The Doomed Costa Concordia: A Maritime Disaster that Was Waiting to Happen

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At about 10:30 p.m., the officers mutinied on the bridge of the capsizing Concordia. Apparently only one officer, a Greek, was still on Schettino's side. The others decided that Roberto Bosio, a captain from Liguria and who was on board as a guest, would assume command of the ship. Bosio, anxious to begin the evacuation immediately, started issuing orders.

The loudspeakers finally sounded the emergency alarm at 10:58 p.m., triggering a panic among the passengers. "People were screaming and pushing and shoving," says retiree Karlheinz Knapp. He lost balance while on his crutches, and suddenly he found himself in the air between the railing and a lifeboat. Then he fell into the boat. Someone kicked him in the head, and finally the boat took off.

The first passengers soon landed on the island's jetty. Some women were still wearing the evening dresses and high-heeled shoes they had worn to dinner. Men pulled out digital cameras from their fanny packs and took snapshots of each other in their life vests.

Taking the Tiller

Giovanni Rossi, the man who had been looking forward to thunderstorms when the Concordia went aground, was standing on the pier, staring incredulously at the wreck. He and Pellegrini, the deputy mayor, jumped into the first lifeboat that arrived. The name, "Concordia 1," was painted on the bow. It was a white boat with a yellow superstructure.

Two kitchen helpers from the cruise ship were steering the lifeboat. They are among the low-wage workers from developing countries that cruise ship guests rarely see, because they are supposed to remain as invisible as possible while they do their jobs.

Of course, the two kitchen helpers had never steered a boat in their lives, which Pellegrini recognized immediately. He took the tiller and, together with Rossi and the kitchen helpers, drove the boat back out to the wreck. When they reached the Concordia after a few minutes, Pellegrini moored the boat to ropes dangling from the side of the ship. People were gathering above, getting into the boats.

Pellegrini and his friend Rossi escorted their first 40 passengers to the safety of the harbor, where half of the island's residents had already gathered. The women brought hot tea in thermos bottles, and the men brought warm blankets.

'Go Aboard, Damn It'

Captain Schettino also fled from the half-sunken ship. He would claim differently later on, because, under the code of honor, a captain should always be the last person to leave his ship. Schettino said that while helping passengers lower a lifeboat into the water, he slipped and fell into the boat.

He was still carrying his mobile phone. It rang, and Gregorio de Falco from the harbor authority in Livorno was on the other end. The telephone call has the potential to go down in seafaring history.

De Falco: "Hello. Hello."

Schettino: "Good evening, captain."

De Falco: "Hello, I'm de Falco, from Livorno. I am speaking with the commander?"

Schettino: "I'm Commander Schettino."

De Falco: "Listen Schettino, there are people trapped aboard, you go with your lifeboat under the prow of the ship on the port side and you go aboard the ship using the rope ladder. You go aboard and you tell me how many people there are. Is it clear? (…)"

Schettino: "So, I'll tell you something..."

(…)

De Falco: "Listen, there are people going down from the prow using the rope ladder; you take that rope ladder on the opposite side, you go aboard and you tell me the number of people and what they have on board. Is that clear? You tell me whether there are children, women or people needing assistance. And you tell me the number of each of these categories. Is that clear? Schettino, maybe you saved yourself from the sea, but I'll make you pay for sure. Go aboard, damn it."

Of course, Schettino did not go on board.

Scrambling for Spots

When hardly any lifeboats were arriving in the small harbor anymore, Pellegrini sensed that something was wrong. Because of the angle of the ship, which was tilting more and more to the side, the remaining lifeboats were apparently stuck in their davits. He saw people scrambling for the last few spots, and he heard them screaming.

He climbed the pilot ladder up the ship's side. On board, passengers were running around in a panic and children were getting in the way. Pellegrini still didn't see any officers. He walked around and shouted: "Women and children first, all in a row, hold each other's hands." Then he helped the desperate passengers down to where Rossi was waiting on board a lifeboat below.

There were helicopters hovering above the ship, piloted by members of de Falco's team. At least one helicopter had a night vision camera on board. The grainy images would later reveal how risky Pellegrini's rescue effort was. The passengers looked like a column of ants as they lowered themselves down the sloping side of the ship on a safety rope. Pellegrini, standing at the top, practically had to push some of the passengers down the rope, into Rossi's arms.

There was another hero in the chaos of the capsizing ship. Giuseppe Girolamo, a 30-year-old Italian, worked for Costa as a musician. Girolamo looks like the rock star he once wanted to become, with his wild-looking shoulder-length hair, beard and dark eyes. He was wearing his "Hard Rock Café" T-shirt on that evening.

Girolamo was normally a bass player, but on board he played drums in a band called Dee Dee Smith. He made it to one of the lifeboats when the Costa Concordia capsized. But then someone handed a frightened child into the boat, and Girolamo gave the child his spot. The last people who saw him alive were the shivering passengers, as they looked back at him from the lifeboat.

