Italy’s once-luxurious Costa Concordia cruise ship embarked on its last voyage yesterday, as tug boats began towing it from island wreck site to scrapyard grave in one of the biggest salvage operations in maritime history.
Hundreds of onlookers on the Mediterranean island of Giglio, including survivors from the nighttime disaster two-and-a-half years ago that left 32 people dead, watched from shore as the crippled giant began its crawl up the coast.
“This is a big day for Giglio, but we’ll only be able to relax once it reaches Genoa,” Nick Sloane, the South African salvage master in charge of the operation, was quoted by Italian news agency Ansa as saying.
Photo: Reuters
The rusting liner, about twice the size of the Titanic and now hoisted afloat by massive air chambers, will be tugged to the port of Genoa in northwest Italy, where it will be dismantled and scrapped.
The massive operation — including a 17-person crew aboard the Concordia, a dozen vessels in a convoy and two tug boats pulling the wreckage at a speed of just two knots (3.7km) per hour — is expected to reach Genoa in four days, weather permitting.
Surviving passengers who returned to Tuscany’s Giglio island for the final farewell, said they were ready to put the nightmarish experience behind them.
“We hope that what we’ve kept inside us will depart when the boat departs. And that as it goes on its way, we can finally go on ours,” Anne Decre of the French Survivors’ Collective said, clutching the hand of friend Nicole Servel, whose husband died in the disaster.
On the evening of Jan. 13, 2012, the 4,229 passengers from 70 countries were settling into the first night of their cruise when their luxury liner struck a rocky outcrop off the Tuscan island of Giglio.
The biggest Italian passenger ship ever built — the length of three football fields — the Concordia boasted four swimming pools, tennis courts, 13 bars, a cinema and a casino.
The crash tore a massive gash in its hull and it veered sharply as the water poured in, eventually keeling over and sparking a panicky evacuation and, ultimately, dozens of deaths.
In what ship owner Costa Crociere estimates is a billion-euro salvage operation — excluding the cost of its disposal — the Costa Concordia was being towed by Dutch and Vanuatu-flagged boats while the flotilla carries divers, engineers, a medical team and environmental experts with it.
Sensors attached to the sides of the ship are to monitor for possible cracks in the crippled hull, while underwater cameras are to watch for debris washing out of the vessel amid fears toxic waste could spill into the sea.
The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, is on trial for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all the passengers had been evacuated — even though he has claimed that he fell into a lifeboat.
Dubbed Italy’s “most hated man” by the Italian media after the disaster, he found himself in hot water again on Tuesday after photographs emerged of him partying on the island of Ischia while the final preparations were being made to tow away the wreck.
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