Recording suggests captain tried to abandon ship
ROME -- The captain of a cruise ship that capsized off the coast of Italy was heaped with scorned Tuesday by the media and Italians as damning details came out about his abandoning of frantic passengers so he could escape in a lifeboat.
Italian newspapers reported that Captain Francesco Schettino had steered the vessel too close to the island of Giglio to give a thrill to the islanders and had once told a magazine he enjoyed diverting from standard procedures.
But the revelation that generated the most contempt was the recording released Tuesday of a conversation between Schettino and a coast guard officer who demanded the captain return to his ship to oversee the rescue.
"What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue?" shouted Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Italian coast guard in Livorno. "Get back on board now for (expletive) sake! That's an order! Don't make any more excuses!"
Schettino is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his vessel in the grounding of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the Tuscan coast on Friday night. He faces up to 12 years in prison.
A judge in Grosseto, Tuscany, ruled that the captain should be released from jail and confined to his home near Naples under house arrest, his lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, said.
"This is all anyone wants to talk about," said pollster Maria Rossi, who said Schettino had quickly replaced ousted prime minister Silvio Berlusconi as the most despised man in the country. "A week ago, nobody knew who this man, Schettino, was. And today, he is seen as the worst man in the country."
The Costa Concordia had more than 4,200 people aboard when it hit a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio after Schettino made an unauthorized deviation from the cruise ship's programmed course.
Schettino has a clean record until Friday, according to Italian news media reports. Since then, he has been lashed in late-night talk shows, lampooned in newspaper cartoons and scorned by everyday Italians.
"This is a typical case of an incompetent person in an important position, and now the consequences are clear for everyone to see," said Lorenzo Piermatteo, 36, a restaurant and bar manager. "It's a typical Italian tragedy."
Daniela Bruna, 49, a high school language teacher, agreed.
"They should throw away the key to his jail cell," she said. "A man like that shouldn't be allowed to harm people again."
The Rome daily Il Messaggero reported that Schettino steered the Concordia close to the shores of Giglio so his headwaiter Antonello Tievoli could see his home island and greet his family from the deck.
Schettino called Tievoli onto deck and said, "Come to see it, Antonello! We're right on top of Giglio!" according to witnesses quoted by the newspaper. Tievoli reportedly told him, "Be careful. We are extremely close to the shore." Moments later, the ship hit the rocks, tearing open a gash in the hull that forced it to list to starboard.
Corriere della Sera newspaper from Milan reported that Tievoli's family said he was "tormented by guilt" about the accident and did not request the deviation in course. But it appears Tievoli's family knew about it.
His sister, Patricia, said on Facebook less than a half hour before the accident, "Before long the Costa Concordia will pass very close … let's give a big hello to my brother," Corriere della Sera reported.
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