Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
very interesting reconstruction here.

http://gcaptain.com/gcaptains-john-...maneuvers-of-the-costa-concordia-video/?37941

he almost pulled it off, emphasis on 'almost'.

what a tool.

Thanks for posting - very interesting.

Seems unbelievable that he was navigating by sight at night. As with all large failures, errors stack upon errors - the comments on this page suggest that the final keeling over of the ship wouldn't have happened had he not run it sideways into a sand bank.
 

Attachments

  • Captain Merkel, Chicken of the Sea.jpg
    Captain Merkel, Chicken of the Sea.jpg
    68.8 KB · Views: 82
Love that photo. It's like inception.

The headlines are about the only good thing about the NY Post...

@obeygiant

What a picture! I can't believe the ship has been lying in that same position for more than a week. Crazy.

Yes I did say favorite "headline". =)

yes, it is very odd indeed.
maybe it's very cold over there and the water just froze.

Water in the mediterranean don't freeze. The temperature is not even close to freezing.

The ship is leaning on sandbar / rocks, and the sea is not very rough. The boat moved a few inches during rescue attempt due to weather, and might move more if the weather is bad.
 
As the removal of fuel gets underway, salvage planning continues. This latest from the Chicago Tribune echoes many of the same issued brought up in the earlier BBC article in terms of the issues facing salvors.

If the Costa Concordia is refloated, it will represent the biggest and trickiest operation of it's type ever undertaken, even trickier than the Kursk salvage, as that vessel was already on the bottom rather than perched precariously on a rocky ledge. Also, the superstructure of the Concordia is lightly built and cannot withstand the kinds of stresses that will be necessary to pull the ship upright. Finally, the ledge the ship is perched on may be too unstable to support a refloating.

It seems increasingly likely that the ship will be cut up in situ, like this Maltese-flagged oil tanker that beached only a week or so ago in France (a great series of photos). Notice, however that the tanker is much more simply constructed than a cruise ship - the main hold or holds are a series of large voids (once the cargo was pumped out) that make chopping the ship up fairly straightforward business.

The Costa Concordia, on the other hand, is completely full of waterlogged fittings and appointments, and subdivided into thousands of little rooms. It is perched on a ledge, and cutting bits off the ship might cause the rest to slip into deeper water. Also, the Maltese tanker above weighed 2,000 tons - the Costa Concordia in it's current state is thought to weigh 45,000 tons.

SMIT estimate that just cutting the ship up where it lies could take two years and cost over $50 million.
 
Last edited:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4S: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Cherchez la femme
IBJogVol
 
And the lawsuits have begun.

FoxNews.com said:
Six passengers on the stricken Costa Concordia cruise ship filed a complaint against Carnival Cruise Lines, the parent company of ship owner Costa Cruises, demanding $460 million in compensation, the ANSA news agency reported Saturday.

The lawyer acting for the six passengers, Marc Bern, said the legal action was launched Friday in a court in Miami, where the headquarters of Carnival Cruise Lines is based.

www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/28/six-costa-concorida-passengers-sue-for-460-million/?test=latestnews
 
The Sinking of the Concordia Caught on Camera: Channel 4 Documentary

Channel 4 in the UK have last evening shown a documentary made solely of passenger and crew own video recordings of the events of that evening. I'm watching it now online and it's shocking.

From a French family chronicling the ports they are visiting to an English family marvelling at the sheer size of the vessel, it's an engaging programme. You can't help but feel for the family as the children realise something isn't quite right and begin to cry. Shots of plates sliding along the floor like curling stones in a winter tournament and seeing people leaning at impossible angles as they try to steady themselves on a listing deck. The sense of dread increases. A traffic accident is fast decisive but seeing this un-fold is like seeing the disaster in slow motion. even the lowering of lifeboats didn't go smoothly.

Whoever is deemed to be responsible for this ... they will have a lot to answer for. So sad for everyone that was caught up in this.
 
Channel 4 in the UK have last evening shown a documentary made solely of passenger and crew own video recordings of the events of that evening. I'm watching it now online and it's shocking.

From a French family chronicling the ports they are visiting to an English family marvelling at the sheer size of the vessel, it's an engaging programme. You can't help but feel for the family as the children realise something isn't quite right and begin to cry. Shots of plates sliding along the floor like curling stones in a winter tournament and seeing people leaning at impossible angles as they try to steady themselves on a listing deck. The sense of dread increases. A traffic accident is fast decisive but seeing this un-fold is like seeing the disaster in slow motion. even the lowering of lifeboats didn't go smoothly.

Whoever is deemed to be responsible for this ... they will have a lot to answer for. So sad for everyone that was caught up in this.

Is it the version by Discovery Channel?
 
Is it the version by Discovery Channel?

I'm really not sure as I didn't see it on Discovery, it was being broadcast by the fourth terrestrial channel over here in the UK named Channel 4. It may well have been a collaboration between the two as they have produced documentaries together in the past. It struck me all the more because there was minimal commentary, just the footage by the sources on the spot, edited together to give a timeline to the disaster.
 
I'm really not sure as I didn't see it on Discovery, it was being broadcast by the fourth terrestrial channel over here in the UK named Channel 4. It may well have been a collaboration between the two as they have produced documentaries together in the past. It struck me all the more because there was minimal commentary, just the footage by the sources on the spot, edited together to give a timeline to the disaster.

Actually found both:
- Discovery Channel Cruise Ship Disaster Inside the Concordia
- Sinking of the Concordia caught on camera c4tv

They are different, but both great:
- Discovery version is more about explaining what happened using the boat's navigation data with some short footage from within the boat.
- C4tv is mostly footage from within the boat.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.