whether that is right but it sounds like it.
And tomndebb your post about the uncharted rock issue is off the mark. The owners have said they don’t have access to the black box because it has been confiscated. They don’t know precisely where the vessel went. The Italian government does, yet they haven’t said there is a charted rock. Doesn’t add up to me.
Maybe the ghost of Criswell (“Can you prove that it didn’t happen?”) told him, for all I know.
The ones in the standard navigation protocols the captain deliberately overrode.
So, in your opinion, the company is quite willing to suffer the loss of a multi-million dollar ship and open itself to lawsuits over the behavior of its employee instead of waiting for further evidence simply because they enjoy the opprobrium? If they had no information supporting the “off course” idea, they would have been far better to wait for the actual information–unless, of course, they already have enough information and they are trying to get ahead of the blame game, (which would appear much more likely to me).
Which ones? I don’t know what protocols you are talking about. Obviously, you wouldn’t post unless you did, so please, fill me in: exactly which protocols?
You are assuming incompatibilities that don’t exist. It may well be the case both that the master took the vessel on a fly by closer to the island than the company would (at least officially) approve and that it hit an uncharted rock. And if they have 'fessed up early to the “off course” idea it’s because they knew that was going to come out anyway, and that’s what PR people tell you to do. Insurers will cover the lawsuits.
Why do you think the Italians haven’t pointed out that the rock is charted? I’m curious.
Somewhat incautious?
Somewhat?
Ya, I guess, in the same way that the master is going to get a “little bit” of jail time.
ETA: Is taking a major ship off course just fine and dandy? No problems could possibly be forseen with taking a ship with a draft of ?? off course near islands with rocky, pointy bits sticking out of them?
What do you mean by “taking off course”? I’ve read a few stories but I don’t think I’ve got a clear picture yet as to what the master’s planned course was and whether he was off it. And if he was off it I don’t know the reason.
Ships go close to things all the time.
I understand that the First Officer (second in command) evacuated with the captain.
I still have a soft spot in my heart for Italian police that dismantled several terrorist gangs in the 1980s while operating within the constraints of civil society. We should be so lucky.
I realize that we really should not come to any conclusions or even discuss the matter until a court of law had rendered a verdict, and all appeals are concluded, and we witness the heat death of the universe, but bear with me and my nutty speculations for a moment…
Yes, it’s not a notarized court-ordered sworn statement, but it does have the ring of truth about it.
What do you make of the recordings that indicate that the Italian coast guard captain Captain Gregorio de Falco ordered Schettino back on board the ship to assist with the evacuation, and Schettino came up with a string of lame excuses as to why he abandoned his ship with passengers on board?
Here’s a Translation of the transcript (Again, sorry it is not a signed, notarized, sworn statement)
My favorite lines?
If the ship was off course, it is immaterial whether the rock was charted and there is still no reason for the company to admit anything before they have evidence of it. That they have already acknowledged that the captain was off course indicates that they have knowledge–otherwise they open themselves to further lawsuits for libel from the captain.
I suspect that the Italians are too busy looking for bodies, trying to arrange for fuel oil to be extracted, and making sure that the captain does not high-tail it to some country that lacks an extradition treaty with Italy to spend any effort determining which rock the ship hit in the dark when they don’t even know where the ship was, since it was off course.
You are really reaching.
From the BBC:
Click the link for the map: Costa Concordia cruise ship captain 'went off course' - BBC News
The article also states that Schettino maintains that he and his crew were the last to leave the ship, contrary to accusations by prosecutors.
So is Schettino denying that the following conversation that was recorded did not take place?
The BBC posted a map from Lloyds showing the track of the previous trip superimposed on this trip. The vessel was way off the previous course and, according to the captain, about 300m from shore. The position of the gash in the hull is consistent with the vessel being in a starboard turn (away from the shore) when it hit. Subsequent to the crash, the vessel executed a 180 degree turn to put the starboard side along the rocks just north of the ferry terminal. Compare BBC pix and Google Earth.