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Rumours fly as Costa captain awaits enquiry
So did the captain of the ill-fated Costa Concordia fall into a lifeboat by mistake, leaving 300 passengers on board?
“Unexpectedly, seeing that the ship was listing 60 or 70 degrees, I stumbled and ended up in one of those lifeboats,” La Republica quoted him as saying. “That’s why I found myself there.”
And was Captain Francesco Schettino, who remains under house arrest at his home in Italy, saluting a former captain when he sailed too close to the Tuscan island of Giglio?
Or has the captain owned up to a fatal navigation mistake, as the Italian media claim?
According to a leaked interrogation transcript, Captain Schettino allegedly told investigators he had “ordered the turn too late” as the luxury ship sailed close to the island,
All number of allegations are being made in the wake of the disaster as the Italian prosecutor’s office begins its probe of a disaster that has left 11 passengers dead, and 24 still missing.
The first dead victim to be identified was a 38-year-old Hungarian violinist, Sandor Feher.
Jane Archer, a travel writer specialising in cruises says the size of modern cruise ships is under scrutiny.
“If things can go wrong on Costa Concordia, what about Oasis of the Seas and its sister ship Allure of the Seas? Factor in the crew on those two vessels and you have a small town of almost 8,500 people,†she wrote in the UK Daily Telegraph.
But Archer added, “cruising is the safest form of travel there isâ€.
Massimo Gramelini of La Stampa warned that every Italian has “a little Schettino†inside.
“Even if only half of it is true, we are nevertheless in the presence of an Italian that we cannot pretend we don’t know,” he wrote.
“More full of himself than sure of himself … Someone who creates havoc simply out of bravado and then tries to hide it with the mantra ‘Everything’s fine, no problem’, even when the ship is sinking …
“It’s not Schettino himself who worries me. It’s the Schettino in me.”
by Ian Jarrett
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