UNTIL the weekend, the name Costa Concordia would have meant very little to anyone outside Italy. But in the space of a couple of hours late on Friday, when the ship hit rocks off the island of Giglio, all that changed. By Saturday morning, it was being compared to the Titanic.
True, the disaster was on a different scale - at least six dead and 16 missing from Costa Concordia out of the 4234 passengers and crew; more than 1500 dead when the Titanic sank. And the Costa Concordia was never hailed as unsinkable; no one was going to make that mistake again.
But there was a general understanding that over the past century lessons had been learnt about safety at sea; that modern vessels, equipped with the latest navigational and satellite equipment, would be safe from hidden rocks - certainly in waters around the Italian coast.
If, as initial reports suggest, the accident was not due to a fault with the ship - an important concern, because there are other Costa vessels built to a similar design - but rather a serious error on the part of the captain, the cruise industry will be breathing a collective sigh of relief. But only temporarily, because the incident raises many other questions.
Why did Costa Concordia keel over, given that water-tight bulkheads in the hull were supposed to keep the vessel upright? Why did it take so long for the captain to give the order to abandon ship? And why did the emergency evacuation procedure descend into chaos?
I can speculate about the first two. Maybe too many bulkheads were flooded for the system to work; or more likely, by bringing the ship so close to land, thinking it would help the evacuation, the captain actually upset the stability and caused it to tip over. And if he thought the evacuation would be easier close to land, that would explain the delay in ordering passengers to abandon ship.
The last question is easy to answer. I know from many years reporting from cruise ships that passengers do not take any notice of what is being said during the emergency drill held at the start of each cruise. They talk, they laugh, they joke.
So I have no doubt the chaos on Concordia was caused because passengers did not know what they were doing - Costa is one of a few lines that allows people to board at various ports on an itinerary; worryingly, initial reports say there was no safety drill for those who embarked at Civitavecchia.
It was dark, which would have added to the panic, and witnesses say many lifeboats could not be lowered due to the angle of the ship. I suspect also that there were communication problems between the crew and the many different nationalities on board.
During the safety drill, passengers are instructed to go to their cabins to fetch their life jackets - a crazy system, especially on big ships. Many passengers cannot find their cabins at sea in calm waters and with the sun shining, so how are they supposed to find them when the electricity has failed and they are panicking?
Royal Caribbean International abandoned that system in 2009 when it launched Oasis of the Seas, the world's biggest cruise ship, which holds almost 6300 passengers. Now people are instructed to go to the muster station in an emergency, and if necessary life jackets will be issued there. I suspect other cruise lines will now change their procedures.
Inevitably, the size of modern cruise ships is now under scrutiny. If things can go so wrong on Costa Concordia, what about Oasis of the Seas and its sister ship, Allure of the Seas? Factor in the crew on those two vessels and you have a small town of almost 8500 people.
But all that said, we need to put this accident in context. Cruising is the safest form of travel there is. That is not to say there have not been some accidents involving cruise ships in the 100 years since the Titanic sank. But Concordia is the worst. It has taken a century for it to happen.
Although there does seem to be some bravado involved in building ever bigger ships, I suspect Oasis and Allure will remain the world's largest for many years, mainly because of the sheer practical difficulties of managing 4000-plus people. But there will certainly be many more new ships built to cater for a phenomenal increase in the number of people taking cruises over the past 15 years. More than 21 million people took an ocean cruise last year and all the signs indicate that numbers will continue to rise. There are billions of dollars riding on that hope.
Jane Archer is a travel writer specialising in cruises. This article appeared first in the London Telegraph.
-SMH
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