Italian Cruise Ship “Runs Aground”
It has been widely reported that the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia “slammed into shallow water off Italy’s western coast.”
Authorities are looking at why the ship didn’t hail a mayday during the accident near the Italian island of Giglio on Friday night, officials said.
“At the moment we can’t exclude that the ship had some kind of technical problem, and for this reason moved towards the coast in order to save the passengers, the crew and the ship. But they didn’t send a mayday. The ship got in contact with us once the evacuation procedures were already ongoing,” Del Santo said.
According to Business week,
Cabin steward Deodato Ordona told the British Broadcasting Corp. there was a “roaring sound” before the ship began to tilt. He said the vessel tilted to the left and then the right before the captain announced an order to abandon ship.
There were 3,200 passengers on the ship, comprising 1,000 Italians, 500 Germans, 160 French and 250 from the U.S., Costa Corciere said on its website. Emergency procedures started immediately though were impeded by the ship’s listing, it said in a statement. The cause of the incident cannot be confirmed, it said.
Initial reports of such events are usually sketchy and raise many questions. One of mine is how in the world a modern cruise ship, presumably with more sophisticated electronic gear that was available on my sailboat nearly a decade ago, could have got so dangerously close to land without correcting course to avoid running aground.
I have no way to verify this January 14th story from Four Winds and thus far have seen no similar account elsewhere. Still, it seems worth posting anyway. It says:
A “flash” message received in the Kremlin today from the Northern Fleet Command, whose Russian Navy flotilla is in the Mediterranean Sea after having just left their Syrian port of call, reports that the anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko has detected the firing of a torpedo having the “unmistakable signature” of one fired from a kilo-class submarine near Isola del Giglio a popular vacation island about 18 miles off the Italian Tuscan coast.
Within 10 minutes from the detection of this torpedo being fired, this “flash” message continues, a distress call was received from a cruise ship nearing the port of Isola del Giglio Costa named Costa Concordia [photo of sinking top left], and owned by owned by Genoa-based Costa Cruises, stating that it had been “attacked” and was in “immediate danger of capsizing.”
Reports from the London Telegraph about this attack state that the Costa Concordia’s passengers’ dinner was “interrupted by a loud boom around 8 pm local time” with an initial announcement claiming that the ship was suffering an electrical failure, ordering everyone onboard to don life-jackets, and appearing to confirm this “flash” message of it being an attack.
The Northern Fleet Command further states that after the initial distress call from Costa Concordia it was ordered by the US Naval Air Station Sigonella (located in Sicily and known as “The Hub of the Med”) to cease open broadcasts and, instead, use NATO encrypted communications only. [Note:Due to past attacks on cruise liners carrying international passengers, all Western ships of this type are required to carry NATO encrypted radios.]
Most disturbing about this “flash” message, however, is its stating that the only known submarine currently suspected to be in the Mediterranean Sea is one, or possibly two, possessing kilo-class torpedoes belong to the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN).
If accurate, the story suggests that our troubles with Iran get a tad worse.
Well, there is an explanation for how a modern, well-equipped vessel can go aground or have an allision despite all that equipment; somebody had their head up their butt, and it does happen, more than we’d like to think it does. Bridge management and communication can be real issues, especially on cruise ships which tend to have multi-national crews. But, it doesn’t take a language barrier to have things just not work.
I did the administrative investigation of the grounding of our State ferry, M/V LeConte, a fairly large well-equipped passenger/car ferry, on a marked rock on a beautiful, sunny, windless day. The Master and First Mate allowed as how they had “lost situational awareness,” another way to say they had their heads up their butts. And of course, maritime ettiquette being as it is, it would never ocurr to the AB at the helm to say, “Sir, there’s a rock there,” he just steered the course the Mate called out. The Coast Guard merely suspended their licenses for a few months, we fired them both and made it stick. I wanted some of the helmsman as well but Ferry System management wouldn’t do it because they believed that “just following orders” was an adequate defense. I didn’t and still don’t. I’m a licensed master, too, and my ego will tolerate an AB or OS, or even a steward, Hell, even my wife, pointing out that I might just possibly have made a mistake.
All that said, though, I certainly wouldn’t rule out the other explanation for the grounding.
Well, there is an explanation for how a modern, well-equipped vessel can go aground or have an allision despite all that equipment; somebody had their head up their butt, and it does happen, more than we’d like to think it does
Such as the example of the Greek ferry Express Samina, which plowed into a rock approaching the port of Paros in 2000. Soccer game on TV, captain joined crew watching it, autopilot headed straight for port but didn’t dodge the rock.
