When Danger Reared Its Ugly Head, Brave Schettino Turned And Fled

Amazing:

[Schettino] should have stayed to the end. That is what Commodore (Edward J.) Smith did on the Titanic. Smith died, and I think “just as well that he did” because he would have been disgraced for life as the collision was completely his fault in every sense. I recall as well the captain of the Andrea Doria (Piero Calamai, an Italian) in 1956. He lived, but he was the last one off his ship as it sank. That is the way of the captain.

This captain should have stayed and helped save passengers. When a ship lists like that and goes out of vertical, the doorways and other interior structures are twisted. This is well known and it will trap people in their cabins. So his duty ultimately would have included searching for trapped survivors himself. But he must also maintain the discipline of the bridge, and send assessment parties out. His main job is to stay at his command post and direct all this activity. There would have been a better lifeboat evacuation if the captain had been at his post and in command. We would not have seen such hysterical images of people thrown into panic and having to pilot their own lifeboats. The captain did not even announce “Abandon ship!” – because he was not there! Just appalling.

...Legally an evacuation drill is required within 24 hours after sailing. ... But lifeboat drills are not very useful by and large. The people sit in a giant theater and hear a talk and then go outside on deck and perhaps stand around in a life jacket. That is a far cry from a pitch-black panicked evacuation surrounded by dark seas. And this would have been the biggest evacuation of a cruise ship in history. There were 4,000 people trying to get off.

You cannot fault the people for panicking. None of us knows how we would react in such a moment of bedlam. And because there are not many true sailors and seamen on board these ships nowadays, the crew members were trying to get away too.

...But it will have repercussions far beyond the numbers dead. It will live on in infamy, and for these reasons: Utter command stupidity, horrendous behavior on the part of the captain, sloppy evacuation, and the vessel settling there and becoming an in-your-face icon of what can go wrong. And, the problem of transient crews with little experience in emergencies. They are simply not steeped in the lore and traditions of the sea – how can they be?