Costa Concordia Trial

[Paul Racine]

Even though it is early days in the trial of the captain of the Costa Concordia I would like to open a discussion and see where it leads us.
The first major piece coming out of the trial is the assertion by Captain Schettino that the helmsman is to blame for not reacting promptly to his command and that if he had, there would have been no collision with the underwater shelf.
I know that when I was steering every command given by a bridge officer or pilot had to be immediately repeated by the helmsman. This is one of the most basic rules of steering procedure and was drilled into me from the first moment I stood behind the wheel. I find it very odd that after the captain gave a command and when there was no immediate response from the helmsman the captain didn’t react at once. These are the basics. You give a command, it comes right back at you. Any captain or officer on a well-managed bridge should have been aware of this. So where does the fault lie? With the captain or the helmsman? The other thing worth mentioning was that the helmsman was Indonesian and perhaps he didn’t understand the command. One has to ask the question how any master of a major multimillion dollar cruise ship could allow critical bridge personnel be in such a position of responsibility and not have a very good command of the language. But what was the language spoken on the bridge? English, Italian? Interesting! Something is not right about all of this.
I think that as the trial goes on there will be many more items brought up that will keep us all enthralled.

Paul in Montreal

[Des Taff Jenkins]

HI Paul.
It was good to see that they have hauled the Concordia off the rocks. I agree with you about the command situation
And possible language difficulties, but by all accounts of the Captains behavior after the collision seems to me that he is desperately trying to shed the blame.
Cheers Des

[happy daze john in oz]

The problem here is one of getting to the truth of the matter, not an easy task given the circumstances. If I recall the dear captian was having dinner at the time of the incident, if this is so how could he have given the helmsman orders? there was a pilot on the bridge as well as the officer of the watch then the question is how did such an event happen? is more to this than we are currently aware

[John Arton]

Regarding language on board, he has no real defence for saying the helmsman did not understand him.
ISM requires that their is a common language on board and throughout the company management.
This language has to be stated in the company's management policy and also in the bridge and engine room log books.
All Officers and ratings forming part of a navigational or engineering watch have to be capable of understanding orders in this language and undertake a test (MARLINS) to ensure that they are capable of doing so. It is the responsibility of the company's management to ensure that they only employ personnel in these positions who have passed this language test (spoken and written) and the person responsible for signing on the crew (the Master) has to check that all crew members in these positions hold such a certificate along with all the other STCW requirements.
I would suspect that once he realised the proximity to danger that the captain reverted to his native language or rushing his commands to make them unintelligible.
The voyage data recorder will either prove or disprove his defence when it is played back at the trial but the irrefutable fact is he took his extremely large vessel to close to a navigational hazard without having the correct scale chart for the area and also that despite having the latest navigational and manoeuvring aids he navigated carelessly and as such has to shoulder the blame for his errors.
Human error will never be eliminated and complacency is the biggest cause of human error. IVE DONE THIS MANY TIMES BEFORE AND IT ALWAYS HAS WORKED O.K. How many times have we heard that at sea.
Seamanship is all about using your knowledge to reduce the risk so that should an incident occur it can be fixed with a Band-Aid and does not require amputation or long spells in hospital, if you understand my meaning.
rgds
JA

[robpage]

At the end of it all there was a needless loss of life that was so easily avoidable , someone , who I assume was Captain Schettino , ordered the ship closer to the island than was safe to do so , That alone in my mind is a guilt that I for one would not wish to carry . In the time I spent at sea , fourteen years was on cross channel ferries , " Rock Hoppers " to many deep sea men . Every Navigator I have ever met avoided getting close to anything that looked like land unless they had to . What I think sad is this man seems to show no grief , he shows a defensive " who ME ! " attitude . I just wish he would be remorseful and tell us all what went wrong , I doubt he ever will >

[Chris Allman]

I cant remember but at one stage was it not said that the rock that the ship hit was uncharted also I seem to think (could be wrong) that the bridge voice recorder was not working at the time or was faulty.

The Captain is blaming the poor soul at the bottom of the heap who cannot really fight back having already been hung drawn and quartered as have the other bridge officers. I think that the case is seen to be proved against Schettino as the ship was not where it should have been, presumably with his permission, he was on the bridge at the time and giving orders, he abandoned ship when hundreds of crew and passengers were still aboard. Summary, he cocked up the manoeuvre, did a runner and is now trying to blame everyone and anyone else. Ah well, innocent until proved guilty, lets see what the courts think.

[j.sabourn]

Language.. I have been on ships where at least 50 per cent of the crew could not converse with each other. Most Masters or the O.O.W. who found that the helmsman was not steering properly in such a close quarter situation as happened in the case of the Costa Concordia would have taken the wheel himself. I have been on ships also where myself as mate have had to take on the pilotage steering with a certain foreign crew, as they were never taught how to steer, so really was not their fault, however they were very cheap. In any disasterous situation if you do not have adequate correspondence re passing on of orders and requests the danger has magnified out of all proportion. However I believe someone has mentioned that the vessel under discussion had a pilot on board, I never knew this, if this is true then he himself as a neutral witness should be able to show more light on the case than the present witnesses. Especially if he was on the Bridge at the time. John Sabourn

[alf corbyn]

i thought that he was to blame because he went the wrong side of the island.
no doubt he was taking his work home to show his mum

[robpage]

There is a very good analysis here

http://www.enav-international.com/wo...alaccident.pdf


I think there is a confusion between Pilot error and a pilot on board , I have trawled all the reports and can find no reference to a pilot but a lot to pilot ( age ) error , so I think reports of a Pilot on board are misread . The rock allegedly struck is charted at a minimum depth of 7. 3 metres and the Ships draught was over 8.2 . Even basic maths for engineers makes that an interference fit of ship and rock . The report above is detailed and interesting , I think it is a good summary .

[Lou Barron]

If there was a pilot on the bridge he woulld be the one to give orders to the helmsman ???