Lloyd’s List Awards “Seafarer of the Year” to the Crew of the Costa Concordia

The press release says that the Lloyd’s List Global Awards are “a celebration of the best that shipping industry has to offer and the finalists are the innovators and the visionaries. They are the boldest and the brightest. They are shipping’s success … Continue reading

Update: Costa Concordia – Report Says Captain Schettino to Blame, Crew and Company Also at Fault

Not long after the Costa Concordia struck Le Scole Rock off the island of Giglio, Italy at 9:45 pm on January 13, 2012, Captain Francesco Schettino’s voice can be heard on a voice-data recording muttering, “Madonna, what a mess I’ve … Continue reading

Report: Black Box Not Functioning, Watertight Doors Open When Costa Concordia Hit the Rocks

Extremely disturbing news coming out of Italy regarding the Costa Concordia, which ran aground and sank off the island of Giglio on January 13, 2012 with the deaths of at least 30 passengers. If the reports prove to be true, the ship was sailing with open watertight … Continue reading

Video of Proposed Costa Concordia Salvage

Last Friday we posted about a presentation made by the Titan-Micoperi consortium detailing their plans to salvage the Costa Concordia from the where she sank on January 13th off the island of Giglio, Italy.  The plan is to build an underwater platform onto which the ship … Continue reading

Titan-Micoperi Presents Plan to Raise Costa Concordia

Representatives of Titan-Micoperi presented their plans to raise the Costa Concordia from where she sank after running aground off the island of Gilgio last January.  Titan-Micoperi is the consortium of Titan Salvage, the Crowley-owned specialist marine salvage company, and Italian marine contractor Micoperi, which … Continue reading

Costa Concordia Update: Titan Salvage Awarded Contract, More Bodies Identified, Tourism Suffers

In February, Costa Lines invited ten companies to bid on salvaging the Costa Concordia (see our previous post.)   Today, the salvage contract was awarded to Titan Salvage and Micoperi.  Titan Salvage is a unit of Crowley Maritime Corporation and Micoperi is a Italian marine … Continue reading

Update: MS Carnival Triumph Allowed to Sail from Galveston, TX in Costa Concordia Lawsuit

Update:  The MS Carnival Triumph was allowed to sail as scheduled following last minute negotiations. The 2,758-passenger cruise ship MS Carnival Triumph was supposed to sail today for a five-day cruise to Yucatan and Cozumel. Instead, a Texas judge has ordered the ship … Continue reading

The Costa Concordia’s “Black Box” – A Look at Voyage Data Recorders

What really happened on the Costa Concordia in the final hours leading up to and following her grounding and sinking off Giglio on January 13, 2012?  The first step in definitively answering that question began in early March when an Italian judge … Continue reading

Costa Concordia Updates – Ship’s Bell Missing, Salvage Estimate More than 100 Million Euros

The ship’s bell on the Costa Concordia has gone missing.  According to Reuters, “underwater thieves have evaded an array of laser systems that measure millimetric shifts in the Costa Concordia shipwreck and 24-hour surveillance by the Italian coast guard and … Continue reading

Costa Concordia Pre-Trial Hearings Begin – Has Anything Changed in Cruise Operations?

In a hearing today in the Tuscan city of Grosseto, Italian Judge Valeria Montesarchio will ask court appointed experts to examine the “black box,” which contains digital recordings of the night of the grounding and sinking of the Costa Concordia off … Continue reading

Costa Allegra: Not A Sister Ship – the Unusual Transformation from Container Ship to Cruise Ship

The headlines from several media sources (see here or here) have referred to the Costa Allegra, the cruise ship adrift in the Indian Ocean after an engine room fire, as a sister ship to the Costa Concordia.  A sister ship is generally defined as a “a ship of the … Continue reading

Cruise Ship Costa Allegra Adrift off Seychelles After Fire

Sixteen months after the Carnival Splendor was blacked out by an engine room fire in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico, another Carnival owned cruise ship is drifting, dead in the water, after an engine room fire.  The Costa Allegra, a cruise ship … Continue reading

ROV Video – Costa Concordia Perched Perilously on Rocks, Bow & Stern

Video shot by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), roughly a month after the ship ran aground, shows that the Costa Concordia is not sitting evenly on the bottom.  Instead, the 950′ long ship is perched perilously on two rocky outcroppings at the bow … Continue reading