Captain Coward fled from sinking cruise liner Costa Concordia leaving 300 passengers and crew to their fate

Schettino (centre) faces 20 years in prison for his part in the maritime disaster off the island off Giglio. Others were also at fault, the report found

Three hundred passengers and crew were still on the sinking cruise ship Concordia as its captain made his escape, the official report on the tragedy has revealed.

Among other damning revelations in the 176-page dossier is that the coastguard were not alerted to the incident until they were phoned by a passenger’s mother.

Half an hour after the collision, Captain Francesco Schettino had yet to put out a distress signal.

Captain Francesco Schettino was at the command of the cruise liner in January 2012 when it hit rocks off the coast of Tuscany and sank, killing 32 people

Captain Francesco Schettino was at the command of the cruise liner in January 2012 when it hit rocks off the coast of Tuscany and sank, killing 32 people

But by this time a mother of one of the passengers had informed police of an accident, after receiving a call saying that the ship was in blackout, a ceiling had collapsed and those on board were putting on their life jackets.

Some 32 people died when the Costa Cruises liner ran aground off the Italian island of Giglio in January last year, hours after leaving Civitavecchia on the first leg of a cruise round the Mediterranean.

A catalogue of errors by 53-year-old Schettino are documented in the dossier into the disaster by the Italian maritime authorities.

The captain caused the collision by sailing too fast, too close to shore, and he was distracted by people who had no business on the bridge, it found.

He had failed to consult large-scale maps, and used the wrong landmark on the island to turn the ship. He then delayed sounding the general alarm, and when he did eventually speak to the coastguard, downplayed the seriousness of  the incident.

The report appears to demolish Schettino’s claim that he saved thousands of lives by steering the ship into shore, saying the crash caused the rudder to fail. Instead, a detailed chronology reveals how he left his 4,228 passengers to fend for themselves.

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Scorned Cruise Ship Captain Not Alone in History

The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia allegedly abandoned ship -- like many captains before him.

What will likely never be forgotten about the Italian cruise liner disaster is the quickness with which the captain of the Costa Concordia abandoned the sinking ship.

Considered one of the most infamous crimes in maritime law, Schettino's act of cowardice has many precedents in history.

Schettino may be a scorned captain today, but one of the most ignominious captains in history is Hugues de Chaumareys, captain of the French frigate Medusa.

On July 2, 1816, the Senegal-bound ship slammed into a reef. De Chaumareys, whose incompetence doomed the voyage, fled for the Medusa's lifeboats along with some upper class passengers and crew, while 147 people set afloat on a makeshift raft.

Initially towed behind the convoy of lifeboats, the raft was ordered cut free by de Chaumareys, who abandoned the passengers to a gruesome fate of murder and cannibalism.

When the raft floated to shore 13 days later, only 15 of the 147 were alive. The story shocked Europe and was immortalized in Theodore Gericault's painting, "Raft of the Medusa," on display at the Louvre.

Another 19th century infamous episode, involving the steamship  S.S. Jeddah, became the inspiration for Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim."

In 1880, just like the fictional seaman Jim, captain Joseph Clark and crew abandoned the Jeddah, convinced that the leaking ship would have sunk. Nearly 1,000 passengers -- Muslim pilgrims on the way to Mecca -- were left to their fate in the middle of the Bay of Bengal.

Captain Clark reported his ship as lost, to then hear that she had reached port with all passengers alive, towed by another vessel.

On the other side of these tales of shame are numerous stories of nautical chivalry. One, involving the sinking of the troopship the HMS Birkenhead off the coast of South Africa in 1852, inspired the tradition of "women and children first."

The story goes that the soldiers' commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Seton, ordered his men to help get the women and children on board the three lifeboats as the Birkenhead began sinking in shark-infested waters. Not a single woman or child lost their life, thanks to the soldiers who stoically stood on deck as the ship went down. Their sacrifice has gone down in maritime history as the Birkenhead Drill -- women and children first.


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