But I suppose we need more evidence about the sound signature of a ‘Kilo-class sub with torpedo’ before making the parallel with the Greek event.
It seems odd to me (I’m no expert), but looking at hole in these pictures (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2086527/Costa-Concordia-accident-Pictures-cruise-ship-sinking-coast-Italy-Titanic-like-scene.html), I would think side of ship with hole would be under water. I realize it started taking on water, but then it lists to side opposite of hole. It also seems to me that ship is pointed in wrong direction because it should have been traveling north west to its first port of call. In these pictures, its bow is pointed toward small harbor on Isla del Giglio, like he was making for it after reacting to something bad. It’s almost like skipper maneuvered as best he could to get passengers to safety.
Being close to land is one of the more precarious positions for a ship or even a small (46 feet) sailboat similar to the one my wife and I sailed to and then in the Caribbean for about six years. Take off and landing are among the more precarious positions for aircraft. Generally, the harbors large ships, including large cruise ships, enter are very well charted and marked and the ships are competently manned.
Still, shinola happens even with the best and brightest people and the latest equipment. I posted the article, from a site I had not seen previously, because it seemed to offer a credible explanation consistent with but going well beyond the otherwise reported “facts” of the “grounding.” If the asserted Iranian involvement is real, we will probably hear more about it eventually.
What kind of Iranian/Soviet torpedo leaves a house-size boulder embedded in the hull? No dark Shiite machinations here. My money’s on a plain and simple screw-up.
Oh, and by the way, Kilo is a class of SUBMARINE.
Often times there are multiple mistakes that converge or cascade in a domino effect that ends in a disaster.
What in the world are tourists doing cruising around the freezing and incredibly windy Mediterranean in the Winter?
For the same reason they come to Alaska in April and early May or late September and early October; it is a Helluva lot cheaper than comimg mid-summer. Though if you don’t mind wearing a coat, May is a good time to come to Alaska since it tends to be clear and dry – but it can be what most people consider cold.
People brave the cold of Alaska to see glaciers and wildlife; there is no equivalent of that in the Med. During the winter you can barely ride a motorcycle on the hillside of a Greek island without being blown over and even in summer, wind that is calm on that island is terrific just off the island.
It is very cold in Cairo right now, 45 at night. How frickin’ cold is it on the deck of a cruise ship out in the Med far North? They must be ignorant of Med weather or nuts.
Given that illegal aliens pay about 5 grand to be brought to Italy, one can’t help wonder if the Captain had some illegal cargo from Malta. 20 people, 100 grand and unscheduled night maneuvers close in to shore in the wind are tricky.
Dude, eveni n cold weather there’s food to be eaten, wine to be drunk, and you can wear a coat to look at the ruins.
Yeah, I saw enough of tourists when I lived in Juneau, five or six Panamax ships a day at midsummer, to conclude that there is an inverse relation between a person’s distance from home and their IQ. Wish I had a dollar for every passenger on my boat in salt water that looked around at the mountains around JNU and asked me how far above sea level we were.
Well, yes. But how high were they?
I didn’t have a documented vessel and liquor licenses under State law are too difficult and expensive to get, so I couldn’t legally serve. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t sometimes share a bit with my guests. That said, they were on vacation, for many the vacation of their lifetime dream so lots of them, especially on afternoon trips were WELL lubricated when they came aboard. Those never bothered me and usually tipped well, especially if you brought out the “grog ration” when you tied up. The ones that I always worried about were the twenty-somethings that you knew were holding. I had all the right zero tolerance signs up, but the Coast Guard just loves to board charter boats and has NO sporting nature about pax with pot. Never happened to me, but I had an acquaintance whose boat was seized because a guest was holding and he had the Devil’s own time getting his boat back; cost him a lot of money in fines and legal fees.
what deck were they on?
One of mine is how in the world a modern cruise ship, presumably with more sophisticated electronic gear that was available on my sailboat nearly a decade ago, could have got so dangerously close to land without correcting course to avoid running aground.
They asked much the same question in 1956, when the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm collided in mid-ocean. Both had radar. Shit happens.
Or to put it another way, the more idiot-proof we make things, the more resourceful the idiots get.
Or yet another way…
Nothing is idiot-proof, given the proper degree of idiot.
When you do something every day, even a very difficult and hazardous something, it just becomes another mindless drive to work.
And most accidents occur close to home, probably because people are so used to the roads that they don’t pay proper attention.
The more idiot-proof you make things, the safer the people in charge feel and the less attention they pay to what’s going on.
There’s a classic quote by Rich Cook at goes, “Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”
It is rather like the inverse square law. The more idiot proof you make it only means that somewhere, and soon, there will emerge a better idiot.
