The Costa Cruises ship ‘Costa Concordia’ has sunk off the island of Isla Giglio, after sailing from Civitavecchia earlier yesterday afternoon. it’s reported that some people have died, although the number and whether they were passengers or crew isn’t confirmed.
Details are still very unclear – there are reports about a power failure – and the sequence of events is also very uncertain. But it seems clear that at least some of the crew, and possibly passengers as well, had to jump into the sea to save themselves – the continuing list of the ship eventually made the lifeboats unusable. The BBC New website has an audio clip of an interview with a crew member, a steward. I’ve listened to it, and this is a transcript of the main things he says:
He says that there was “a roaring sound”, and then “the ship tilt to the left”. Then he says that they received messages that “all is OK, it’s under control”. Then I think he says they were attending to the guests. He says that this lasted for a while: he says “Then maybe around one hour or something like that they announce general emergency”, and he says the crew took the passengers to the muster stations, and the crew stayed there as well. Then he says: “and then the ship tilt to the right, the opposite side…”. After that they received the order to abandon ship, but couldn’t use the boats on their proper side; he says “happily [?] …the officer came and they told us to go to other side, the right side, the tilt side; so the passenger(s) and the crew went there.” You can hear his voice becoming hard to understand with emotion, but I think he says after that that they had some problems getting to the boats because of the tilt, but they managed it, and some passengers and crew were able to get off in boats. But he wasn’t able to: “.. because suddenly the ships start to sink on that side. So for we .. crew … we had lifebelts; we jump on (into) the sea. We just swim; and luckily there’s an island near us .. maybe 300 or 400 metres … we just swim there and luckily we survived there”.
It must have been a terrifying experience, but he sounds as if he was trying to do his job and look after the passengers as well as save himself and his fellow crew members.
Costa Concordia was launched in 2006 and was the lead ship in a four-ship class for Costa Cruises. She was a big ship – ships in this class have a standard capacity of 3000 passengers and a maximum capacity of 3,700 passengers, plus a crew complement of 1,100; their gross tonnage figure is 112,000 and they’re ‘post-panamax’.
really did you swin 300-400 metres ? I still dont understand all the jumping out of the ship to make it more dramatic just because there was a rock at 20 metres
Obviously I didn’t swim – I was transcribing the words of the steward from Costa Concordia.
Get a life butt, that was very bad what happened to all the people on that ship, my and everyone else who thinks about life will wish them all well.
Oh my God! I wanted this year to make a cruise with the ship ‘Costa Concordia’ . I think it was a terrible experience for people who were there.
Obviously this tragedy is in result of “HUMAN ERROR”.
As a professional seaman I have definite observations that
the quality of deck officers is getting worse and worse with
the years. This is due to the fact that no any appropriate
professional training on board of TRAINING VESSEL is arranging
to the graduated deck officers. No one is approaching with
proper training for the attitude of the deck officer on the Navigating
Bridge. No one like to spend money for such training, which
should be during education, totaling not less than 12 months.
Just during this period of education could be trained proper
professional attitude and habits, and to be thrown aside negligent
students.
Who like to oppose me with the arguments for SOLAS-required
training courses, I will say, that these courses do not train for
proper attitude and behavior on Bridge (whether to plot position
of the vessel on a paper chart every 2-3-5 min, or once per hour,
or whether to permit yourself to listen music during watch or not, e.t.c.).
They are training courses for proper abilities and reaction only –
kind of post-training courses.
In addition, nowadays on such modern vessel navigation is fully
electronically. Young deck/navigating officers as per my observations
are unable to navigate the vessel if electronic fails – radars, ECDIS
(electronic charts), echo-sounder lost power due to some power-problem,
because they do not have any training for visual observations. Such
“modern” officers of 21st Century have just some memories from the
theory of these methods of navigation, and ZERO practice!
The result of this is such tragedies! IMO should open their eyes, and
to distance their policy from different lobbyist. And to insert in STCW
requirements for compulsory seaboard training during the process of
education, prior to obtaining Diploma and first Certificate for Watch-keeping
Officer.
Capt. Dimov:
Thank you for contribution.