Top marks :up:

The gash in the side is 50m long, over 150 ft, so, it could have breached multiple watertight sections. Apparently she lost electrical power, so no pumps, no control over starboard side ballast adjustments, and turning to enter the bay, she has the breakers crashing into her port side, then free surface effect takes over, and she lists badly to starboard...

Loss of control and steering, hits the sandbar, and just falls over, once the upper deck is awash, with her poor crew, odds are there's no water tight seal on the upper decks, and she floods from the upper deck downwards, in all sections.

Just guessing from the various pictures of her plight over the time period.

I still blame the captain. To steam towards shore with a massive gash in your side is foolish. Makes more water come in, and when the ship listed it made the lifeboats unusable.

Greedy bastard looking out for the company in making for an easy salvage, rather than the lives of the passengers under his charge.

Shameful display.

So you know that for sure do you?

Once he'd hit that rock of the SW tip of the island, he didn't have much choice, head for the shelf where the ship won't completely sink, or stay put over enough water to cover the smokestack...

Or abandon ship while the lifeboats were still usable?

I initially blamed people giving damage report, but the boss is the boss, good or bad, he messed up.

I blame insurance companies alongside the captain. Easy salvage=saved money from the company.

Edit: bad judgement is what it is. Not hating, just saying. It is what it is, and we can't change it now, we can only prevent it in the future.

New theory of the day with claims it may have been part of a facebook stunt
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/n...-1226245938989

Would be nice to compare this rumour mill to one in September 1912... :roll:

CORRECTION: In above intention was to write "in April 1912". RMS Titanic was ordered in 17 September 1908 and she sank 15 April 1912. For some reason I always write wrong month. :damn:

If accident investigation report's conclusion turns out be anything even resebling common sense then many will consider it to be conspiracy! :nope:

Just wait till the conspiracy theories crop up! :haha:

My dad still says a U Boat did in the Titanic... :shifty:

Hmm, tricky... The life boats at deck level will be on electrically powered davits, with a manual backup in case of electrical power failure (this ship suffered a power outage), allowing you to load them up, then winch them down into the water. But that usually means deck officers who know how the things work, supervising a crew that knows how the things work.

Italian officers, trying to communicate in a panicked environment with a Sri Lankan/Phillipino crew who speak little or no Italian.

The inflatable rafts are no problem, arm them yank on the lanyard, and they are pretty much automatic, but on a ship this size the deck is over 100 ft from the water, so you're trying to get 4000 people down ropes and rope ladders into floating rubber rafts.

Safer to beach her first. Assuming that you can do that without capsizing her.

Fair point sir. But I feel it is better to err on the side of caution. Too bad that costs ship companies money when you are wrong , so a Captain is hesitant to make such decisions without fear of his job. Just too bad people died trying to save the shareholders a few bucks.

But an SOS, and immediate abandon ship would have been prudent.

I would rather see him abandon ship, and it not go down than what happened.

Get the eff off the boat or die, is pretty universal. Especially in panicked tones while pointing at the sea.

Frankly, I don't think it matters what you do with a 150 foot gash that far below the waterline. It would I think seem to allow an instantaneous and unstopable rush of water into the boat. Even if it was a two compartment boat with a tear that long it's gonna go down and go down fast.

<edit> An Italian official told The Wall Street Journal that the coast guard learned of the ship's troubles after passengers phoned police to complain. The coast guard then contacted the ship's command at about 10:15 p.m., more than a half-hour after the boat hit the rock formation, the official said.

.

The ship is 950 feet long, I hope it has more than two watertight compartments. It should have something like 20-30 watertight bulkheads running port to starboard on each deck below the waterline and one or two running the length.

Considering the ship capsized but did not sink makes me think only part of the ship flooded and the crew was unable to manually counter flood compartments to keep stable long enough to ground her safely (à la the West Virginia). Whatever caused the lapse in damage control should seriously be considered by the investigators, weather it be a failure of the captain or inability of the crew to perform due to lack of training, lack of able hands, or communications difficulties due to language.

Indeed...I'd put money on the grounding being deliberate, get as close to shore as possible so the lifeboats didn't have far to go. Heck, he may have even been trying for the harbour, as small as it is. They turned a bit too sharp, the ballast got screwed up and over she went.
I certainly wouldn't have liked to have dropped lifeboats near a rock formation, if they had drifted onto the rocks too...not pretty.
I still believe that, even if the captain did alter course deliberately, he still did all that he could after the collision to ensure the safety of his passengers and crew, the fact that we're looking at a death toll of maximum fifty out of four thousand is due, in part, to the ships location, which is due to either deliberate action or drifting.

As mapuc says though, we won't know anything until after the investigation. So there's little point in assigning blame when we still don't know all the facts, and are relying on stressed and scared eyewitness reports, media speculation and what seems to be a very hyperactive Italian prosecution.

Seems the captain ignored an order to return to his ship after he abandoned the ship and left the passengers http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-1...0?WT.svl=news0