Thread: Cruise accident: six feared dead and at least 50 passengers still unaccounted for

Holidaymakers from France, Italy, Germany and Britain were forced to flee the 1,500-cabin Costa Concordia in lifeboats when it hit a reef less than two hours after leaving port.

Cruise accident: six feared dead and 69 passengers still unaccounted for - Telegraph

Me and the Mrs were thinking of booking a Med cruise next year

Think a week in Blackpool will be safer...........just.

This is sad news. Better to stay on dry land i think.

Can't imagine anything worse than being on an enormous ocean liner out at sea that suffers a hull breach in the middle of the night (in winter). Panic, disorientation, cold, dark, just awful.

I've never been social or friendly enough to holiday on a huge tub full of over-perfumed coffin dodgers that you have to eat / rest / spend time with, and this has just cemented it.

Pity the poor sods on board and their families.

Some incredible pictures, thoughts go out to those involved.

The wife wanted to book a cruise around the Med this year!

I bought her a ticket. Hope she enjoys it.

my question is how the hell does a boat like that with all that technology hit a rock in such well documented waters?

(cough) insurance job ?

Not nice. Almost the Poseidon Adventure for real. They were really lucky they managed to limp into that port otherwise the death toll would have been horrendous.

Wonder if they've breath tested whoever was on duty on the bridge? As you say Turkster, there should be no way that something so modern ran aground.

Originally Posted by Turkster

my question is how the hell does a boat like that with all that technology hit a rock in such well documented waters?

(cough) insurance job ?

That was my question at the time. Funnily enough, I had just finished a course on Friday about global safety systems at sea and what to do/who to speak to/how to speak to people when sh*t hits the fan. Then I wake up to this on Saturday. Feel for the families involved.

Luckily, this wasn't in the middle of the Atlantic as it would have been much worse. The captain was apparantly interviewed and he said that the charts told him that he was 100+ metres away from the reef. There are 3 possible explanations to this.

1) His GPS was telling him he was in a position that he wasn't. This can happen. GPS on boats often go wrong. However, a ship like that will have backup systems in the event of it going wrong in the first place.

2) The reef wasn't on his charts. This is HIGHLY unlikely as that reef would have been documented a long time ago, and being an ocean cruise liner, all charts will be the most up to date.

3) The captain wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. This is the most likely option.

What gets me is, nobody else on the bridge noticed that they were heading towards a reef. There would have been charts (electronic and paper), depth sounders and depth gauges pointing that the ground was coming up to see them. From my point of view, this shouldn't have happened. There is absolutly no excuse for him because he should have known those waters like the back of his hand. Secondly, there are no tides in the med (none worth mentioning anyway...), so that reef would have been at a constant level under the water the whole time. It's not as if the boat would have been fine at high tide but the calculations made were wrong so he was caught out.

Said On the news the captin took the ship off course and was doing a bit of showing off railing the coast. Also said he was one of the first to leave the ship and was at home 20 mins after impact. Is this true? Thought the captin was ment to go down with the damn thing lol

We don't know the truth yet, it is difficult to get the truth with so many reporters bobbing around the ship.

What we know is the ship was too close to the coast, it got damaged by a rock, a hole was made, it listed before sinking. The Ca[tain was on TV pretty soon after the accident.

He insists he was the last person on the ship. We will no doubt find out soon.

How the hell are they going to salvage that.....

Originally Posted by damo.h

Said On the news the captin took the ship off course and was doing a bit of showing off railing the coast.

If that's true, then he's got it all coming to him. Why would you want to risk people's lives for the sake of getting a few metres closer to the coast? It's a cruise ship!!! Hardly going to make a difference!

Originally Posted by damo.h

Thought the captin was ment to go down with the damn thing lol

lol. I sure as hell ain't if I'm ever in that situation! I do have 1 rule though... don't go in the same life raft as the owner!

Originally Posted by s3dave

How the hell are they going to salvage that.....

Its going to be really difficult to salvage the liner Dave. Did you see the size of that hole where it hit the rocks. It said on the news that he was way of course and should have been at least 500 metres away from the rocks. Im glad he is under arrest for this, as he put a lot of peoples
Lives in danger.

Surely the only thing they will do is patch it up and pump out the water and move it? Will be interest to see how they do it.

I went on a cruise about 5 years ago, got it all paid for as I would never had gone. It's actually a fairly good experience if your with family. We went with P&O and sailed to the caribbean from southampton, took a week to cross the Atlantic. The impressive thing is the size of the ships, you have no idea until you see them up close, it's fairly easy to lose your family for half a day on board.

Just booked a cruise round the Carribean as well!

Originally Posted by s3dave

How the hell are they going to salvage that.....

