When the Costa Concordia sank it launched one
man to infamy and another to fame in the eyes of the Italian population. This is the story of Captains Francesco
Schettino and Gregorio De Falco.
The world watched in amazement as the luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia
grounded on shallow rocks just off the coast of Yet somehow, at 21h30, guests were confronted with a horrifying grating sound as the Concordia hit a rocky outcrop just off
Giglio’s population of 800 rolls out every boat they have and soon a massive rescue effort is underway. All the while the captain is missing. He is found just before midnight, already ashore and exhausted. Later reports will state that he left the boat hours before the last passengers were evacuated and as the death toll mounts, his name will increasingly be pointed to by ship authorities, the media and the population of Italy as being the person to blame. The sinking was a tragedy in which, at the time of going to print, at least 13 people died and many more disappeared, and in the aftermath, questions have been raised as to the cause and the people involved that have divided Italian perceptions and christened some men as heroes and others as villains. It is a story that seems, at times, to come more from soap operas than real life.
By way of an explanation for why he was found ashore long before even the women and children had been abandoned from his cruise line, Captain Francesco Schettino told eager reporters he had ‘tripped and fallen into a lifeboat’, after which he had come ashore. Not surprisingly, very few people are buying it and Captain Schettino is being painted by the Italian press as the very image of cowardice and forgotten manliness that has recently been plaguing that country. On the other side of the coin is Captain Gregorio De Falco, the head of the local coast guard, who furiously ordered the skipper of the Costa Concordia to return to his ship and oversee the rescue operations. A balding 48-year-old, Captain De Falco is being lauded as a hero in
The country has declared him to be a symbol of the type of man Italians should aspire to be. What he did was not heroic, but his righteous anger at the betrayal of the captain who abandoned his own ship has struck a chord. “Listen Schettino, perhaps you have saved yourself from the sea but I will make you look very bad. I will make you pay for this. Go on board, Cazzo,” De Falco yelled at Schettino during a four-minute radio exchange.
The word ‘cazzo’ is slang for the male sexual organ but is commonly used to emphasise something, equivalent to ‘Go on board, damn it’. The imperative phrase ‘Vada a bordo, cazzo!’, was already on T-shirts just a day after they were spoken. ‘Thank You, Captain’ was the more sedate headline the country’s largest national newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, chose reflecting the gratitude of Italians who see Schettino’s behaviour as a national embarrassment. ‘Two men ... two stories, one who humiliates us, the other who redeems. Thank you Captain De Falco, our country badly needs people like you’, the Corriere Della Sera said. Another memorable exchange between the two captains, listened to by millions of Italians since it was made public, is when De Falco tells Schettino, “You get back on board! That is an order! There is nothing else for you to consider. You have sounded the ‘Abandon Ship’. I am giving the orders now. Get back on board. Is that clear?”
Apart from 52-year-old Captain Francesco Schettino’s abandonment of his ship there are a number of other factors colouring him as the country’s latest villain. Just an hour before the fateful crash the married captain was seen dining with Domnica Cemortan, a blonde 25-year-old Moldovan, employee of the company who was not listed as being aboard the ship that night. Captain Schettino denies drinking with her despite the fact that passenger Angelo Fabbri snapped a picture of a waitress pouring wine for the table at 20h44, exactly an hour before the R4-billion Costa Concordia hit the rocks and began to sink.
The captain’s infidelity pales into insignificance, however, when compared with his greatest failure on the night. Prosecutors now believe that Schettino is single-handedly responsible for causing the ship to run aground when he ordered that it be taken too near the coastline so he could ‘salute friends in Giglio’. Captain Schettino, however, denies it was a salute to friends and explains that the ship’s owners ordered the salute. “The salute at Giglio on January 13 was planned and wanted by Costa before the departure from
The alarm on the ship was raised some 15 minutes after the ship first hit rock, but even then it was raised by passengers, not the captain who was sitting in his office in nervous and desperate conversation with his bosses. It wasn’t until 68 minutes had passed that Schettino admitted to the coastguard that what his ship was experiencing was more than an electrical failure and things were serious. It’s clear in the minds of
Whatever the reasons
Columnist and writer Beppe Severgnini noted that De Falco was just doing his job. “And if normality has become heroic,
Journalist Aldo Grasso wrote: “The behaviour of the two captains contrasted the ‘two souls of Italy’ – one of them represented by a cowardly fellow who flees his own responsibilities, both as a man and as an official and the other the man who tries to bring him back to his responsibilities.” One child named Salvatore Garzillo summed up the mood perfectly, by taking to his Twitter account to state: “The next time someone asks me what I want to be when I grow up I am going to say, ‘a man like De Falco’.”
