After a handful of people had already been discovered, 5 more bodies have been found in the awful wreck of an Italian cruise ship that is being compared to the Titanic. Get the details below.
An Italian Coast Guard official swore in frustration at the captain of the stricken Costa Concordia after the ship hit rocks Friday night, ordering him at least 10 times to return to the cruise liner and coordinate rescue efforts, a transcript of the conversation published Tuesday shows.
Authorities in the port of Livorno seemed to believe the captain had abandoned ship with passengers still on board, a report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra suggests.
“You get on board! This is an order!” the Coast Guard official instructed Capt. Francesco Schettino.
“You have declared ‘Abandon ship.’ Now I’m in charge. You get on board — is that clear?” the port official said.
Schettino says at one point that he wants to go back on board, then refers to “other rescuers” and says something about a lifeboat being stuck.
Italian prosecutors confirmed that the quotes match ones in a transcript they were using in their investigation.
A judge ruled Tuesday that Schettino will remain jailed pending a later decision on whether to release him while authorities investigate his role in the disaster, chief prosecutor Francesco Verusio said.
Schettino is under arrest and may face charges that include manslaughter, shipwreck, and abandoning a ship when passengers were still on board, Verusio said.
Rescue crews discovered five more bodies on Tuesday, coast guard Capt. Filippo Marini confirmed, bringing to at least 11 the number of people known to have died as a result of the wreck. Before the discovery, officials had listed 28 people as missing.
That list included 14 Germans, six Italians, including a crew member, four French people, two Americans, and one each from Hungary, India and Peru, all of whom are crew members. One person on that list was found dead Monday, but officials did not identify the victim.
The discovery of the bodies came after Italian Navy explosives experts blew a hole in the hull of the vessel to allow access for search-and-rescue teams, Navy officials said Tuesday.
The German Foreign Ministry said that 12 Germans were unaccounted for, adding that it would investigate any reports of other missing Germans.
Also on Tuesday, Italy’s Coast Guard said it has located a second “black box,” or data recorder, from the ship that wrecked off Italy’s western coast Friday evening.
Operations were under way to retrieve the recorder, said Coast Guard Warrant Petty Officer Massimo Macaroni.
Information from the device, along with that from another that has already been recovered and is being analyzed by prosecutors, will provide authorities with “a complete picture of how the disaster unfolded,” Macaroni said.
Authorities questioned Schettino at a closed hearing Tuesday prior to the judge’s ruling, his attorney said. He could face up to 15 years in prison, according to prosecutors.
Schettino’s attorney, Bruno Leporatti, said in a statement Monday that his client was “shattered, dismayed, saddened for the loss of lives and strongly disturbed.”
But, he said, Schettino is “nonetheless comforted by the fact that he maintained during those moments the necessary lucidity to put in place a difficult emergency maneuver … bringing the ship to shallow waters.” That move, Leporatti said, saved the lives of many passengers and crew members.
Italian prosecutors have ruled out a technical error as the cause of the incident, saying the captain was on the bridge at the time and had made a “grave error.”
