cruise ship sinking 2013

'We all suffer from PTSD': 10 years after the Costa Concordia cruise disaster, memories remain

GIGLIO, Italy — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship's engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia's wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

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“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month  warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

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'We all suffer from PTSD'

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice," Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

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'We did something incredible'

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry's top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary," CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement."

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

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Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

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The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse

By: Becky Little

Updated: August 10, 2023 | Original: June 23, 2021

Many famous naval disasters happen far out at sea, but on January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia wrecked just off the coast of an Italian island in relatively shallow water. The avoidable disaster killed 32 people and seriously injured many others, and left investigators wondering: Why was the luxury cruise ship sailing so close to the shore in the first place?

During the ensuing trial, prosecutors came up with a tabloid-ready explanation : The married ship captain had sailed it so close to the island to impress a much younger Moldovan dancer with whom he was having an affair.

Whether or not Captain Francesco Schettino was trying to impress his girlfriend is debatable. (Schettino insisted the ship sailed close to shore to salute other mariners and give passengers a good view.) But whatever the reason for getting too close, the Italian courts found the captain, four crew members and one official from the ship’s company, Costa Crociere (part of Carnival Corporation), to be at fault for causing the disaster and preventing a safe evacuation. The wreck was not the fault of unexpected weather or ship malfunction—it was a disaster caused entirely by a series of human errors.

“At any time when you have an incident similar to Concordia, there is never…a single causal factor,” says Brad Schoenwald, a senior marine inspector at the United States Coast Guard. “It is generally a sequence of events, things that line up in a bad way that ultimately create that incident.”

Wrecking Near the Shore

The Concordia was supposed to take passengers on a seven-day Italian cruise from Civitavecchia to Savona. But when it deviated from its planned path to sail closer to the island of Giglio, the ship struck a reef known as the Scole Rocks. The impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger.

Sailing close to shore to give passengers a nice view or salute other sailors is known as a “sail-by,” and it’s unclear how often cruise ships perform these maneuvers. Some consider them to be dangerous deviations from planned routes. In its investigative report on the 2012 disaster, Italy’s Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports found that the Concordia “was sailing too close to the coastline, in a poorly lit shore area…at an unsafe distance at night time and at high speed (15.5 kts).”

In his trial, Captain Schettino blamed the shipwreck on Helmsman Jacob Rusli Bin, who he claimed reacted incorrectly to his order; and argued that if the helmsman had reacted correctly and quickly, the ship wouldn’t have wrecked. However, an Italian naval admiral testified in court that even though the helmsman was late in executing the captain’s orders, “the crash would’ve happened anyway.” (The helmsman was one of the four crew members convicted in court for contributing to the disaster.)

A Questionable Evacuation

Evidence introduced in Schettino’s trial suggests that the safety of his passengers and crew wasn’t his number one priority as he assessed the damage to the Concordia. The impact and water leakage caused an electrical blackout on the ship, and a recorded phone call with Costa Crociere’s crisis coordinator, Roberto Ferrarini, shows he tried to downplay and cover up his actions by saying the blackout was what actually caused the accident.

“I have made a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding,” Schettino told Ferrarini while the ship was sinking. “What should I say to the media?… To the port authorities I have said that we had…a blackout.” (Ferrarini was later convicted for contributing to the disaster by delaying rescue operations.)

Schettino also didn’t immediately alert the Italian Search and Rescue Authority about the accident. The impact on the Scole Rocks occurred at about 9:45 p.m. local time, and the first person to contact rescue officials about the ship was someone on the shore, according to the investigative report. Search and Rescue contacted the ship a few minutes after 10:00 p.m., but Schettino didn’t tell them what had happened for about 20 more minutes.

A little more than an hour after impact, the crew began to evacuate the ship. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats. Evacuation was made even more chaotic by the ship listing so far to starboard, making walking inside very difficult and lowering the lifeboats on one side, near to impossible. Making things worse, the crew had dropped the anchor incorrectly, causing the ship to flop over even more dramatically.

Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it!” —a recorded sound bite that turned into a T-shirt slogan in Italy.

Schettino argued that he fell into a lifeboat because of how the ship was listing to one side, but this argument proved unconvincing. In 2015, a court found Schettino guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship before passengers and crew were evacuated and lying to authorities about the disaster. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In addition to Schettino, Ferrarini and Rusli Bin, the other people who received convictions for their role in the disaster were Cabin Service Director Manrico Giampedroni, First Officer Ciro Ambrosio and Third Officer Silvia Coronica.

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10 years later, Costa Concordia survivors share their stories from doomed cruise ship

Ten years after the deadly Costa Concordia cruise line disaster in Italy, survivors still vividly remember scenes of chaos they say were like something straight out of the movie "Titanic."

NBC News correspondent Kelly Cobiella caught up with a group of survivors on TODAY Wednesday, a decade after they escaped a maritime disaster that claimed the lives of 32 people. The Italian cruise ship ran aground off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after striking an underground rock and capsizing.