I reckon them boys in transit pulling caravans would have it stripped and weighed in within 24hrs

Originally Posted by sportstractor

Surely the only thing they will do is patch it up and pump out the water and move it? Will be interest to see how they do it.

Not quite as simple as that. Apart from having to replace all of the interior due to things breaking, furniture and upholstery getting wet etc, the salt water would have also gone into every nook and cranny of the boat which means all of the electrics and wiring would need replacing. Now a lot of that wiring is put in during the building process of the boat so it'll be sandwiched into the structure. I don't know if it'll be worth it. Time will tell what they'll do with her.

One of the online news stories I saw on this awful event, a couple of days ago, had the headline "Ship was off-course when it ran aground."

Is it just me or is that the most redundant headline ever?!

its astonishing that it happened with all the technology available. The captain is in a world of trouble but what of the rest of the bridge crew? They have allowed the safety protocols to be circumvented. I was speaking to somebody who felt taking in further inshore was a bad idea as it caused the roll. If it had been allowed to sink it would have gone down level & the lifeboats wouldn't have been compromised.

Originally Posted by lil_coz

Not quite as simple as that. Apart from having to replace all of the interior due to things breaking, furniture and upholstery getting wet etc, the salt water would have also gone into every nook and cranny of the boat which means all of the electrics and wiring would need replacing. Now a lot of that wiring is put in during the building process of the boat so it'll be sandwiched into the structure. I don't know if it'll be worth it. Time will tell what they'll do with her.

I didn't mean bringing the ship into commission. I ment that they might float it to tug it away to break it up?

Just been on the news that they have released a taped conversation with the captain and the port control or whoever they are. They were persistently having to tell him to get out on deck and oversee the evacuation procedure, and to update them with numbers of women/children/crew etc and he wasn't playing ball. I think this guy is off to jail soon and very much deserved. If he is found guilty of all his charges, stand-by for all the claims against the owners/operators. Thats gonna be a huge finacial ouch on top of the one they're dealing with with the loss of a squilion pound ship.

Originally Posted by sportstractor

I didn't mean bringing the ship into commission. I ment that they might float it to tug it away to break it up?

Ah sorry, thought you meant to bring her back into working order. My bad.

Absolutly no idea how it'll be done. There's a boat just off the coast in Cyprus where it ran aground years ago and it's still there. Perfectly perpendicular! lol I think it was a fishing boat of some sort. Rusted to hell now. You can see it on Google Earth! Put in the co-ordinates 34.787475 32.386354 and you'll see it.

If this happened out at sea it would not be much worse at all.

As in deep water the ship is designed not to tip over, it would have also meant they could launch the lifeboats.

The very fact this clown brought it into shallow rocky water resulted in those safety systems being made redundant.

You don't pilot a cruise ship in less than 20ft of water, especially in poorly documented waters.

Originally Posted by Dazmo

You don't pilot a cruise ship in less than 20ft of water, especially in poorly documented waters.

Especially when the ship has a 25ft draught, you don't!

Originally Posted by Dazmo

If this happened out at sea it would not be much worse at all.
.

The accident wouldn't of happened if they had been in deeper waters though to be fair

Well I'm doing a cruise of that area in April, we are sailing from Southampton for a two week cruise on Ventura, this will be our 3rd time on Ventura and fifth cruise.

I have always felt safe on a P&O ship they take safety seriously, I'm not saying it couldn't happen to me, but it hasn't put me off cruising. Put it this way does a plane crash ever put your off flying ? The other way I see it, I can swim / float but I sure as hell can't fly Look at the survival rate of this accident (which very much looks like human error) it looks like over 99% of the soles on board survived.

Great way of seeing different countries / cities and only having to un-pack the once.

Paul

Heard the latest!!

Captain has released a statement saying " I was not scared and I didn't intend to leave the ship"... "I fell into the lifeboat"...

On lighter news... George Michael has sympathised with the captain of the stricken Italian liner saying
'I'm often left abandoned and lying on my side with a badly damaged bottom after a nights cruising

lol.
even with that hole in the side it wouldnt have sunk.
i read that the ship has 19 sealable compartments (once the inner water tight doors are shut) below deck. this isnt the titanic with just baulkheads up to a certain height, these are sealed rooms completely water tight..... the visible hole (with the rock stuck in it) aparently breached six of these compartments... it would have stayed upright and afloat, albe it quite lower in the water, had they not paniced and ran it aground causing the ship to topple over and the life boats unlaunchable.

reguarding salvage.......
maybe the mythbusters could fill it with ping pong balls??
Mythbusters. Pingpong.Rescue.part 4 - YouTube

the word on the playground is that salvage company's are standing by in lines to go in and make a claim in the ship for its metals but the coast guards are keeping them at bay claiming its now a crime scene and nobody can go in and take the ship, the vultures are circling as they say!