Pitch Black

Shortly after midnight, the human chain on the side of the ship, which was almost horizontal by then, began to thin out. Most passengers had already made it to safety, but Pellegrini feared that the ship was about to sink altogether.

He grabbed a young doctor, the only crew member who helped him. The two men tried to reach the other side, which was now under water. They searched the corridors, standing almost vertically on the walls. Pellegrini found a megaphone and shouted into the darkness: "Is there anyone still there? Everyone off the ship!"

Two women shouted from a corridor in the middle of the ship. Pellegrini threw a rope into the corridor, which was now a pitch-black shaft. The women managed to grab the rope and Pellegrini pulled them up. They were completely soaked and said that they had been stuck between floating pieces of furniture. The last person he was able to pull up was a Peruvian woman who had worked as a bartender in one of the restaurants. Together, Pellegrini and the woman slid along the steel panels of the hulls, stumbling over each other and grabbing onto ropes to avoid being blown off the ship by the icy wind.

Pellegrini, his hands bloody by now, cut the tarps on the lifeboats into strips so that the shivering passengers could cover themselves. While still out at the wreck, he let them use his mobile phone so that they could call relatives in Great Britain, Germany and the United States to tell them that they were still alive.

'Like a Beaten Dog'

Frankfurt retiree Karlheinz Knapp and his wife were already in safety by then. They were given shelter in the local church, surrounded by 700 passengers and crewmembers recovering from the shock. Some who had fallen into the water had covered themselves in the altar boys' robes, and children were sleeping on the floor. "Somehow you manage to keep on functioning. Being scared to death like that releases unimagined strength," says Knapp.

Schettino also made it to land safely. According to a taxi driver who says that he took the captain to a hotel on Saturday morning, Schettino asked him where he could buy socks. "He looked like a beaten dog, cold and scared."

At the end of last week, Schettino was under house arrest at his home in Meta di Sorrento. The court did not consider him to be a flight risk. But the public prosecutor in Grosseto would prefer to lock up "Capitano Dilettante," the derogatory nickname the Italian press has given Schettino. The captain could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for offenses including negligent homicide.

At some point Schettino called his mother to tell her that a tragedy had occurred. But that tragedy still isn't over, not by a long shot. The heavy fuel oil from his ship, for example, is a black substance full of carcinogens, phenols, heavy metals and sulfur compounds: the waste product from the production of diesel and gasoline. Refineries sell the material for much less than diesel, and the white dream ships burn this toxic waste at sea.

Thick as Honey

The Costa Concordia has about 2,400 tones of heavy fuel oil on board. The hazardous cargo threatens the conservation area around Giglio, which is also home to whales and dolphins. The oil has to be removed from the tanks in the Costa Concordia as quickly as possible. But at the current temperatures, heavy oil is as viscous as honey. The salvage company hired to pump out the oil will have to heat it to 45 to 50 degrees Celsius (113 to 123 degrees Fahrenheit) before it can begin pumping.

Rescue divers have been carefully making their way around the ship throughout the entire week. They reportedly found five bodies in a restaurant on Deck 4, floating in the water in sports coats, evening dresses and life vests. There was an evacuation assembly area nearby, but when the ship capsized, the restaurant was suddenly 20 meters beneath the surface.

What will happen to the wreck of the Concordia remains completely unclear. The shipping company is expected to submit a salvage plan as quickly as possible. In the ideal scenario, specialists could weld the tear in the ship's hull shut, because large sections of it are above the surface. Then they could try to upend the ship with balloons and cranes. If that worked, tugboats could possibly tow away the Concordia.

It's more likely that specialists will have to cut apart the ship with blowtorches in the waters off Giglio. It could take a long time. The wreck is still resting on an underwater ledge. But it keeps moving, slipping toward the open sea, centimeter by centimeter. A few meters farther along, there is a steep drop in the ocean floor, first to 70 meters and then to 90 meters. In a storm, the ship could slip off the ledge and sink completely.

Photos Everywhere

The mother of musician Girolamo, who gave up his spot on a lifeboat for a child, has come to the island. She has posted photos of her son everywhere, and asks that anyone who sees him should contact her.

Last week, the Knapps were safely back in Frankfurt. An employee with Costa Cruises has already called to tell them that they will be reimbursed for everything. And if they make up their minds by March 31, "we would also get a free cruise," says Angelika Knapp. "We will think about that in our own time." Five passengers who were sitting on the bus with them on the trip to Italy were still missing late last week.

And Indian national Kevin Rebello was still sitting in the Giglio harbor, waiting for the divers to find his brother Russell, who he hopes is still alive, somewhere in an air pocket beneath the deck of the Concordia. "Russell is athletic," says Rebello. "He is used to fasting." He keeps glancing at his mobile phone. "Maybe he'll call in a moment."

REPORTED BY MARKUS DEGGERICH, FIONA EHLERS, ÖZLEM GEZER, CLEMENS HÖGES, SIMONE KAISER AND JANKO TIETZ

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• Part 1: A Maritime Disaster that Was Waiting to Happen
• Part 2: 'We'll Sound the Siren for You'
• Part 3: 'People Were Screaming and Pushing'