"I think it’s the panic, the feeling of panic, is what’s carried through over 10 years," Ian Donoff, who was on the cruise with his wife Janice for their honeymoon, told Cobiella. "And it’s just as strong now."

More than 4,000 passengers and crew were on board when the ship crashed into rocks in the dark in the Mediterranean Sea, sending seawater rushing into the vessel as people scrambled for their lives.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had been performing a sail-past salute of Giglio when he steered the ship too close to the island and hit the jagged reef, opening a 230-foot gash in the side of the cruise liner.

Passengers struggled to escape in the darkness, clambering to get to the life boats. Alaska resident Nate Lukes was with his wife, Cary, and their four daughters aboard the ship and remembers the chaos that ensued as the ship started to sink.

"There was really a melee there is the best way to describe it," he told Cobiella. "It's very similar to the movie 'Titanic.' People were jumping onto the top of the lifeboats and pushing down women and children to try to get to them."

The lifeboats wouldn't drop down because the ship was tilted on its side, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on the side of the ship for hours in the cold. People were left to clamber down a rope ladder over a distance equivalent to 11 stories.

"Everybody was rushing for the lifeboats," Nate Lukes said. "I felt like (my daughters) were going to get trampled, and putting my arms around them and just holding them together and letting the sea of people go by us."

Schettino was convicted of multiple manslaughter as well as abandoning ship after leaving before all the passengers had reached safety. He is now serving a 16-year prison sentence .

It took nearly two years for the damaged ship to be raised from its side before it was towed away to be scrapped.

The calamity caused changes in the cruise industry like carrying more lifejackets and holding emergency drills before leaving port.

A decade after that harrowing night, the survivors are grateful to have made it out alive. None of the survivors who spoke with Cobiella have been on a cruise since that day.

"I said that if we survive this, then our marriage will have to survive forever," Ian Donoff said.

Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here! ) that brings the day's news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and a daily delight right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else. 

10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster is still vivid for survivors

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Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio . But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises , regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

A dozen passengers on cruise ship test positive for coronavirus

The passengers, whose infections were found through random testing, were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, according to the Port of San Francisco.

Jan. 7, 2022

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Assn., the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to the Associated Press that passenger and crew safety were the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

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Ten years on, Costa Concordia shipwreck still haunts survivors, islanders

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Philip Pullella reported from Rome; Additional reporting by Yara Nardi, writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

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Costa Concordia Victims' Last Moments Revealed

The story of a passenger who drowned after giving up his seat in a lifeboat features in a report released by prosecutors.

By Nick Pisa, Sky Reporter

Tuesday 5 March 2013 12:46, UK

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Details of the final moments of the 32 people who died in the Costa Concordia cruise ship tragedy have emerged in a prosecution report.

The 60-page document makes up the official request to have captain Francesco Schettino - who was in charge at the time - sent for trial.

He is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a disaster, failing to inform authorities of what had happened and abandoning ship while dozens of passengers were still onboard.

More than 4,000 passengers and crew were onboard the doomed Costa Concordia when it struck rocks after Schettino allegedly changed course in order to carry out a sail-by salute of a Mediterranean island to impress holidaymakers.

The 70-metre gash allowed water to pour in and the ship eventually capsized and came to rest on its side at a location known as Seagull Point, just outside the harbour on the island of Giglio in January last year, hours into a seven-day cruise.

The chaotic scenes of panic and disorganisation that gripped the ship as it started to sink are evident throughout the report.

In one part, Francecso Verusio relives the moment when the youngest victim of the disaster, five-year-old Dayana Arlotti, and her father, William, drowned.

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Mr Verusio wrote that they died ''because they were unable to find any space in a lifeboat on deck four, on the left-hand side, and they were then directed to the right-hand side by crew members on the same deck but as they were crossing the inside corridor ... they fell into a hole that had been created when the ship rolled onto its right side.

"They dropped into an area that was already flooded and they died from drowning," he added.

Other stories include that of bartender Erika Fani Soria Molinala, who fell from a lifeboat as it pulled away from the Concordia but as she was not wearing a lifejacket she was dragged underwater from the current created as the Concordia tilted on its side.

It also emerged that holidaymaker Maria D'Introno - whose body has yet to be recovered - was told to get out of a lifeboat because it was too full and the tilt of the ship made it impossible to launch safely.

She was later seen terrified by the edge of the ship, jumping into the water without a lifejacket despite not being able to swim.

The last moments of musician Giuseppe Girolamo are described in another section of the report.

It emerged he had been directed to the right-hand side of the boat to get into a lifeboat and had actually got into one when he decided to give up his place - only to later drown.

The prosecution report also details how Schettino was distracted by the ''inopportune presence of unauthorised persons'' on the bridge of the Concordia, including several crew members and passenger hostess Domnica Cemortan - who was seen enjoying dinner with the captain minutes before the ship struck the rocks.

