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5 more bodies found on Costa Concordia
Updated at 3:48 p.m. ET
ROME - Five more bodies were pulled Tuesday from the wreckage of a crippled cruise ship off Tuscany, and a shocking audio emerged in which the ship's captain was heard making excuses as the Italian coast guard repeatedly ordered him to return to oversee his ship's evacuation.
Prosecutors have accused Capt. Francesco Schettino of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship before all passengers were evacuated during the grounding of the Costa Concordia cruise ship Friday night. Schettino was interrogated for three hours Tuesday before an Italian judge ordered him under house arrest, according to his attorney.
The death toll nearly doubled to 11 on Tuesday when divers extracted five more bodies, all of them adults wearing life jackets, from the rear of the ship near an emergency evacuation point, according to Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro. He said they were thought to have been passengers.
Amateur video from Costa Concordia cruise ship
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Prior to that discovery, the coast guard had raised the number of missing to 25 passengers and four crew. Italian officials gave the breakdown as 14 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans, one Hungarian, one Indian and one Peruvian.
But there was still confusion over the numbers, and the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin listed 12 Germans as confirmed missing.
Luxury cruise ship runs aground
The Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 people when it hit a reef off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Friday night. That occured after Schettino made an unauthorized deviation from the cruise ship's programmed course, apparently as a favor to his chief waiter, who hailed from the island.
Schettino has insisted that he stayed aboard until the ship was evacuated. However, a recording of his conversation with Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco that emerged Tuesday indicates he fled before all passengers were off — and then resisted De Falco's repeated orders to return.
"You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear?" De Falco shouted in the audio tape.
Schettino resisted, saying the ship was tipping and it was dark. At the time, he and his second-in-command were in a lifeboat and the captain said he was coordinating the rescue from there. He also said he was not going back on board the ship "because the other lifeboat is stopped." Passengers have said many lifeboats on the exposed port side of the ship didn't winch down after the ship had capsized.
De Falco shouted back: "And so what? You want to go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what their needs are. Now!"
"You go aboard. It is an order. Don't make any more excuses. You have declared 'Abandon ship,' now I am in charge," De Falco shouted.
At one point, De Falco vowed "I'm going to make sure you get in trouble. ...I am going to make you pay for this. Go on board, (expletive)!"
Schettino was finally heard agreeing to reboard on the tape. But the coast guard has said he never went back, and had police arrest him on land.
Audio: Coast Guard ordered captain back to liner
Inside the Costa Concordia wreck
The 52-year-old Schettino, described by the Italian media as a genial, tanned ship's officer, has worked for 11 years for the ship's owner and was made captain in 2006. He hails from Meta di Sorrento, in the Naples area, which produces many of Italy's ferry and cruise boat captains. He attended the Nino Bixio merchant marine school near Sorrento.
Schettino recounted his version of events before prosecutors and a judge at a preliminary hearing Tuesday as to whether he should stay jailed, as requested by prosecutors. The judge instead placed him under house arrest, rejecting a defense bid to set Schettino free, his attorney, Bruno Leporatti, told Sky TG24 TV and the Italian news agency ANSA. The captain could face up to 12 years in prison on the abandoning ship charge alone.
Leporatti said that in the hearing, the captain had insisted that after the initial crash into the reefs, he had maneuvered the ship close to shore in a way that "saved hundreds if not thousands of lives."
Passengers, however described the evacuation as chaotic.
Steve and Kathy Ledtke, who live in Fort Gratiot, Michigan, said they were sitting down to a late dinner Friday when they realized something had gone wrong. Kathy Ledtke told WDIV-TV that it seemed no one was in charge.
"It was complete chaos, and it was every man for himself," Kathy Ledtke said. "Nobody knew where to go."
Earlier Tuesday, Italian naval divers exploded holes in the hull of the grounded cruise ship, trying to speed up the search for the missing while seas were still calm. Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TV 24 the holes would help divers enter the wreck more easily.
"We are rushing against time," he said.
The divers set four microcharges above and below the surface of the water, Busonero said. Video showed one hole above the waterline less than 6 feet in diameter.
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"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!"
