Italians enthralled by ship’s tale of two captains
Italy has become enthralled with the tale of two captains.
One is coastguard captain Gregorio De Falco, who furiously ordered the skipper of the Costa Concordia to return to his ship and oversee the rescue operations.
The other is Francesco Schettino, whom newspapers have branded a coward for fleeing in the face of adversity and who is now under house arrest, accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship.
“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 [expletive],” De Falco yelled at Schettino during a four-minute radio exchange.
The Italian word De Falco used, “cazzo” in Italian, is slang for the male sexual organ but it is commonly used to emphasise something, equivalent to “Go on board, damn it!.”
The imperative phrase in Italian — “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” — was already on T-shirts yesterday.
“Thank you, captain” was the more sedate headline chosen by the country’s largest national newspaper, Corriere della Sera, 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?”
The new Italian idol is an unlikely one.
De Falco is 48. He is balding and, in uniform, looks more like the maitre d’ of an exclusive restaurant on the Amalfi Coast than a swashbuckling heartthrob.
“I’m no hero,” De Falco told reporters last night as he entered a magistrate’s office in the Tuscan city of Grosseto to give testimony for the investigation.
Judging by the comments on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, Italians, living in a country many feel is mired in corruption and economic woe, would beg to disagree.
A tweet from Sofia Rosada said: “It is men like De Falco who should be governing. Instead we are full of men like Schettino.”
Some have even compared the men to Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot, one a saviour, the other a traitor.
Judging from reports that De Falco is usually soft-spoken and unassuming — when he is not faced with a shipwreck — he would likely reject the acclamation of instant sainthood.
But he may be moved by a tweet from an Italian boy named Salvatore Garzillo: “The next time someone asks me what I want to be when I grow up I will say: ‘A man like De Falco.’ ”
Divers searching the capsized Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia suspended work after the vast wreck shifted slightly, but officials said they are hoping to resume as soon as possible.
Six days after the 114,500 tonne cruise ship struck a rock and capsized off the picturesque Tuscan island of Giglio, hopes of finding anyone alive have faded and salvage experts are preparing to pump 2,300 tonnes of fuel from the hulk.
Eleven people are confirmed dead and at least 23 are still missing from more than 4,200 passengers and crew aboard when disaster struck the Concordia two hours into a week-long cruise of the western Mediterranean.
Schettino, blamed for causing the accident by coming too close to shore and then abandoning the vessel before the evacuation was complete, was put under house arrest on Tuesday after being questioned by a judge.
Schettino has reportedly said he was in a lifeboat while thousands of panic-stricken passengers and crew were trying to evacuate because he “tripped” and fell into the rescue craft.
During questioning, he reportedly said: “The passengers were pouring onto the decks, taking the lifeboats by assault. I didn’t even have a life jacket because I had given it to one of the passengers. I was trying to get people to get into the boats in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, since the ship was at a 60 to 70 degree angle, I tripped and I ended up in one of the boats.”
Meanwhile, the first victim of the crash was identified last night — a 38-year-old violinist from Hungary who had been working as an entertainer on the stricken cruise ship.
Sandor Feher’s body was found inside the wreck and identified by his mother, who had travelled Grosseto, according to Hungary’s foreign ministry.
Jozsef Balog, a pianist who worked with Feher on the ship, said he was wearing a lifejacket when he decided to return to his cabin to get his violin. Feher was last seen on deck en route to the area where he was supposed to board a lifeboat.
The search continued overnight on sections above the water line. Until the order was given to suspend work, divers had been preparing to resume the difficult and dangerous search of partly submerged areas of the giant ship after entries are blasted into the ship with explosives.
“The visibility is awful. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face,” said Giuseppe Minciotti, one of the specialist diving team deployed on the wreck.
“I grabbed a piece of floating debris, and I couldn’t see what it was until I had my head out of the water. It was a woman’s shoe,” he said.
“We’re waiting for new openings to be made, and we’ll see if the visibility is any better in those points.”