It also details how Schettino was distracted as he was speaking on the telephone while he was ''in close proximity to the coast in a dangerous situation and with the helm under manual control".

It goes on to list 157 passengers who are suffering from post-traumatic stress following the disaster.

Schettino, 52, has insisted he is innocent of all charges and that the rocks were not marked on his charts. He says he should be thanked as his actions in steering the ship back towards the port at Giglio saved hundreds of lives.

However, he was ridiculed by the world's media after it emerged he had told coastguards he "tripped and fell" into a lifeboat as the Concordia began to list to one side, while recordings later emerged of him refusing orders to get back onboard and co-ordinate the rescue efforts.

Some other crew members also face charges, as do management figures from the company Costa Cruises, which owns the ship that is still lying on its side and not expected to be removed until September at the earliest.

The initial part of the trial is expected to last a week and once again will take place in a theatre in the town of Grosseto.

Prosecutors have also requested the indictment of five other crew members, including two officers Ciro Ambrosio and Silvio Coronica and the Concordia's helmsman Jacob Rusli.

In an unusual move, Mr Verusio has posted details of the case on a Facebook site in various languages and invited those who may have a claim to contact him.

It has also emerged that Costa Cruises asked for a plea-bargaining agreement, which would see them pay a fine of one million euros. They insist Schettino is solely to blame.

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10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster vivid for survivors

FILE — The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia lays on its starboard side after it ran aground off the coast of the Isola del Giglio island, Italy on Jan. 13, 2012. Italy is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Giuseppe Modesti)

FILE— The grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen through a window on the Isola del Giglio island, Italy, Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Oil removal ships near the cruise ship Costa Concordia leaning on its side Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, after running aground near the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, last Friday night. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— The Costa Concordia ship lies on its side on the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Monday, Sept. 16, 2013. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

FILE— A sunbather gets her tan on a rock during the operations to refloat the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia on the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Once the ship has refloated it will be towed to Genoa’s port, about 200 nautical miles (320 kilometers), where it will be dismantled. 30 months ago it struck a reef and capsized, killing 32 people. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— The wrecked hulk of the Costa Concordia cruise ship is towed along the Tyrrhenian Sea, 30 miles off the coast of Viareggio, Italy, Friday, July 25, 2014. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Fabio Muzzi)

FILE— A view of the previously submerged side of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, off the coast of the Tuscan Island of Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 13, 2014. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— A passenger from South Korea, center, walks with Italian Firefighters, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012, after being rescued from the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia which ran aground on the tiny Italian island of Isola del Giglio. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— A woman hangs her laundry as the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen in the background, off the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap.(AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, Francesco Schettino, right, the captain of the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, is taken into custody by Carabinieri in Porto Santo Stefano, Italy. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Giacomo Aprili)

Experts aboard a sea platform carry oil recovery equipment, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, as they return to the port of the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, where the cruise ship Costa Concordia, visible in background, ran aground on Ja. 13, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Seagulls fly in front of the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Italian firefighters conduct search operations on the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia that ran aground the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

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GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises , regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

Winfield reported from Rome.

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Costa Concordia: The Whole Story

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The whole story of the Costa Concordia ship disaster, the worst cruise accident since the Titanic. The whole story of the Costa Concordia ship disaster, the worst cruise accident since the Titanic. The whole story of the Costa Concordia ship disaster, the worst cruise accident since the Titanic.

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A Photo History Of Carnival Cruise Ship Disasters

In mid-February, an engine room fire onboard the Carnival Cruises ship Triumph left more than 4,000 passengers stranded in the Gulf of Mexico, with no hot water and few working toilets.

A month later, just as the incident was fading from the public eye, the diesel generator in the Carnival Dream malfunctioned, while the ship was at port, and passengers were flown home.

The next week, Carnival Legend had a technical issue with its sailing speed, and was sent back to its destination in Tampa, canceling a scheduled stop.

This recent string of public relations disasters is not a new phenomenon for Carnival: Its first ship ran aground on a sandbar on its inaugural voyage. There have been fires on four ships since 1998.

The Costa Concordia, operated by a Carnival subsidiary, struck a reef of the coast of Italy in January 2012, killing 32 people.

But despite its checkered past, the increased cost of maintaining its aging fleet, and the need to cut prices to draw customers put off by recent fires and strandings, Carnival's bottom line has not badly suffered.

In fact, its quarterly earnings and revenue just beat market expectations, and Carnival executives say bookings have already bounced back in the wake of the heavily publicized Triumph disaster.

Problems started early for Carnival: The TSS Mardi Gras, its first cruise ship, ran aground on a sandbar during its inaugural voyage, in 1972.

Everything was fine until July 1998, when a fire started in the main laundry room of the Ecstasy, soon after the ship left Miami.

A fleet of tugboats fought the fire and pulled the ship to shore, but not before 8 passengers and 14 crew members were injured.