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!"
It's time to start the investigation into "Who is at fault?" here..... I'm personally betting it is the captain who left the ship when he wasn't supposed to.
In response to the largest passenger ship disaster since the sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago, Carnival Corp (CCL), has placed the blame entirely on Capt Francesco Schettino. A spokesperson for the company stated that Schettino made an "unapproved, unauthorized" deviation in the course of the Concordia whose hull was torn open on Friday 13th when the ship struck rocks off the island of Giglio, Italy.
As survivors speak angrily about their horrifying ordeal, images eerily similar to those seen in the movie Titanic have emerged. Sandra Rogers a 62 year-old grandmother from Minorca told a reporter from the Daily Mail: "There was no women and children first policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats."
Carnival Corp (CCL) claims the partial sinking of the Concordia will cost them approximately $85 million to $95 million in lost earnings for the year. When compared to the $6.5 million dollars Carnival paid for their first ship in 1972 one can safely conclude the company which now owns over 100 passenger ships has deep enough pockets and insurance to absorb this loss.
The origin and rise of the largest cruise company in the world is rooted in what some might call murky waters.
Meshulam Riklis and Ted Arison (born Theodore Arisohn) founded Carnival Cruise Lines. The pair became friends in Tel Aviv (the then British Mandate of Palestine) while attending school during the early 1940s. In 1971 Arison approached Riklis who owned, among other businesses, American International Travel Services (AITS) of Boston to help him get back into the cruise business.
Two previous ventures had soured for Arison. In 1968 the Israeli government impounded his small cruise ship for monies owed. Instead of paying the money to retrieve his ship, he abandoned it, swiftly putting all the passengers onto another vessel. The second incident happened soon thereafter in 1971 after when Arison had a nasty falling out with his Norwegian Caribbean Cruise Line (NCL) partner Knut Kloster.
Riklis and Arison had more than just a school in Israel in common. They both earned well-deserved reputations of being ruthless barracudas in their primal pursuit of financial gain.
The enterprising Riklis/Arison pair purchased "Empress of Canada" from Canadian Pacific for $6.5 million and renamed the ship "Mardi Gras". On its maiden voyage it ran aground with approximately 500 people on board before it ever left Miami.
In February of 1973 Riklis used AITS to purchase the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas for $56 million. The hotel had ties to infamous mobster Meyer Lansky. The Nevada Gaming Commission had Riklis dispose of its interests in Carnival or lose the hotel's gaming license. Riklis and Arison exchanged a document whereby Riklis sold his 50% share in Carnival for $1. People familiar with the transaction believe the Riklis family still owns a portion of Carnival.
Carnival Corp. (as it is known today) became the mega giant it is by registering their ships in foreign countries in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The company is also notoriously known to exploit Third World laborers who work on their ships for slave wages. A recent lawsuit by a former employee shows the company paid him a paltry $1.70/hour. Their lobbyists, on the other hand, receive a small fortune to ensure tax laws don't change in Congress.
On October 8, 1999, almost 10 years after Arison denounced his U.S. citizenship and returned to Israel in an effort to avoid paying estate and inheritance taxes, he passed away of a heart attack at the age of 75.
Arison's son Micky became Carnival's CEO. In 2012 Micky's net worth was estimated at $4.5 billion (after dropping $1.3 billion) according to Forbes Magazine.
His daughter Shari inherited one-third of his wealth making her the richest woman in Israel.
In 2002 Forbes Magazine reported that Meshulam Riklis left his business creditors holding the bag for approximately $4 billion. The companies included the Riviera, McCrory Corp., McCrory Parent Corp., E-II Holdings and Dylex.
In 2010 a then 86 year-old Meshulam Riklis married 51 year-old Tali Sinai. When asked exactly how much he was worth by a reporter, the billionaire replied: "What difference does it make? I can only wear one pair of shoes at a time." His son, Ira Riklis, told this writer on numerous occasions that his father worked hard on staying off the Forbes 400.
2012 Copyright Kirby Sommers
If (1)your captain can't drive better, and (2) your captain abandons his vessel AND you, you be in a heap o' troubled waters!