How a Modern Ship Sinks: Costa Concordia, 13 Years Later
Elliott Carbonneau, Staff Writer
January 30, 2025
13 years ago from Monday, January 13th, a cruise ship named Costa Concordia struck a rock and began taking on water, eventually rolling over on its side and sinking.
The disaster cost 30 lives and around 2 billion dollars in cleanup, and it became one of the most infamous shipping disasters, right behind the RMS Titanic.
You may be wondering, how does a modern ship end up in this situation? Have we learned nothing in the 100 years since accidents like the aforementioned Titanic?
In this article, I will go over the events of the night and explain why this ship rolled over.
First, we need some background information on the Costa Concordia to fully understand what happened.
The Costa Concordia was owned by the Italian cruise line Costa Cruises, which is a subsidiary of the very large Carnival Cruise Line.
The ship was designed and built in 2004, was 952 feet long, and was designed with over 1,500 cabins. It featured a spa, one of the world’s largest exercise facilities to be placed into a cruise ship, five restaurants, a theater, 13 bars, and even a poolside movie theater on deck.
Crucially, however, the bottom decks were divided up into watertight compartments, which much like on the Titanic were used to compartmentalize flooding and keep the ship afloat in the event of one or two watertight compartments completely flooding.
The ship also featured plenty of lifeboats for all the passengers onboard, and in the event of an evacuation, all passengers would’ve been able to escape safely, a harsh lesson learnt from the Titanic disaster a century before.
By all accounts, Costa Concordia, much like Titanic, was the newest and seemingly safest vessel afloat at the time and was the pinnacle of modern shipping.
However, this soon would all change, and a subsequent disaster would shock the cruise industry, as well as the rest of the world…
On January 13th, 2012, the Costa Concordia was in its 7th year of operation and had just begun the first leg of a cruise that was chartered around the Mediterranean Sea. That night, the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, intentionally diverted the ship off its planned course to perform what is known as a “Sail-by Salute” to the residents and sailors of the Greek Island, “Isola del Giglio.” But due to a miscommunication at the bridge, the ship was brought too close to the shore.
This mistake would prove to be deadly, when at approximately 9:45 pm, the ship struck an underwater reef, which tore open three watertight compartments along the port (left) side of the ship.
The compartments quickly filled with water, and the ship immediately was plunged into blackness, as the electrical generators became submerged. The ship’s engines were also flooded, meaning that the ship was now unable to move.
Suddenly, the emergency lights came on, and the disaster began.
Passengers immediately began to panic and rush down to the lifeboats, only to be sent back to their lounges by crew who told them that there was no danger, and that there was currently an electrical problem.
Eventually, however, it became more apparent that something was very wrong with the ship, as it began leaning, or listing over to the starboard (right) side due to the water coming into the ship. The captain finally gave out a general alarm, and the evacuation of the ship began.
The crew had made no attempt to contact the local coast guard for help, and in fact had mostly abandoned their posts as the ship began to sink.
Likely the most shameful action was that of the captain, who while hundreds were still on his sinking ship, had leaped into a lifeboat along with several other senior crew members, and abandoned the Concordia, eventually making it to shore, where he was questioned and maligned for abandoning his ship.
While the Concordia had enough lifeboats for everyone onboard, only around half of the lifeboats could be launched. This was because as the ship began to sink, the listing became too great for lifeboats on the Port side of the ship to be launched, leaving hundreds of people stranded on board, who were later evacuated by the coast guard off the side of the ship.
Eventually, the ship came to rest on its Starboard (Right) side in the shallow waters of the bay. Tragically, in the confusion and panic, 30 people lost their lives, most in elevators, or on lower decks as the ship rolled over.By daybreak, the ship was deemed a total loss by the cruise line, and now the question came up, “What next?”Clearly, the massive cruise ship could not simply rot away in the center of a busy port. Thus, an 800 million dollar salvage operation went underway.First, the Concordia was emptied of all fuel to prevent the oil from escaping out of the ship and polluting the waters around the island. Next, portions of the ship, including the funnel and various deck equipment, were removed from the ship in order to make it less top-heavy.
Then, an underwater platform was placed underneath the resting ship to hold the ship in place once it turned back upright.
Finally, massive buoyancy tanks were fitted to each side of the hull in order to refloat the ship.
Finally, after resting on its side for almost two whole years, the ship was brought back upright, and was floated high enough for photographers to go inside of the ship and photograph what was left of the interiors.
The wreck was floated off to Genoa, Italy to be broken apart for scrap metal.
Who was to blame? This is the question that many people asked in the immediate aftermath of the sinking, and what the official inquiry found was quite disturbing.
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Not only had the captain shown disregard for protocall by bringing his ship closer to the island than was originally charted, he was also absent and was a very weak captain in the event of the emergency. Not only had he refused to call for help, he had also deliberately lied to the coast guard, telling them that the incident aboard was simply “a blackout” when in reality he had known that his ship was sinking.
He failed to immediately send out a general alarm once he had learned of the situation, a decision which led to confusion and likely to the deaths of several victims of the sinking.
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And after all of that, while hundreds of people were still aboard his ship, he had stepped into a lifeboat, headed to shore, and found a house to stay in, all while his passengers were in a fight for survival.
He was found guilty for the disaster, and was sentenced to 16 years in prison, which he is still serving to this day.
The Concordia was, and many other modern cruise ships today are ironically deemed “Practically Unsinkable”. And yet it shows time, and time again in history that when you become too comfortable with a technology, human error will come once again to prove that there truly is no such thing as an “Unsinkable” ship.
