coast guard dude is a complete prick. how is one supposed to count women and children, and tally what they need when the ship is the size of a friggin air craft carrier and listing severely to one side.
coast guard dude is a complete prick. how is one supposed to count women and children, and tally what they need when the ship is the size of a friggin air craft carrier and listing severely to one side.
Seriously? The captain basically pulled a George Costanza.
This is JUST like the Titanic! Well, except for the Titanic being in the middle of the Atlantic instead of right off shore. And the Titanic being buried several thousand feet underwater. And the thousands of people dying.
Other than those few minor differences, it's creepy how similar they are!
The captain of the stricken cruise ship Costa Concordia has told investigators he "fell into a lifeboat" during the evacuation and could not get out again.
Captain Schettino said:"I was navigating by sight because I knew the depths well and I had done this manoeuvre three or four times," he reportedly said.
"But this time I ordered the turn too late and I ended up in water that was too shallow. I don't know why it happened."
There have been several million shipwrecks over the course of human history, and tens of thousands of large ships have fetched up on rocks in recorded history. We have the names of all of them. Hundreds have probably foundered in the vicinity of the rocks that damaged the Costa Concordia.
And yet, all that people can think of is Titanic. Damn you, James Cameron.
At least I got to watch Leo DiCaprio drown. But that didn't make up for it.
P.S. I thought that poeople would liken this incident to the Andrea Doria sinking. That was at least an Italian ship and had a similar number of casualties. But no, it's all Titanic. Pah.
To be fair, though, the Titanic IS the World's Largest Metaphor, at least according to The Onion.![]()
Hmm. The Mary Rose? The Bonhomme Richard?People must have been starved for absurdly over-used ship-sinking metaphors before 1912.
Hmm. The Mary Rose? The Bonhomme Richard?
We ought to ask iJohnHenry which ship-based metaphors he remembers using when he was a nipper...
I have gone lurking on a few maritime-related forums and the insider consensus seems to be that this incident only very narroly avoided producing thousands of casualties. The SOP of cruise lines, their safety protocols, and the designs of cruise ships (packing tourists in like sardines) are all being called into question.
It will be interesting to see what the aftermath of this wreck means for the cruising industry.