Capt. Francesco Schettino knew that Tievoli's sister lived on Giglio, and invited him to the bridge as they cruised past. With its 13 brightly lit decks, the ship was more brilliant than anything on the island. The 4200 people onboard outnumbered the island's residents four to one.
The captain was no longer following his charted course?he had ordered the 952-foot-long ship to cruise at least 4 miles closer to the island. Insiders say that it was a special tradition for Costa liners to salute a beloved former captain, Mario Palombo, as they passed by his home on Giglio. The ship, which had earlier slowed down while Schettino lingered over a meal, accelerated to 16 knots, a brisk speed for a large vessel less than a mile from a coastline.
The ship's printed itinerary mentioned the island's proximity, but few of the 3200 passengers were looking outside. The Concordia left Civitavecchia, the port city of Rome, about 2 hours earlier, and the passengers were just settling into their vacation routines. Minnesota resident Ronda Rosenthal, who had stopped at her cabin before heading to a 9:30 pm performance by Martin the Magician, looked out her porthole and saw white froth. "The waves were cresting really high, and we could see lights in the distance," Rosenthal says. "And I thought we are either going very fast or we are very close to shore."
Schettino spoke to Palombo, only to find out that his friend and mentor was at his winter residence on the mainland. But there was no turning back; the ship was on a direct course for the rocky coast.
? 9:40 PM // Going Off Course
Modern cruise ships have electronic charts that show their GPS positions on screens. Any deviation from the plan entered into this ?system usually triggers an alarm. "It is possible that he [Schettino] disabled this for the maneuver," says Ted Thompson, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain and the senior VP of technical and regulatory affairs for the Cruise Lines International Association. "In changing the track line he would have??disabled the alarm as well. He may have just turned it off and was going manually and visually."
Other equipment on the bridge could have alerted the crew to trouble?if they were paying attention. "Ships are equipped with fathometers that let you know how much water is under the hull," George Borlase, a naval architect and maritime expert, says. "But at the end of the day, there is always the human factor that overlays technology."
Schettino said he believed that he was more than a half-mile from shore, still too close by the book but not dangerously so. GPS data later revealed he was less than 1000 feet from land.
At 9:45 pm, everyone onboard knew that something bad had happened: The vessel shuddered, and the passengers heard a loud grinding sound. Some later compared the feeling to an earthquake.
Rosenthal was watching the magic show when she felt the ship "lurching, like the ship was being put in reverse." She thought it was a special effect of the ?performance until she saw an empty stage: "I looked for the magician, but he was gone." The ship had hit a large rock in the Le Scole reef off Giglio.
Seconds later the lights flickered and went dark. Rosenthal and her sister, an Army officer on leave from Afghanistan, headed to their cabin to get some sleep. An announcement over the intercom cited a "technical problem" with the generators and stated that power would be restored.
The impact tore a 160-foot gash in the port side. Seawater began pouring in through a hole as long as an Olympic-size swimming pool, flooding three or more of the ship's seven watertight compartments. The generators shut down. The Concordia was in trouble.
Ships built after 2010 might not have foundered the way Concordia did with three compartments flooded. In 2008 the International Maritime Organization (an affiliate of the United Nations) developed new standards mandating that ships remain stable with more than two compartments flooded. Concordia, completed in 2005, was only required to meet 50-year-old standards that the international ?community had deemed out of date.
Minutes after the crash, the emer?gency lights flickered on. The ship was drifting away from the island, already listing to the port side. "Everything is fine," crew members told passengers.
? 9:49 PM // A Dearth of Leadership
More than a decade ago, the cargo and cruise industries overhauled rules in an attempt to prepare ship crews for ?calamity. The key to disaster management is preplanning the response so it will be fast and organized. These plans rely on an established chain of command that divvies up responsibilities during a ?crisis.
That idea fell apart in the darkness on the night of Jan. 13. The captain, according to reports and video taken on the bridge just after the impact, did not seem to be directing the action or behaving as if he was in charge.
"What doomed the ship?was the complete and utter?lack of?leadership at every point along the way," says?Capt. Harry Bolton, director of marine programs and leadership development at the California Maritime Academy.
Ninety miles north, officers on night duty at an Italian Coast Guard station in Livorno? got their first alert from the police (who received panicked calls from families of Italians onboard) that a ship in nearby waters was in trouble. Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco called the Concordia's bridge, where officers told him, "It's okay, it's just a technical problem." No mention was made of the gaping hole in the ship's side.
As it took on more water, the Concordia continued to list perilously. Dishes and silverware tumbled off tables; serving carts and other furniture slid down decks.
People emerged from their staterooms wearing pajamas and life vests. Crowds formed and confusion reigned; few knew the location of their ?lifeboat stations. That information would have been part of their muster drill, required by law to be performed within 24 hours of boarding. But the ship was in the first hours of its cruise, so the 696 passengers who boarded that day had no idea where to go.
The crew, lacking guidance and information, told passengers to stay put. "At this point, the crew was just as much in the dark as the passengers," says John Konrad, master mariner and founder of gCaptain, a maritime website.
Officers trained in the United States must take additional instruction, but virtually all?cruise ships go to sea under a foreign flag and employ officers who were trained abroad. ?
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