Only three of Costa
Concordia’s 69 liferafts
were successfully launched
after the vessel capsized.
AFTER THE DUST
HAS SETTLED
According to the author of a new incident analysis, there’s more to the 2012 loss of
the cruiseship Costa Concordia than investigations at the time led us to believe.
ANDREW LININGTON reports…
Vital lessons about the safety of ships and the
wellbeing of seafarers are in danger of being lost
because of failures in the way in which the 2012
Costa Concordia disaster was investigated, a
meeting in London heard last month.
Nautilus Council member Captain Michael Lloyd told
the packed seminar onboard HQS Wellington that the
accident had highlighted many of the things that are
wrong in the shipping industry – including the lack of
proper governance – but its wider signifi cance has been
overlooked.
‘Had it not been for the vagaries of the wind that blew
the ship back to the coast, this could have been one of the
worst accidents in peacetime history,’ he pointed out.
Just 32 of the 3,229 passengers and 1,023 crew onboard
Costa Concordia died when the 114,147gt vessel capsized
after hitting a rock off the island of Giglio, and Capt Lloyd
has produced a 150-page analysis of the incident, providing
an alternative to the widely-criticised Italian investigation
report.
‘As I worked my way through the various documents
and accounts, I began to realise that there was far more to
this casualty than what I had been led to believe by the
offi cial and media reports,’ he explained.
72 SUOMEN MERENKULKU J FINLANDS SJÖFART
With the company and fi ve individuals – including the
fi rst and third offi cers, the helmsman and the designated
person ashore – having secured plea bargaining agree-ments
with the Italian authorities, responsibility for the
accident has been placed on the master, Captain Franc-esco
Schettino.
Capt Lloyd said his report had not been produced as an
attempt to exonerate Capt Schettino ‘from his many errors
of judgement made on that night’, but rather to examine
the reasons for the accident and the scope for making
changes that would prevent similar accidents in future.
He told the meeting, which was organised by the
Honourable Company of Master Mariners and the Nautical
Institute, that there is evidence that many other cruise-ships
carried out sail-by ‘salutes’ in coastal waters – and
that another Costa ship, Fortuna, was damaged after
hitting rocks off the island of Capri in 2005.
Costa Concordia might have narrowly avoided the rocks
off Giglio had it not been for an eight second delay in
changing course, which had been identifi ed in analysis of
black box and automation system data, Capt Lloyd said.
The delay had been caused by the Indonesian helms-man’s
diffi culty in understanding orders given in Italian,
he added. Evidence showed that communications onboard,