Repairs cost $17 million.

[Source: NTSB ]

A little more than a year later, a fire started in the engine room of the Tropicale (later renamed Ocean Dream). The ship was left stranded in the path of Tropical Storm Harvey, but no one was injured.

In November 2010, the Carnival Splendor lost power after an engine room fire, and was towed to shore by tugboats.

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan brought supplies, including Spam and Pop-Tarts, when food supplies on board ran low.

[Source: CNN ]

The ship finally reached shore three days after the fire.

After spending three days without air conditioning and hot water, passengers finally escaped the ship.

Carnival's most serious problem came in January 2012. The Costa Concordia, operated by a Carnival subsidiary, ran aground off the coast of Italy and partially sunk.

32 people died.

In a show of sympathy, the flags at the Carnival headquarters in Doral, Florida were flown at half-mast.

Last month, Italian prosecutors officially sought to indict Captain Francesco Schettino on manslaughter charges.

[Source: The Guardian ]

The wrecked Costa Concordia is still sitting half-submerged in Italy. An incredibly complex, $400 million operation to remove it should be complete by next summer.

In February 2013, an engine room fire led to a power loss on the Carnival Triumph, stranding the ship in the Gulf of Mexico.

It took five days to tow the enormous vessel back to port, and its passengers were stuck on a ship with few working toilets and no power.

Some of the 4,229 passengers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Carnival, but because they signed waivers, they likely won't win.

In March, the problems continued for Carnival: The diesel generator in the Dream malfunctioned while the ship was at port in St Maarten.

Passengers were flown home, and will receive a refund equal to the equivalent of three days of the trip, plus half-off on a future cruise.

Just a week later, the Carnival Legend had a technical issue with its sailing speed, and was sent back to its destination in Tampa, canceling a scheduled stop. Passengers received a $100 credit.

The recent string of incidents has hurt Carnival's bottom line, but not seriously: Its quarterly earnings and revenue beat market expectations.

Now see how another company has faced disaster.

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Carnival Triumph disaster: A drama of discomfort

On Friday morning we finally saw them, those wretched refugees of the Carnival Triumph, after five days stranded at sea. They disembarked the floating Port-a-John on which they had been imprisoned, some wearing white cruise line bathrobes to protect themselves against the unexpected chill, kneeling to kiss the ground as they came ashore.

“United States,” a woman in a floppy hat breathed ecstatically to a television reporter. “Ain’t nothing better.”

A cruise represents not only a vacation, but a very specific kind of vacation. One books it when one does not want to have to decide, or plan, or worry, or change money, or get tetanus shots. The people who would take a cruise have considered hiking through Nepal, cycling through Norway, staying at quaint little flophouses in Eastern Europe — it's not like they don't know those travel options exist — and thought, "No." They do not believe that getting your wallet stolen in Mexico City is "a good story."

I have cruised, and I loved it, and so I say fondly: A cruise ship’s passenger log is comprised entirely of the exact demographic that is least prepared for a cruise to go to pot. A cruise is a giant boat full of your mother-in-law. Your mother-in-law does not belong in the wild.

What happened: Midway through a four-day Mexican cruise, the Triumph's engine room caught fire, the ship lost power, and then suddenly it was just drifting, somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. A four-day trip became an eight-day one. A 102,000-ton boat , the length of three football fields and containing 4,000 passengers, was reduced to Huck Finn's raft. It took three days for some gallant little tugboats to tow it into port in Mobile, Ala. There was nothing for watchers at home to do but imagine the hellscape aboard the doomed vessel.

But now the survivors are back, ready to share what really happened. On the "Today" show, Matt Lauer encouraged two female passengers to tell him everything . But everything, edited. "Not too graphic," he warned them. This was, after all, a morning show. The women appeared briefly flummoxed, trying to figure out how to tell a G-rated version of the story.

“It was, like, post-natural disaster,” Julie Billings said finally. “But stuck on a boat.”

Excuse us, Matt Lauer, but how could the story not be graphic? The filth, the waste, the rapid decline, is precisely what made the saga so horrifying for viewers and readers at home. We hung onto every bleated-out text message of despair, every description of what they were eating, and where they were sleeping, and where their waste went. (In red plastic bags. Marked with hazardous-waste symbols. Left outside state rooms. In ice buckets. We saw pictures.)

It was a drama, but not of danger. It was a drama of discomfort.

The smell. Just think of the smell. Skip this paragraph if you don't want to think of the smell. The unrefrigerated food and the unrefreshed bodies, the uncirculated dankness of the cabins, so filthy that passengers began sleeping on deck chairs instead, lugging their pillows to some high-thread-count open-air slumber party.

“I’m just happy to be alive,” a woman told “Good Morning America.”

Hell is other people. Hell is other people on a boat. What will it take before we accept this? After David Foster Wallace writes about it in an erudite essay ? After a Concordia captain abandons his sinking ship? After a New York Times reporter mentions that his journey on the classy Cunard was delayed for several hours so workers could scrub the ship down after a norovirus outbreak?

