Cruise ship sinking: I fell into lifeboat, claims captain

THE captain of the stricken Italian cruise liner has told investigators he did not abandon ship but accidentally “fell into a lifeboat” when helping passengers after the Costa Concordia hit rocks and ran aground.

Francesco Schettino, 52, who is under house arrest after being detained on suspicion of multiple manslaughter and abandoning his vessel, told a hearing that he had been assisting passengers when the ship lurched, throwing him into a lifeboat.

He said: “The passengers were rushing all over the decks trying to scramble into the lifeboats. I didn’t even have a lifejacket because I had given it to one of the passengers. I was trying to get them into the lifeboats in an orderly fashion.

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“All of a sudden the boat listed between 60-70 degrees. I got trapped and ended up in one of the lifeboats. That’s why I was in there.”

Capt Schettino, who has been dubbed the “most hated man in Italy” for reportedly abandoning ship when there were still passengers and crew on board struggling to escape, told magistrates he had saved “thousands of lives” by steering the ship close to shore after rocks ripped a 160ft gash in its side.

Prosecutors said his explanation was “curious, to say the least”.

Italian media last night reported Capt Schettino told investigators, in a leaked interrogation transcript, that he had “ordered the turn too late” as the ship sailed close to the island.

The captain reportedly told the investigating judge that he had decided to sail close to Giglio to salute a former captain who had a home there.

He reportedly said: “I was navigating by sight because I knew the depths well and I had done this manoeuvre three or four times. But this time I ordered the turn too late and I ended up in water that was too shallow. I don’t know why it happened.”

The first victim from the Costa Concordia disaster was identified yesterday – a 38-year-old violinist from Hungary who had been working as an entertainer on the stricken cruise ship.

Sandor Feher’s body was found inside the wreck and identified by his mother, who had travelled to the Italian city of Grosseto, according to Hungary’s foreign ministry.

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The death toll from Friday’s disaster stands at 11. A German woman, Gertrud Goergens, who was listed among the missing has been located alive in Germany, bringing the number of people still unaccounted down to 21.

Capt Schettino’s actions were called into question after audio tapes of a conversation between him and a coastguard commander were made public. The commander, Captain Gregorio De Falco, has become a national hero for furiously ordering the ship’s captain back on board to oversee the rescue.

Yesterday, the recovery operation on board the sunken liner was halted when movement was detected. Coastguard commander Filippo Marini said: “As a precautionary measure, we stopped the operations, in order to verify the data we retrieved from our detectors, and understand, if there actually was a movement, how big this was.”

It is hoped that divers can resume their search for bodies today, although concerns have been raised that stormy seas forecast for the end of the week could dislodge the liner from its rock ledge and plunge it 100 metres to the seabed.

Italian prime minister Mario Monti offered his first comment on the disaster yesterday, saying it “could and should” have been avoided.

He thanked the residents of Giglio, which has a winter population of about 900, for opening their doors to the 4,200 refugees who struggled ashore.

He also acknowledged concerns about the 500,000 gallons of fuel still aboard the ship.

He said: “Everybody can be assured that the Italian authorities are both taking care of the prevention and limitation of any environmental negative implications of this accident.”

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Passengers claim crew members were ill-prepared. “The crew members had no specialised training – the security man doubled as the cook and bartender, so obviously they did not know what to do,” said Chilean passenger Claudia Fehlandt.