Costa Concordia Grounding: Ruminations

Captain Schettino arrived on the bridge when the ship was about four nautical miles from Giglio off the Tuscan coast and switched to manual navigation in order to perform a close-up "salute" to a retired captain, Mario Palombo, living on the island.

The Captain's testimony before Italian authorities describing the situation just before the accident, translated here:

SCHIUMA A PRUA (foam astearn at 21.42 while the ship is sailing at 15, 16 knots...radar was not pinging..... the order of the captain to avoid the obstacle came 40 seconds too late .............. )
Sono le 21.42. Dice Schettino: "All'improvviso vidi a prua la schiuma sulla superficie dell'acqua e capii che c'era uno scoglio che il radar non mi batteva". La Concordia, in quel momento viaggia tra i 15 e i 16 nodi e la manovra per evitare l'ostacolo è disperata. E tardiva. "Quaranta secondi di troppo". "Ordinai la virata d'emergenza a dritta".

Approaching close to land in the dark of night, at high speed, and without the aid of radar, can only be described as an act of recklessness. One might question his sobriety at the time.

We should also question the lack of his bridge watch officers objecting to his actions. Unfortunately, at this time we have seen no interviews with the ship's seaman and engineering personnel.

However, once realizing the danger ahead, it would seem hard to fault the Captain's subsequent actions to safely control his vessel, ultimately leading to her grounding, preventing the vessel sinking off-shore.

Shortly after turning left, he lost all propulsion, however, he was not aware of the situation in his engineering spaces which were in the process of flooding out. I would believe that the engineering Main Control Room flooded also, as it appears he no longer had communication with the Engineering Watch Officer having to send a senior Mate below to assess the situation.

Schettino said he made an emergency maneuver after hitting the rocks to prevent the vessel from heading out to sea and sinking.

Once he realized that he no longer commanded full control of his ship, he was in a situation called in the Navigation Rules, as a vessel not under command.

The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea define that a “vessel not under command,” meaning a vessel which through some exceptional circumstance is unable to manoeuvre as required by these Rules and is therefore unable to keep out of the way of another vessel.

Captain Konrad's in his narrative states that once he was clear of the rocks and has suffered a loss of power, the Captain should have declared Mayday.

This would have included sounding the general alarm, transmitted over the emergency radio frequency, proceed to anchor, and set the abandon ship procedure for passengers. However, at this point, he was still proceeding northwards at a speed of 8.2 knots, much too fast to drop the hook.

The Navigation Rules for vessels in International Waters proscribe these signals:

ANNEX IV - Distress signals

1. The following signals, used or exhibited either together or separately, indicate distress and need of assistance:
(a) a gun or other explosive signal fired at intervals of about a minute;
(b) a continuous sounding with any fog-signalling apparatus;
(c) rockets or shells, throwing red stars fired one at a time at short intervals;
(d) a signal made by radiotelegraphy or by any other signalling method consisting of the group . . . — — — . . . (SOS) in the Morse Code;
(e) a signal sent by radiotelephony consisting of the spoken word “Mayday”;
(f) the International Code Signal of distress indicated by NC;
(g) a signal consisting of a square flag having above or below it a ball or anything resembling a ball;
(h) flames on the vessel (as from a burning tar barrel, oil barrel, etc);
(i) a rocket parachute flare or a hand flare showing a red light;
(j) a smoke signal giving off orange-coloured smoke;
(k) slowly and repeatedly raising and lowering arms outstretched to each side;
(l) a distress alert by means of digital selective calling (DSC) transmitted on
(i) VHF channel 70, or
(ii) MF/HF on the frequencies 2187.5 kHz, 8414.5 kHz, 4207.5 kHz, 6312 kHz, 12577 kHz or 16804.5 kHz;
(m) a ship-to-shore distress alert transmitted by the ship’s Inmarsat or other mobile satellite service provider ship earth station;
(n) approved signals transmitted by radiocommunication systems, including survival craft radar transponders.

However, the Captain is further reported to say, "La regola d'oro: mai il mayday" (golden rule: never use "Mayday" at least not until the sitation is truly desperate.

Shortly thereafter, he applied right rudder to head out to sea perhaps to avoid grounding at this high rate of speed. Without propulsion he soon lost rudder control with his ship heading in a north east direction but his motion over the ground being northward. He was thus crabbing northward loosing speed rapidly as he proceeded north due to the massive hull resistance presented.

He has been highly criticized at not loading and launching the lifeboats earlier. However, I would not believe it prudent to try shipping lifeboats with the ship still in motion. Although seaman man the lifeboats, I would believe their training to be with the ship in port, at rest, not in any dynamic way and perhaps not skillful in dealing with a moving mother ship.

Lifeboats dropped on the port side in the path of the ship would be liable to being overturned or crushed by the ship or the wave motion being developed, those on the starboard side on reaching water level, would be moving away from the ship making unshackling the fall lines difficult and subjecting the boat to being hauled over. Or, they could be sucked into the ships hull from the sideways motion of the ship.

I would believe launching the lifeboats with way on the ship to be unthinkable at this early time. We furthermore, have no information on the sea state at the time.

While drifting northward, the ship was in water over 300 feet, probably too deep for anchoring. Also, the extent of flooding was not fully understood, and the potential of sinking was apparently not considered imminent.

A little over a mile north of grazing the outcropping, speed over the ground had decreased to the point where the Captain appears to have activated his port bow thruster enabling the ship to reverse it's movement north, turning southward where the current set the ship heading in towards the island.

Not heading inland would have resulted with the ship continuing seaward, not a prudent action knowing that the ship was holed and progress of internal flooding unknown.

Ultimately, the ship grounded with a list to starboard of about 20°. At this time, the Captain was said to have commanded abandon ship.

Abandon ship procedures were instituted. What transpired thereafter has not been well understood with much misunderstanding portrayed by the press of ineptitude of the crew. The interval of time before the ship heeled over completely to starboard has not be established, to my knowledge.

The bottom line however, is that we now know that there were 3,216 passengers and 1,013 crew members aboard the COSTA CONCORDIA for a total of 4,229 souls. As this is written 13 bodies have been recovered while another 19 are missing and presumed lost. "Considering the circumstances it seems amazing that more lives were not lost in the darkness and confusion of the capsizing ship."

Over 99% of the souls aboard survived. I believe the much maligned ship's crew has to be credited with this remarkable statistic.

Here are a few pictures taken during evacuation process, have no idea of times.