It’s over now, all over.

Carnival put the passengers on buses, heading either to New Orleans or to their origin point of Galveston, Tex. The company had promised to cover all travel expenses home. And to give each passenger $500 in compensation.

As well as a credit. A credit for another cruise.

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The Getaway

How Normal Are Cruise Mishaps?

By Stephanie Rosenbloom

• May 8, 2013

Its name is Triumph, yet this year has been anything but that for the 14-year-old ship owned by Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise company.

The latest news is that Carnival is seeking to dismiss lawsuits from the Triumph passengers whose ordeal this winter transfixed the nation. In case you’ve blocked out the vile details: in February a fire in the engine room shut down the Triumph’s power, propulsion, sewage and air-conditioning systems, leaving 4,200 passengers adrift for days in the Gulf of Mexico with little to eat and raw sewage seeping through the ship’s walls and carpets. Even in the home stretch — when the crippled ship was being tugged to port — a towline snapped, prolonging the rescue. 

Savvy travelers have to ask: Is this normal? How many fires, power failures and other unwelcome incidents are there in the life of the average cruise ship? 

Before offering some answers, let’s recount what has happened to the Triumph over the last few months.

Triumph floated around the Gulf of Mexico for five days while news of the rank conditions leaked out through Facebook, Twitter and CNN, which had a helicopter whirring around the Triumph for nonstop coverage. The notion of travelers spending their vacations trapped amid raw sewage so captured the collective American imagination that “ Saturday Night Live ” opened a show with a skit set onboard the Triumph in which a perky cruise director informed passengers that “the Superstar Karaoke Bar is now officially a toilet.”

Amazingly, the Triumph’s travails didn’t end after it finally reached port in Mobile, Ala. Early last month while undergoing repairs, the ship became unmoored in strong winds, crashed into another boat and wound up with a 20-foot-long gash in its side. Could the Triumph be more unlucky?   Yes. A few weeks later explosions from fuel barges on the Mobile River forced workers on the nearby Triumph to evacuate. That incident was seemingly beyond Carnival’s control. And accidents happen on other passenger ships. But it’s worth looking closely at the Triumph because it belongs to a company that spent more last year than any other cruise line on lobbying Congress, according to the secretary of the United States Senate.

Is what happened to the Triumph normal? Obtaining answers is not easy. 

“No one is systemically collecting data of collisions, fires, evacuations, groundings, sinkings,” said Jim Walker , a maritime lawyer in Miami who has attended more than half a dozen Congressional hearings about cruise ship crime and passenger safety. The reason for the lack of data is that cruise lines, while based in the United States, typically incorporate and register their ships overseas. Industry experts say the only place cruise lines are obligated to report anything is to the state under whose laws the ship operates. “The whole industry is essentially outsourced abroad,” said Mr. Walker.   Or, as Senator Charles E. Schumer said in a statement after the Triumph debacle: “Cruise ships, in large part operating outside the bounds of United States enforcement, have become the wild west of the travel industry.”

Vance Gulliksen, a spokesman for Carnival, said that given that the company carries 4.5 million passengers annually, the incidents on the Triumph “are quite rare.”

“Carnival’s ships are extremely safe and we meet or exceed all regulatory standards in every respect,” he said in an e-mail. “Nonetheless, Carnival has taken the recent events extremely seriously and we want to do everything we can to prevent it from happening again.” To that end, Carnival said it has begun investing $300 million in enhancements across its fleet, including improved emergency power capabilities, and increased fire prevention and suppression systems.

Yet for the industry overall, there remains no comprehensive public database of events at sea like fires, power failures and evacuations. Neither the International Maritime Organization nor the United States Coast Guard track everything. But there is one unlikely man who does.

“It’s a Canadian professor of sociology,” Mr. Walker said, “who testifies in front of the senate.”

Ross A. Klein, an American with dual citizenship and a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, was a longtime cruise enthusiast, spending more than 300 days at sea between 1992 and 2002. During that time, he saw that there were differences between what the cruise industry was saying about environmental and labor issues, and what he was observing.

Today, Mr. Klein is an authority on the cruise industry, having testified at hearings before the House of Representatives and the Senate about onboard crimes, disappearances and industry oversights. His Web site, CruiseJunkie.com , is a record of fires, sunken ships, collisions and other events at sea over the last few decades that have been culled from news reports and sources like crew members and passengers.   There are some limits: Mr. Klein receives fewer reports about incidents in Asia, Africa and South America, therefore most of the information is about cruises in North America and Europe. And he is unlikely to learn about problems that are not reported by English speakers or English language news organizations. “I’m sure there are a lot more incidents going on that we don’t know about,” he said.

I used the statistics Mr. Klein does have — many of which were part of his testimony last year before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — to help determine just how rare (or not) the events aboard the Triumph were. Here’s what the data reveal.

