Concordia captain blames helmsman for disaster
“I wanted to slow the ship down. But the helmsman did not follow my orders correctly,” Schettino told a court in Grosseto, where the trial against him for manslaughter and abandoning ship resumed after a summer recess.
“He steered in the wrong direction and we crashed,” he said, according to Italian media reports, accusing the helmsman, Jacob Rusli Bin, of making a mistake that caused a fatal delay in changing the ship’s course.
Schettino said: “If it weren’t for the delay and the mistake... the ship would have stopped,” he added, after requesting permission from the court to speak.
Schettino, dubbed “Italy’s most hated man” by the tabloids, is accused of sailing too fast and too close to the island in a risky manoeuvre to “salute” the residents, an Italian maritime tradition.
His defence team asked permission for experts to go aboard the wreckage to determine whether technical problems contributed to the disaster.
“It is now possible to carry out an inspection on board the Concordia. Parts of the ship are now above water and work can begin,” lawyer Francesco Pepe told journalists outside the court. The ship was hoisted upright last week from its watery grave off Giglio island following the biggest-ever salvage operation of its kind, 20 months after it ran aground.
Reports following the crash suggested that some safety mechanisms on board the ship failed to function, aggravating the situation.
“We will only be able to ascertain the truth and understand what happened after a fresh inspection of apparatus such as the emergency generators, the watertight doors and the lifeboat launches,” Pepe said.
Schettino, who has been nicknamed “Captain Coward” for apparently heading ashore while terrified people were still trapped aboard, faces up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted.
The 951-foot Concordia crashed into rocks on Jan 13, 2012, with 4,229 people on board.
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