One week after the stricken cruise liner the Costa Concordia was righted in a spectacular salvage operation, the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, was in court in Grosseto, Tuscany yesterday.
Controversially Capt. Schettino argued that if his helmsman had carried out his instructions properly then the ship would not have collided with rocks off the island of Giglio.
Capt Schettino (52) stands accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship, following the January 13th, 2012 disaster which saw the Concordia run aground off the island of Giglio, with the loss of 32 lives.
For much of the last year, Schettino’s defence team has attempted to argue that responsibility for the tragedy cannot be attributed to the captain alone.
Giving evidence in Grosseto’s “Moderno” theatre, converted into a courtroom because of the huge media interest and the numbers of lawyers involved, Capt. Schettino himself pursued this same line of defence yesterday, saying:
“If the helmsman had not made that mistake, by failing to steer the rudders to the left, then there would never have been that collision…”
That line of defence, however, appeared to be contradicted by the evidence of maritime expert, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, head of a team which has examined the ship’s black box.
In court yesterday he said that given the speed at which the ship was travelling, its proximity to the coast and the conditions at sea, a collision was inevitable. Admiral Dragone said that the helmsman, Indonesian Jacob Rusli Bin, had indeed delayed carrying out his orders, but only by 13 seconds, adding that the collision would have happened in any case.
The Schettino defence also asked the court yesterday to be allowed to send their own team of experts onto the Concordia, now the ship has been righted.
In particular, the defence wishes to establish if the failure of an emergency electricity generator interfered with the ship’s steering, the launching mechanisms of the lifeboats and with the water pumps.
Admiral Dragone’s evidence also appeared to contradict Schettino’s claim that his handling of the ship, by steering her close to land, had limited the loss of life. Admiral Dragone said that following the collision, the ship was out of control and “ungovernable”, implying that ship had run herself aground.
The trial resumes today.