Adrift at Sea Loss of power is common, according to Mr. Klein. “It’s inconvenient,” he said. But it typically lasts no more than a few hours.

Evacuation Evacuations are infrequent, and when they do happen, they are usually done safely. Mr. Klein said that about three or four times a year there is preparation to abandon a ship, though actually abandoning it is rare. One of the most recent evacuations was in 2007, when a GAP Adventures ship called the Explorer struck ice off Antarctica and began sinking. All 154 people on board were safely evacuated. Still, even larger evacuations in the ocean are possible: in 1999 a Sun Cruises ship caught fire and sank off the coast of Malaysia, but the more than 1,000 people on board safely made it onto lifeboats and rafts.

Fire Fires are not unusual. There have been about 79 fires onboard cruise ships between 1990 and 2011, according to Mr. Klein’s data. Up until about 2006 there were usually three or four fires a year. From 2006 onward the number of fires doubled to about seven or eight a year. That increase, Mr. Klein said, is the result of a combination of better reporting (thanks, social media) and the rapid growth of the cruise industry.

Overflowing Toilets Plumbing issues are, bewilderingly, par for the course. Mr. Klein said part of the problem is that the ships use vacuum toilets and if passengers (particularly those on upper decks) flush anything down the toilet other than human waste or toilet paper, the line of pipes from the top cabins to the bottom (and usually several cabins across) stop working. But the Triumph had a bigger problem: it lost power. The resulting raw sewage put it in the rarest of ship categories — that which inspires bathroom humor by David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jon Stewart.

Running Aground It’s more likely that a cruise ship will run aground than sink. From 1972 to 2011, 98 cruise ships have run aground, according to Mr. Klein’s figures. On average that’s about 2.5 ships a year.

Sinking When the Costa Concordia (a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation) partly sank last year off Giglio, Italy, killing 32 people after hitting a submerged rock, it was one of the first times a cruise ship had done so since the Explorer in 2007. From 1980 to 2012, about 16 ships have sunk. They tend to be ships that sail in inhospitable waters like the Antarctic Ocean, or ships that belong to smaller lines. One of the most devastating accidents was in 1994 in the Baltic Sea, when the Estonia sank and more than 800 people died. Today, “ships don’t sink with everybody dying,” Mr. Klein said. “The chances of loss of life are pretty minuscule.”

Bottom Line So are the events that unfolded on the Triumph normal? Yes and no. “We see maybe two to four of these kinds of incidents a year, and they range in severity,” Mr. Klein said, “with the Triumph certainly being one extreme.”

“I think that what the numbers say is that things go wrong and in most cases there is no threat to physical harm,” Mr. Klein said. “In probably 95 percent of the cases, it’s purely inconvenience.”

“Just endure it as best you can,” he advised. “If something goes wrong, your attitude is what’s going to get you through it.”

And when it’s over, you can help build the public record by telling Mr. Klein all about it: [email protected].

Follow Stephanie Rosenbloom on Twitter @stephronyt .

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Carnival cruise fire that disabled ship caused by fuel leak, coast guard says

An engine room fire that left the Carnival Triumph stranded without power in the Gulf of Mexico for days was caused by a fuel leak, a US coast guard official said on Monday.

Commander Theresa Hatfield told reporters during a conference call that a full investigation into what happened to the stricken ship would take six months.

The Triumph lost electricity, air conditioning and functioning toilets in the aftermath of the fire in the early hours of Sunday 10 February. The outage led to unsanitary conditions for the 3,143 passengers and over 1,000 crew on board. It finally made port in Mobile, Alabama , late on Thursday.

Hadfield said the Bahamas – where the ship is registered – is leading the investigation, with help from the coast guard and National Transportation Safety Board. She said investigators have been with the ship since it arrived Thursday in Mobile, and that interviews had been conducted with passengers and crew.

The crew responded appropriately to the fire, Hadfield said. "They did a very good job," she added. The Carnival Triumph left Galveston, Texas, on 7 February for a four-day cruise. Instead passengers were forced to remain on the trip for an extra three days in unpleasant conditions as toilets overflowed and human waste reportedly began to seep through walls in lower deck cabins. The ship was met by tugboats in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday 11 February and guided to Alabama.

Officials from Carnival Cruise Lines have said the company will pay for all passengers' onward travel, fully reimburse everyone for the trip, give every passenger a free cruise and pay $500 each in compensation.

Passengers on the Triumph told of resorting to using showers and red plastic bags for human waste and having to ration food and water in the days immediately following the fire. Many took to sleeping above deck in makeshift tents due to the heat and stench below.

The company came under scrutiny last year after the Costa Concordia, operated by a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise Lines, partially sank in Italy, killing 32 people. The Carnival Triumph was actually seized in Texas in March 2012 after a lawsuit was filed against Carnival Cruise Lines on behalf of a woman who died on the Concordia.

