Cruise disaster: ‘We heard a rumble, the ship tilted, the lights went off’

In agony with a broken leg, the crew member was trapped for more than 36 hours in icy water in one of the ship’s five restaurants, now semi-submerged and resembling a scene from the disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.

After the luxury cruise liner hit rocks off the coast of the Italian island of Giglio at 9:30pm on Friday, the cabin service director had stayed at his post to guide frightened passengers towards the lifeboats, but when at 10:15pm the vast vessel began to list badly he fell and broke his leg, then became trapped and forgotten in the ensuing panic. Yesterday, he became only the third person to be rescued from the stricken ship, after he was dramatically winched up into a rescue helicopter and flown to hospital in Tuscany. “I never lost hope of being saved,” said Mr Giampedroni, 57, but added that he had endured what was “a 36-hour nightmare”.

For the families of the 15 people still missing – nine passengers and six crew – the nightmare continued as teams of divers carried on with the painstaking work of searching the hundreds of submerged cabins in what the Italian coastguard described, referring to the sheer scale of the vessel, as akin to hunting through a “sunken town”.

Late on Saturday night, 24 hours after the disaster began, two South Korean honeymooners were rescued after Italian firemen heard their screams and spent 90 minutes freeing them from the wreckage of their cabin. The couple, both 29, who have not yet been named, said they had not seen or heard any other survivors during their 24-hour ordeal.

Yesterday afternoon, the bodies of two elderly men were recovered from the submerged restaurant, bringing the number so far confirmed dead to five. On Saturday, officials said two French passengers and a Peruvian crew member, Tomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza, 49, had died.

As coastguard boats bobbed beside the semi-submerged vessels and divers, in teams of 20 at a time, swam cautiously through sunken cabins, the full extent of the panic on Friday night was revealed by passengers and crew.

A picture emerged of a severe breakdown in communication and an abandonment of the gallantry of a bygone era as fathers ignored the rule of “women and children first” and fought for a place on lifeboats so as to stay with their families.

“We were giving priority to kids and women and trying to leave the men until last, but they were not accepting it because it was their families,” said Fabio Costa, a crew mate.

On Friday night many of the passengers had just settled down to a relaxed dinner when the first shock was felt.

“We heard a loud rumble, the glasses and plates fell from the tables, the ship tilted and the lights went off,” said Luciano Castro, an Italian, who had just begun a week-long cruise of the western Mediterranean on the floating resort that boasted seven restaurants, a dozen bars and the largest spa and biggest cinema ever built on a cruise ship.

The ship’s big state rooms and stairwells were quickly filled with frightened passengers. Crew members, few of whom knew the Italian spoken by the largest number of passengers – nearly 1,000 – struggled to contain the rising panic as the ship began to list alarmingly.

“At the end I got to the purser and stayed close to him,” said Eleanora Venti, one of the entertainment staff who was on board to look after young children. “I said to him: ‘I am 21 years old. If I am going to die you need to tell me now.’”

Cabin crew eventually began to gather people at meeting points and direct them towards lifeboats, but panic was spreading quickly among passengers.

“I can easily understand the comparisons to the film, how it must have been on the Titanic,” said Francesca Sinatra, an Italian passenger. “Panic creates disaster. There were people scrambling over each other, elderly people wetting themselves.”

As the ship listed heavily, it became very difficult to lower the packed lifeboats into the water and many frightened passengers were left waiting in cold weather for several hours before they were taken off the ship.

As delays continued and the crush built up in the lifeboats, many passengers decided to take their fate into their own hands and swim to shore.

“We were standing and the water started coming on my feet, and I said to my wife: ‘That’s it, we’re going,’” said Lawrence Davies, a passenger from South Africa.

Yet once in the cold water they faced a new danger as the enormous ship loomed above them, listing heavily. “I kept looking at the boat. It was coming down so I wanted to make sure I could get further away, so that if it comes it doesn’t trap us,” Mr Davies said. Eventually, they reached the island’s rocky shore and scrambled on to land, where residents waited with blankets and hot drinks.

At Mass yesterday morning in Giglio’s main church, which opened its doors to the evacuees on Friday night, altar boys and girls brought up to the altar a life vest, a rope, a rescue helmet, a plastic tarpaulin and some bread. Don Lorenzo, the parish priest, told the gathered faithful: “Our community, our island will never be the same.”