Italy cruise ship Costa Concordia aground near Giglio

In following the thread I can't help but
think what this must have been like for
the passengers. Terrifying to say the
least.
I think it will be some time before we
really know what caused this to happen.
The fact the ship was off course by
2.5 miles certainly raises some questions.

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL
GPS: recalculating...but captain the GPS says turn hear....crrraaasssshhhhh

lol, so true. It reminds me somewhat of people listening to the GPS that says "TURN HERE", and they end up in rivers, or a railtrack, etc ......

but seriously, what type of nav-equipment does a cruise-ship like that have?

reply to post by Hellhound604


Here is a link, good photo essay

Bridge and Nav station

Looks like a 2 seater

dead scientist=sunk cruise liner i blame cyber attack to take it off corse just like the drone that got landed undameged
lets invade!

Originally posted by kawika
reply to post by Hellhound604

 

Here is a link, good photo essay

Bridge and Nav station

Looks like a 2 seater

thanks for that link .... Maybe too reliant on technology???? and then something went wrong with their nav-systems?

Satellite positioning systems such as GPS are critical to navigation today. "GPS uses a framework of 24 U.S. military satellites orbiting the earth, and can provide accurate positioning data up to 3 feet or 1 meter. The EXPLORER, of course, has multiple GPS systems plus another system called GLOBAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM, or GLONASS. The GLONASS system uses a network of 17 Russian satellites that use the same type of technology as the GPS satellites. The combination of both systems gives the EXPLORER unprecedented coverage and sub-meter accuracy. . . . The EXPLORER also has the ability to receive DIFFERENTIAL CORRECTION SIGNALS from both land-based beacon stations and the satellite-based INMARSAT system."

Another element I am thinking about is that whenever a large ship like this enters or leaves a port, the city will send out a local pilot to bring the ship in to prevent exactly what happened here. They are the ones who are meant to know where sandbars might be.
Now the captain Francesco Schettino is Italian from what I can work out, and the crash happened in Italy. But I assumed they would still bring a pilot in even if he is local, mainly for liability reasons.
Would love to hear what happened with the pilot if there even was one.

Can’t wait for updates into this.

Another thing I noticed in this picture (inside yellow circle) is that the ships stabilizers are out. These are long fins that are usually deploid out of the hull in deep and rough oceans to make the ride much smoother.
Now its possible they thought it may prevent it tipping over but a good captain would know that they are not going to help one bit. So it could be something, who knows at this stage

reply to post by BeforeTooLong


Very observant. Another lead, perhaps.

Now check this out:

An investigation by Italian prosecutors began yesterday. The consequences for a cruise industry worth billions of pounds could be devastating.

Investigators will want to know why the 1,000ft-long ship ran aground and how it began to sink in such a short time.

The Concordia was just two hours into its journey from a port near Rome to Savona in northern Italy when it crashed into rocks, ripping a 160ft-long hole in its hull, at about 9.30pm on Friday. It is not clear why the ship, with its sophisticated navigation equipment, did not detect the reef.

Before he was arrested, Captain Francesco Schettino said: “As we were navigating at cruise speed, we hit a rocky spur. According to the nautical chart, there should have been sufficient water underneath us...”

Full article

I feel so bad for each and every one of those passengers, I can't imagine the fear that took hold, elderly, families, romancing couples and groups of friends, fellow humans. So glad most got off eventually, the staff panicked and added to the mess by not having reacted faster instead of sending them to a cabin, gives me chills thinking about it.

I can’t help wondering if the story being fed about this has the seal approval, a strike in WWIII? ?

Lets ~see~ and hear the captains story,

Are ships susceptible to electronic override for a strike in that area? I recall in recent times, threats of invasion in Europe, attacks on the way kind of thing. Could an advanced army/nation posess, lets face it a pretty standard piece of technology to take control of a ship?

The official story looks like it’s been thrown together, interesting to follow the story thats being fed.

Either that or it's simply one drunk out of control captain,

Just saying!!

reply to post by pause4thought


They need to send out a ship to read the actual depth in that area. If there is a new rocky out crop in the channel then nature is to blame for the sinking. A continuous review of ocean channel depth will need to be the norm.

reply to post by lostinspace


You may well be onto something, strange though it sounds. I note with interest your earlier post here, which included the following:

If this crew was following the channel, just as the computers and GPS tell them to I suspect something had changed on the sea floor. I don’t believe the satellites can continuously read the sea floor depths. Ships with side-scan sonar are needed to map out these safe routes. The earth is constantly changing due to movement of magma under ground. This movement is usually slow but eventually any uplift in rock could impact large sea vessels like the one mentioned here. I wonder how long it had been since this sea floor channel was last measured with side-scan sonar. There is an area in eastern Oregon, USA that has been seeing an 9.8 inch (25 cm) uplift of earth since 1996. The area that is uplifting is 230-square-miles (600-square-kilometers)...

reply to post by pause4thought


As for sufficient depth, I found this image on google maps which shows very dark water near their path (yellow line) but it seems to close to rock to be a passage that they would consider.
The ship’s hull goes down 8.50 m (27 ft 11 in) in the water.


