ROME - The captain of the cruise liner which ran aground off Italy’s coast has
been branded a reckless show-off who refused to listen to orders and operated
the ship as if it was a speed boat.
Francesco Schettino, 52, who faces allegations of manslaughter and abandoning
ship, was questioned by prosecutors Tuesday following his arrest in the wake of
Friday’s disaster that has left at least 11 people dead.
Mario Palombo, a former captain of the doomed Costa Concordia with whom
Schettino served as first mate for four years, told investigators that he was
“too high-spirited and a dare devil,” local media reported.
The massive liner hit a rocky outcrop and pitched over near the Tuscan island
of Giglio late Friday shortly after the start of a seven-day Mediterranean
cruise.
Schettino is accused of having sailed too close to the shore in an attempt to
“salute” the island’s inhabitants.
“It was bravado, Schettino was showing off, clowning around, it was incredibly
stupid. I would sentence him not once but 10 times,” said another former
captain who worked with the ship’s owner Costa Crociere.
“The rock was clearly signed on all the shipping maps,” he told AFP on
condition of anonymity.
Schettino denied abandoning ship and said he had saved hundreds if not
thousands of lives, according to his lawyer Bruno Leporatti. He had not been
able to follow orders to return to the ship, he said.
“The ship in that moment was tilted by 90 degrees. You try and get back onto a
boat that is at a 90 degrees angle without a helicopter,” Leporatti said.
The captain “carried out a brilliant manoeuvre” after the collision, and had
“kept his wits about him", managing to steer the vessel towards the shore and
“save a number of lives.” Read the full
story
See also:
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captain
Timeline of Italian cruise ship disaster
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ticket
Captain Francesco Schettino of cruise ship Costa Concordia is escorted into a
prison by police officers at Grosseto, after being questioned by magistrates in
this still image from a video on Jan 17, 2012. Italian coastguards pleaded
angrily with the captain of the stricken super-liner to return to his ship,
according to recordings released on Tuesday.
Passengers line up on the side of the Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia and
move down along the side of the vessel during the evacuation operation in this
still image taken from video January 14, 2012. The death toll currently stands
at 11, leaving 23 people still missing four days after the giant cruiser
carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew was ripped open by rocks off a
Tuscan island.
A video grab shows passengers lined up on the side of the Costa Concordia
during the evacuation operation on Jan 14, 2012.
Italian divers and earthquake rescue veterans are braving chill waters, ships
decks that are now sheer cliffs and the peril of waves sending heavy furniture
crashing on top of them to scour a half-sunken super-liner for survivors and,
more likely, bodies.
Rescue divers retrieve a body from the water near the Costa Concordia cruise
ship.
A part of the Costa Concordia cruise ship is seen underwater after it ran
aground off the west coast of Italy, at Giglio island in this photo released on
January 16, 2012. Rescue squads used controlled explosions on Tuesday to enter
a stricken Italian cruise liner in the increasingly despairing hunt for
survivors.
A look at the wrecked interior of the Costa Concordia luxury liner. The giant
cruiseship - a floating pleasure palace of bars, spas, state rooms and tennis
courts - threatens to plunge 2,300 tons of fuel below the Mediterranean waters
of the surrounding marine nature reserve.
A part of the Costa Concordia cruise ship is seen underwater.
Underwater photo taken and released by the Italian Coast Guard ahows an inside
view of the cruise ship. The 114,500-tonne vessel is the biggest passenger ship
ever wrecked and twice the tonnage of the Titanic.