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The 8 Worst Cruise Ship Disasters

Somali pirates, icebergs, and coral reefs have ruined many would-be vacations.

Gregorio Borgia | AP

Carnival Triumph:  What was supposed to be a four-day jaunt to the Caribbean became an eight-day nightmare when an engine fire left the ship floating in the Gulf of Mexico without power, air-conditioning, or a working septic system.

[ RELATED: Cruise From Hell Set to Limp Ashore Tonight ]

Carnival Splendor:  Carnival's Splendor suffered a similar fate as Carnival's Triumph in November 2011. Both were stranded by engine fires, though the Splendor was left floating in the Pacific Ocean. After three days the Splendor and its 4,500 passengers were towed back to the San Diego Bay.

Costa Concordia:  This Italian cruise ship ran aground on a reef off the coast of Tuscany, Italy, in January 2012 and toppled onto its side. Of the 4,200 aboard, 32 died and 64 were injured, according to the Associated Press . The half-submerged ship is still being removed.

[ PHOTOS: Costa Concordia Disaster: One Year Later ]

Seabourn Spirits:  In 2005, while 100 miles off the coast of Somalia, pirates in speedboats attacked the small cruise ship. The pirates fired on it with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades before the captain changed course and got away. None of the ship's 300 passengers were hurt, and the ship made it to the Seychelles where the rocket damage was repaired.

Celebrity Mercury:  More than 400 of the 2,600 passengers and crew onboard the Mercury were stricken ill in 2010 in what the Centers for Disease control deemed a norovirus outbreak . The virus caused widespread vomiting and other gastrointestinal ills on the ship, which left from Charleston, S.C.

Norwegian Dawn:  At least 62 cabins were flooded when a 70-foot wave smashed into the Dawn, in 2005. About 300 of the ship's passengers disembarked early, in Charleston, after the storm had passed.

S.S. Eastland:  In 1915, just three years after the Titanic sank, the S.S. Eastland passenger tour ship rolled over while in port in downtown Chicago. More than 840 of its 2,500 passengers died in the accident.

RMS Titanic:  The original cruise ship disaster, the "unsinkable ship" struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912 and sank into the icy water, killing more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers and crew.

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The 10 Worst Cruise Ship Disasters in History

Posted: 1 May 2024 | Last updated: 1 May 2024

Cruises Gone Wrong

Around 24 million people board cruise ships each year to vacation at sea. And while the majority of those cruises provide luxurious experiences without incident, it doesn’t mean that the unthinkable doesn't happen.

From tipping over while docked, to on-board fires and sewage backups, these are 10 of the worst cruise ship disasters in history, often resulting in a disturbing number of fatalities.

Costa Concordia

The Costa Concordia was a huge cruise ship with 3,229 passengers on board when it ran aground on a reef off the coast of Italy in 2012.

Costa Concordia: Casualties

The Costa Concordia actually tipped over after it took on water. There were a reported 32 fatalities, 64 injured and one person missing and never found.

Costa Concordia: Cost

Not only was this accident tragic, it was costly too. It took over a year and a half to bring the ship upright, where it was then taken to port and dismantled. All in all, its recover cost upwards of $1.5 billion.

But that’s not all.

Costa Concordia: Cause

The accident was a result of the ship’s captain purposely sailing too close to shore to impress tourists. The navigation system was disarmed at the time.

And then the captain committed the ultimate maritime sin…

Costa Concordia: Captain

The captain abandoned ship in the middle of the disaster, leaving more than 300 passengers on board. He was charged and convicted for the fatalities.

RMS Titanic

Likely the most famous cruise ship disaster of all time, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was said to be “unsinkable.”

Then on its maiden voyage, it struck and iceberg and down it went.

RMS Titanic: Casualties

This massive cruise ship was ill equipped and only had enough life boats for 30% of the passengers. That, along with an isolated position in frigid waters, resulted in over 1,500 fatalities. 

RMS Titanic: Recovery

Unfortunately, the Titanic was never recovered. A recovery of that magnitude would be extremely complex and even more costly than anyone could imagine.

Even still, some extremely valuable artifacts (ie. artwork worth millions) will remain forever on the sea floor.

S.S. Eastland

Three short years after the Titanic’s tragedy, in 1915, the S.S. Eastland rolled over on its side while still docked in the Chicago River.

S.S. Eastland: Casualties

At the time of the accident the cruise ship was filled with Western Electric employees celebrating an event. The tragic rollover resulted in 844 fatalities.

S.S. Eastland: Significance

The accident is known as the largest loss of life from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes. Even though it was docked, people became trapped inside, and some were crushed by furniture.

S.S. Eastland: Cause

There are speculations that the ship was top heavy after adding more lifeboats after the Titanic tragedy. As well, the new owners had replaced hardwood floors with concrete, making the upper texts even heavier.

The captain, along with the owners of the ship were held responsible for the fatalities.