Another thing that I thought was weird was the direction they were heading and where they ended up crashing.

As you can see they have crashed on the opposite side of the bay

reply to post by BeforeTooLong


Good work. But my understanding is that the captain tried to reach harbour after the hull had been breached, possibly explaining why it ended up in an odd position:

It appears the ship steered toward shallow waters near the island of Giglio, but became unstable and capsized.

Source

2 survivors have been found in the hull of the ship according to CNN
Must have been hell for them......

Maybe it's just me but I can't see what the panic is all about. The ship took several hours to 'sink' and all the while the shore was only a few yards away.

Ok if you can't swim it could be worrying

but it's obvious to anyone the ship is sitting on the bottom and not going to go under, so just sit tight and you will be fine.

If you can swim just swim ashore.... no problem..... as some did.

For anybody trapped in the ship and don't realise how close to shore they are it would be worrying.

To compare it to Titanic as some are is just ridiculous imo.

The captain of the ill-fated vessel, which turned over on its side after the grounding, was arrested late Saturday and was being investigated for abandoning ship and manslaughter, a local prosecutor said.

With perhaps up to 50 people unaccounted for, divers suspended their efforts at dark, with plans to resume the search in the azure waters off the island of Giglio at dawn Sunday.
www.cnn.com...

The captain is in jail!!

I wonder why jail i could see fired
for sure this cruise liner company
is going to be out billions.

To arrest him before the investigation seems like
damage control..

reply to post by bigyin


There is clearly some hype over the scale of the rescue. Yet big questions remain over how this could have occurred.

I am also under the impression those from previous generations faced such situations with greater dignity, behaving in a far more orderly fashion, with the men generally standing back, doing everything possible to secure the safety of children and women before considering themselves.

bigyin, go back and look at the pics it was under water, totslly tipped over

Originally posted by kawika
A symptom of the times. They use inexperienced people, because they work cheap. They do little or no training, because it is too expensive, and then wonder why these things happen.

They also use auto pilots

Autopilot sends cruise ship passengers flying

The U.S. Coast Guard is evaluating the need for guidelines governing the use of autopilots following an incident aboard the cruise ship Norwegian Sky that sent passengers and objects flying.

Source

Autopilot Error Suspected In Tilting Of Cruise Ship

PORT CANAVERAL — A glitch in the autopilot system on the Crown Princess likely caused the month-old cruise ship to tilt harshly to one side, injuring 240 passengers, marine experts said Wednesday.

articles.sun-sentinel.com...

Did Carnival's Ecstasy Cruise Ship Almost Hit A Sand Bar?

There was a fire drill that required some and a briefing about departure that required some of them schedualed at the same time. I believe there was nobody at the helm. One passenger said the buoy marked a popular scubba diving area that he had been to in the past. I think they are covering up the fact that the auto pilot was attempting to keep us from running aground.

www.cruiselawnews.com...

reply to post by zorgon


Yup, that was probably a big part of it. Way too close to land to use the autopilot.

In the old days, when we see deep water on the chart, but the fathometer says the water is getting shallow we stop. Because we know, the reason is not because the chart is wrong. Not because the sea bottom has changed.

It is because NAV screwed up and we are not where she thinks we are. Evidently now NAV is not a human officer but a machine that sounds like Majel Barrett. I call my GPS, "Majel" when I yell at her.

Very easy to be in the wrong place at sea.

Sailing a small sailboat, there has been a danger of containers that fall off ships. You know those truck sized container things they use to ship stuff from China to Wal-mart. Used to be the ones with TV sets or computer monitors would float, just below the surface. Can not see it, hit it with a little 30 or 40 foot sailboat and it takes the keel right off. Shipping container danger link

Here's a little something interesting that I've found...

This is not the first accident this ship has been in.

On 22 November 2008, the Costa Concordia suffered damage to her bow when high winds over the Sicilian city of Palermo pushed the ship alongside its dock. There were no injuries and repairs started soon after.

en.wikipedia.org...

Could the owners be trying to recoup lost money or is this a genuine accident? Seeing as it is the first ship of its class, you'd think it obvious that it was the oldest and most worn in comparison to its family;

She was the first ship in the Concordia class, with sisters Costa Serena, Costa Pacifica, Costa Favolosa, Costa Fascinosa and Carnival Splendor built for Carnival Cruise Lines. Costa Concordia entered service in July 2006 and was the largest ship to be built in Italy, at 114,500 GT.

Cut down the dead wood to make way for the new, as they say.