The CNN article I linked has been updated to report that
Whether this is dispositive evidence that the Four Winds story is wrong is an interesting question. Sometimes prosecutors are well informed and provide reliable information, sometimes not.
The dispositve proof the four winds story is wrong is the photograph of the boulder sticking in the hull.
I dunno that it’s dispositive. If he were holed by an explosion, internal or external, running it hard aground close to shore might well be a good decision rather than dealing with a sinking ship in deep water further offshore. That said, my money is on rectocranialitis.
“Rectocranialitis.” I like that word. May I borrow it? Please?
All yours! I didn’t even ask when I stole it somewhere.
There are undoubtedly rocks protruding through the hulls of the ships at the bottom of Ironbottom Sound, but I wouldn’t bet on that being the cause of their sinking.
Odds are it was human failure, but even if it weren’t, we’d only know otherwise if the Iranians made a very public, in English, claim of responsibility.
Iran had nothing to do with this. It hit an uncharted rock. there are photos with the rock embedded in the hull below waterline.
This is why I don’t do cruise ships. Sure, they are safe. But I prefer to be at the helm, or at least standing watch, when navigating inlets. People think cruises are a floating luxury land, but the sea is a an unforgiving place. Uncharted shoals exist all around the globe.
I am reminded of a persistant South Pacific islander who badgered Captain James Cook about where he was going to be buried. In the island culture, knowing where you would be buried was as important as knowing where you lived. Cook explained to him – those who go to sea know not where they will be buried. The modern cruise industry does its best to push that reality into the deep past. Sure, cruise liners are safe by 1770 standards. But the sea occassionally snatches up even the most bold and modern.
I’ve looked at the big gash in the hull that you mention, and that’s certainly possible. However, for a ship to embed a rock of that size in her hull that close to her waterline seems rather odd, unless she was going much faster, much closer to land or in uncharted waters and with nobody paying attention than seems probable. Unless, of course, she had a good reason.
Cruise ships generally avoid uncharted waters as well as charted waters more shallow than their drafts permit. Waters frequented by large cruise ships are generally well charted and big rocks neither appear mysteriously nor ordinarily escape the notice of the people paid to update the charts. The frequently updated charts appear on bridge GPS displays, commonly along with real-time radar overlays, to help avoid similar occurrences. I have sailed in Caribbean waters honestly shown on the charts as “uncharted” and it was then necessary to be much more careful than elsewhere, with someone at the bow to advise, loudly and promptly, of waves breaking over submerged rocks (my boat drew only six feet). There are probably similar waters in the Med as well. I suspect that large cruise ships avoid them. So maybe
idiocylack of situational awareness is the simplest and best explanation.Years ago, I crewed in a sailboat race from Annapolis to Oxford, Maryland. The entrance to the channel going into Oxford has very shallow water to port (clearly shown not only on the charts but obvious from the color of the water) and I recall gleefully waiving at a Naval Academy sailboat solidly stuck in the soft and forgiving mud there. Unsportsmanlike, of course, but I often wondered whether the cadet captain of that beautiful but unfortunate boat might someday achieve flag rank.
In the story I told above about the grounding of the M/V LeConte, the last words from the Master before the grounding were, “there’s a lot of kelp in this water.” Well, maybe not all the kelp in Southeast Alaska has rocks in it, but most of it surely does. I wouldn’t put my 30 footer with two and a half feet of draft in water with a lot of kelp in it, a 235 footer with a bunch of passengers and a twenty-odd foot draft had no business being near that areal.
I don’t think it’s a sub. Some other British paper mentioned that the way these diesel-electric ships are wired, an electrical surge can happen under certain circumstances, that can take the propulsion system down. That would dovetail with the announcement about an electrical problem shortly before the incident, and explain why they may have lost thrust. And once one of those beasts loses thrusts, it loses steering; they don’t have a rudder, they have electric motor pods. An electrical problem with the propulsion system could explain everything.
Of course, if it happened in open water, they’d have been safe, but adrift.
Skipper arrested: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/14/us-italy-ship-shore-idUSTRE80D0S020120114
Plus, this story bears out my earlier theory that skipper knew something bad had happened and maneuvered closer to shore in order to facilitate a rescue. This secondary maneuvering, very close to shore, could explain rock, or not…just saying.
As far as the prospect of a “kilo torpedo” from an Irains Kilo boat….what sort of NATO naval activity in the area?
Lockheed Orions sortying out of bases and surface units patrolling would be evidence of precauionary activity.
The next question would be if contact and an attack made….would we know?
