Titanic's Centenary Year starts on grim note:

Costa Concordia tragedy brings safety issues to the fore

By Pramod DE SILVA

Exactly 100 years ago, the ‘unsinkable’ ocean liner Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the middle of the Atlantic, killing 1,517 people. One hundred years later, the Costa Concordia hit a rock and capsised close to the shore in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 11. Nearly 20 passengers are still missing.

The two tragedies are 100 years apart and there had been quite a few peacetime naval disasters in between, the biggest being the sinking of the ferry Dona Paz with the loss of 4,375 lives in December 1987. But the Titanic is so ingrained in our collective conscience that with each new maritime disaster, we revisit the tale of the magnificent White Star liner that sank midway through its maiden voyage to New York on April 15, 1912.

Christened in 2006, the Concordia was the largest and most luxurious in the Costa cruise fleet, boasting bars, restaurants, a gym, a large spa and several lavish suites. The Titanic had similar amenities. The Concordia is slightly larger (952 feet to the Titanic's 883 feet) and both had a top speed of 23 knots.

Both had issues with their christening. The Titanic was never christened. The Concordia was christened, but the champagne bottle didn't break. And to add fuel to the superstitious fire, the Concordia went down on a Friday the 13th.

Before it sank: Costa Concordia

The complex structure of the Costa Concordia

Bad luck may be a factor, but the stark reality now, as it was then, is that no ship is truly unsinkable, despite a century of advances in maritime engineering. Today’s ships are much safer than the Titanic ever was. Today’s maritime charts are far more accurate than they were in 1912 and of course, ship captains have real-time access to satellite weather data, GPS, Sonar and Radar.

Ships must have public address systems for announcements to passengers. They must hold "abandon ship" and fire drills. And lifeboats must be capable of being loaded, launched and manoeuvered away from the ship within 30 minutes of the signal to abandon ship.

In the past century, the cruise industry has undergone vast changes. Cruising has now become a holiday option for thousands of travellers. One-hundred years ago, the ship was the only option for getting from one city to another. With the advent of air travel, ships literally lost this race. Thus apart from the regular Southampton-New York run of Cunard cruise ships such as Queen Mary 2, there really are no regular passenger ships. They have all become a new way to discover the world at leisure, something that plane-hopping cannot offer.

Before it sank: Titanic

Ironically, this also means that there are far more people at sea at any given time now than in 1912. Carnival Cruises, which owned the ill-fated Costa Concordia, says 300,000 people are on board its ships on any given day. Consider other liners such as Cunard, P & O and Silversea and up to one million people could be at sea.

Any form of transport carries a risk. This is why certain safety measures have been adopted for nearly all forms of transport. The seatbelt in your car is a classic example. The lifejackets in an airplane and indeed, in ships, serve a similar function. But we give little thought to these devices. Indeed, everyday, millions fly and cruise without any accident. Frankly, far more people die on our roads.

But that does not mean that we should take such safety for granted. I have been on a cruise that took me from Singapore to Greece and the first thing the crew did was to hold a lifejacket, lifeboat and fire drill. According to numerous accounts of Costa Concordia survivors, they never had a lifejacket drill. And it seems that most members of the crew had not been trained to handle an emergency of this nature. Both of these are inexcusable errors.

Most accidents involving cars, aircraft and ships occur due to human error. In the case of the Costa Concordia, evidence suggests that Captain Francesco Schettino had made a fatal error in sailing too close to the shoreline of Isola del Giglio, infested with rock projections. Moreover, it has now come to light that he abandoned ship before all passengers were evacuated and ignored the Italian Coastguard’s orders to return to the ship. He has since been placed under house arrest until investigations are completed.

Time has apparently eroded our values as well. The Captain of the Titanic Edward John Smith issued the famous edict ‘women and children first’ and went down with his ship. The captain and crew of the Costa Concordia have allegedly done neither. Many passengers have said that men, crew members included, pushed past women and children in a bid to get to the lifeboats first.

Yet, 11 deaths (and possibly more) out of 4,200 people on board compares well with the 1,500 deaths from the Titanic, which had 2,207 people on board. This brings us to the question of the massive size of today’s cruise ships. Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Oasis of the Seas, one of the largest passenger liners ever built, can accommodate up to 5,400 passengers and 2,400 crew members. Most of today’s larger ships have room for around 5,000 people on board, crew included. We are talking about a small town here, not an ocean liner.

One does not need to be a Mensa member to understand that evacuating such a large number of people in a short period is a hugely challenging task, especially at mid sea. It is also extremely difficult to launch lifeboats from a listing ship, as seen in the Concordia episode. That also effectively cuts off access to lifeboats on one side of the ship. Another concern is that most ships are not known to carry the required number of lifeboats that can take in all the passengers and crew. There is often a delay when ship officers decide to abandon ship – this was evident both in Titanic and Costa Concordia. It could ultimately mean the loss of several lives. The ever more complex designs of ships are another danger – the convoluted pathways become death traps when the ship lists even by a few degrees. The sheer size also makes it equally difficult to fight fires.

While today’s shipping lines are much busier than they used to be in 1912, the nearest ship to a stricken one may still be hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres away. The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia, which rescued 705 Titanic passengers, was 100 kilometres away from the scene of the tragedy and took more than four hours to reach the spot at its maximum speed. It could only save those who were already in lifeboats. The sea could be a lonely place when you face real danger.

Now there are growing calls to investigate the Costa Concordia incident and even limit the making of super-large ships. Secretary-General of the UN body International Maritime Organization (IMO) Koji Sekimizu said the Costa Concordia accident cannot be taken "lightly" and prompts a re-look at the safety regulations of large vessels.

"We should seriously consider the lessons to be learnt and, if necessary, re-examine the regulations on the safety of large passenger ships," a statement from the UN agency quoted Sekimizu as saying.

He added that an investigation "covering all aspects of this accident" should be carried out, findings of which should be provided to IMO as soon as possible. "In the centenary year of the Titanic, we have again been reminded of the risks involved in maritime activities," he said.

Yes, the year will be replete with activities that centre on the Titanic. If our ships – and our seas – could be made safer in the years to come, those who perished on board the Titanic and the Costa Concordia may not have died in vain.

The Titanic link

VALENTINA Capuano could not believe it when the luxury cruise ship she was on began to sink - she only hoped that she would be saved like her grandmother, who survived the Titanic disaster, 100 years ago. "It was like re-living history, it was horrible, I was really shocked," said Capuano, who managed to escape when the giant Costa Concordia hit a rock and tipped over off the northwest Italian coast. Her grandmother survived when the Titanic passenger liner sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912. Her brother Giovanni did not.

Giovanni, who had been working as a waiter on the Titanic and hoped to begin a new life in America, was one of the 1517 people who died in the disaster.