Seabourn Spirit

In 2005, the Seaborne Spirit, a luxury cruise ship, was attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Two pirated boats neared the ship and open fired with heavy artillery and rocket propelled grenades.

Seaborn Spirit: Casualties

The cruise ship was carrying 115 passengers at the time, none of whom were injured in the attack. However, the ship’s master-at-arms was hit by shrapnel while he attempted to fight back.

Seaborn Spirit: Defense

The master-at-arms used a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) while repelled the pirates by basting a powerful sound wave, and successfully stopped the attack.

Seaborn Spirit: Heroes

The master-at-arms, along with the security officer on the ship, were both awarded for their bravery by Queen Elizabeth II.

Seaborn Spirit: Recovery

The ship altered its course and docked elsewhere for repairs and then continued on with their scheduled route. It was later renamed, Star Breeze .

MS Royal Pacific

In 1992, the MS Royal Pacific was struck by a Taiwanese fishing trawler in the Straits of Malacca off southern Malaysia.

MS Royal Pacific: Casualties

There were 530 passengers on board at the time, of which 30 lost their lives and 70 were severely injured. Most passengers were asleep at the time of the collision.

MS Royal Pacific: Further Problems

At the time of the accident, the ship’s PA system wasn’t functioning, and apparently the crew worried more about their own safety than that of the passengers—resulting in the numerous causalities.

MS Royal Pacific: Witness Accounts

Survivors recall the grueling experience, tossing small children into the frigid waters, swimming and drifting for hours before even reaching the rubber dinghies, and waiting for lifeboats to arrive.

All while the crew abandoned them on the only available rubber dinghies.

MS Royal Pacific: Sinking

The collision caused a six-foot hole beneath the water line of the hill. The ship remained above water for about 2 hours after the collision before sinking around 3 a.m.

193 people were rescued by other ships.

Star Princess

In March of 2006, the Star Princess, a massive cruise ship carrying 3,100 passengers was sailing from Fort Lauderdale toward Jamaica when a fire broke out on one of its decks at 3 a.m.

Star Princess: Casualties

The fire, which broke out in one of the guest suites, took the life of one passenger, and injured 13 others.

Star Princess: Cause

The cause of the fire was a smoke that was left unattended and left burning, which had become hot enough to melt the plastic polycarbonate balcony divides.

The fire caused scorching damage in up to 150 cabins, and smoke damage in at least 100 more.

Carnival Triumph

The Carnival Triumph “poop cruise”, as it’s called, occurred in 2013 when a fire broke out in the engine room of the 2,700-passenger cruise ship.

Carnival Triumph: Incident

The fire was put out without any harm to passengers or crew, but the damage left the ship without power or propulsion for four days.

Carnival Triumph: Consequences

This resulted in no air conditioning or working toilets—so they piled the human waste in bags on the decks.

Carnival Triumph: Blame

After investigation, documents showed that the cruise line was aware that the engine fire was likely but continued to operate the ship anyway.

Carnival Triumph: Witness Accounts

Passengers described disgusting scenes of carpets soaked in more than two inches of raw sewage—which lasted for four days as the ship was towed to safety.

Celebrity Mercury

Owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, the Celebrity Mercury experienced a sudden illness in 2010 that affected 413 passengers.

Celebrity Mercury: Illness

Nearly one out of every four passengers fell ill with the Norovirus—which is accompanied by vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramping.

Celebrity Mercury: Outbreaks

A Norovirus outbreak is common on cruise ships, but this was one of the worst cases at the time. The incident made headlines as this was not this particular ship’s first (or recent) outbreak.

The following scheduled cruise was delayed so the ship could receive extra sanitizing.

Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas

In January of 2014, the Explorer of the cruise also experienced a sudden illness on board, causing them to actually return to port with a staggering number of violently ill passengers.

Explorer of the Seas: Passengers

According to the CDC, it was the largest known number of people sick on a cruise, with 630 passengers and 54 crew  extremely ill.

It is estimated that numbers were actually much higher but passengers did not report it in fear of being confined to their cabins.

S.S. Morro Castle

In 1934, the S.S. Morro Castle, carrying 549 passengers and crew, was returning from Cuba to New York when numerous things started to go wrong.

S.S. Morro Castle: The Captain

First, the captain went to his cabin with an upset stomach and ended up passing from a heart attack.

And then only a few hours later tragedy struck again.

S.S. Morro Castle: The Fire

A few hours later, in the middle of the night, a fire started in one of the storage lockers. The crew failed to properly distinguish the blaze, which began to consume the vessel.

S.S. Morro Castle: Abandon Ship

Just like in other similar cases, the crew abandoned ship without addressing the passengers, leaving them to be awoken by smoke, dazed and confused, which resulted in some of them leaping to their demise from the blazing ship.

S.S. Morro Castle: Casualties

An estimated 86 passengers and 49 crew lost their lives. Many passengers made it onto lifeboats which were managed by other Good Samaritan passengers, and some were rescued from the water by other boats.

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