Licensed Master and Retired USN myself. Have to agree with Art Chance @ 1 that even with the latest DGPS electronic charting systems onboard modern cruise ships, FUBARS still occur. Modern ships usually cruise with 3 people on navigational watch. Mate on Watch, AB on the helm (although the auto-pilot is usually on), and a lookout (AB or OS). In my Navy days, I ran across more than one commercial vessel where the bridge navigational watch was apparantly asleep. SEA STORY: Had one merchant ship steam right through a CVBG that was steaming in formation, she never changed course or answered fantic bridge-to-bridge hails….and she was the freaking give-way vessel. She was CBDR to the carrier the entire time and surely scared the crap out of them.
Looking at the rock on the port-side, she looks like she hit it at speed > 10 kts. Freaking broke the rock off and embedded it in the hull. But looking at where she ran aground (damn near drove the ship into a lighthouse), I bet the starboard side has a bigger hole which accounts for the list to starboard.
Interesting that there did not seem to be any bunker fuel in the water.
Looks like a major navigational error to me.
FYI: Modern torps usually break ships backs by exploding underneath and creating an air-gap. Doubt she was hit by one. No one would have got off.
In my limited experience with big commercial vessels – I usually gave them a wide berth – I concluded that they were worse than even weekend recreational boaters about the “Rule of Gross Tonnage;” they didn’t give a damn about the rules because they were big. That said, it is hard to envision them being dumb and arrogant enough to just motor right through a carrier battle group that had the right of way, but I don’t dismiss it; you can’t fix stupid, and there’s a lot of stupid out there.
Agree with you 100% Tommy – no way was this a torpedo attack.
That pretty white hull would have been shattered by contact with any modern torpedo. If you were going to sink a ship, why would you hit it so close to shore? Just a few more miles out, you have a major sinking and major loss of life. The 3 so far confirmed dead and the 70 missing are tragic, but the world would certainly sit up and take notice if 4000+ were killed.
For such relevance if any that it may have, and regardless of the flag under which the Costa Concordia sailed, she is owned by a company based in and associated with the United States.
Iran recently threatened to retaliate against the U.S. and the west in general for, among other things, the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
I wonder if the sound of a torpedo hitting a boat is significantly different from that of a boat hitting a rock. I would think the two sounds are different as night and day. And wouldn’t there be some survivor accounts of an explosion?
Seems to me a grounding is much more likely explanation. Even the best-mapped waters can bring surprises. My grandfather captained the big ore carriers on the Great Lakes (think Edmund Fitzgerald). He said Lake Erie was the most treacherous of the five because of its shallowness and extremely rocky floor. Sailing it is like threading a needle. I’m guessing the Italian coastline is no cakewalk, either.
This link source is notoriously wrong about everything. Just delete the quote even if you leave the link for reference.
Sorcha Faal prank reports are Such A Fail. It’s more like Weekly World News than something from Debka or Obama.
Imagine someone who aspires to be a fiction writer, but decides to write the fiction in real time as exclusive intel.
Look at the “About” section on the Four Winds sight.
The Captain has stated he believes the Navigation Equipment was “malfunctioning.”
Well yes, if said equipment includes Captain and Crew.
(“I beeped the horn, but the rock didn’t get out of the way”)
Torpedo? No. A torpedo hit sounds and feels nothing like hitting a rock.
Search the net (or even just YouTube) to see videos of what a torpedo does.
Perhaps before reposting from Four Winds you should have taken a closer look at other materials on the same site, e.g. “The Jewish hand behind Internet – Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, MySpace, eBay…” Does this sound like a reliable source?
The most likely cause is crew screwup. If there was an external cause, I’d wager it was interference with the navigation signals. GPS isn’t that hard to jam. The Iranians claim they brought down that reconnaissance UAV by messing with the navigation signals. While keeping in mind that the Iranians have frequently been known to lie, if they wanted to mess with the ship, that’d be the way to go and much, much harder to prove.
But still, crew screwup is a more likely scenario.
Wow! The MSM is directly reading Russian naval communications? How did they break the crypto? Where were these wizards at Pearl Harbor?
(I’m assuming the Russians routinely encrypt their traffic, moreso if it were a “flash” message of high importance sent to the uppermost echelons. Also, “flash” is a US term; I wouldn’t assume the Russians use our terminology.)
If computed draft exceeds charted depth then you are most assuredly aground.
The story of the merchant plowing through the CVBG I have heard of before. One story is that the COLREGS (International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea) were changed to require a “proper” (trained human) lookout after one Ship’s Master defended himself by claiming that his dog was the lookout but that a window blew shut so he never heard the beast bark.
Just remember the last line of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, “Worse things happen at sea.”
BS site. I can’t believe PJ media even linked it.