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The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse

By: Becky Little

Updated: August 10, 2023 | Original: June 23, 2021

Many famous naval disasters happen far out at sea, but on January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia wrecked just off the coast of an Italian island in relatively shallow water. The avoidable disaster killed 32 people and seriously injured many others, and left investigators wondering: Why was the luxury cruise ship sailing so close to the shore in the first place?

During the ensuing trial, prosecutors came up with a tabloid-ready explanation : The married ship captain had sailed it so close to the island to impress a much younger Moldovan dancer with whom he was having an affair.

Whether or not Captain Francesco Schettino was trying to impress his girlfriend is debatable. (Schettino insisted the ship sailed close to shore to salute other mariners and give passengers a good view.) But whatever the reason for getting too close, the Italian courts found the captain, four crew members and one official from the ship’s company, Costa Crociere (part of Carnival Corporation), to be at fault for causing the disaster and preventing a safe evacuation. The wreck was not the fault of unexpected weather or ship malfunction—it was a disaster caused entirely by a series of human errors.

“At any time when you have an incident similar to Concordia, there is never…a single causal factor,” says Brad Schoenwald, a senior marine inspector at the United States Coast Guard. “It is generally a sequence of events, things that line up in a bad way that ultimately create that incident.”

Wrecking Near the Shore

The Concordia was supposed to take passengers on a seven-day Italian cruise from Civitavecchia to Savona. But when it deviated from its planned path to sail closer to the island of Giglio, the ship struck a reef known as the Scole Rocks. The impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger.

Sailing close to shore to give passengers a nice view or salute other sailors is known as a “sail-by,” and it’s unclear how often cruise ships perform these maneuvers. Some consider them to be dangerous deviations from planned routes. In its investigative report on the 2012 disaster, Italy’s Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports found that the Concordia “was sailing too close to the coastline, in a poorly lit shore area…at an unsafe distance at night time and at high speed (15.5 kts).”

In his trial, Captain Schettino blamed the shipwreck on Helmsman Jacob Rusli Bin, who he claimed reacted incorrectly to his order; and argued that if the helmsman had reacted correctly and quickly, the ship wouldn’t have wrecked. However, an Italian naval admiral testified in court that even though the helmsman was late in executing the captain’s orders, “the crash would’ve happened anyway.” (The helmsman was one of the four crew members convicted in court for contributing to the disaster.)

A Questionable Evacuation

Evidence introduced in Schettino’s trial suggests that the safety of his passengers and crew wasn’t his number one priority as he assessed the damage to the Concordia. The impact and water leakage caused an electrical blackout on the ship, and a recorded phone call with Costa Crociere’s crisis coordinator, Roberto Ferrarini, shows he tried to downplay and cover up his actions by saying the blackout was what actually caused the accident.

“I have made a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding,” Schettino told Ferrarini while the ship was sinking. “What should I say to the media?… To the port authorities I have said that we had…a blackout.” (Ferrarini was later convicted for contributing to the disaster by delaying rescue operations.)

Schettino also didn’t immediately alert the Italian Search and Rescue Authority about the accident. The impact on the Scole Rocks occurred at about 9:45 p.m. local time, and the first person to contact rescue officials about the ship was someone on the shore, according to the investigative report. Search and Rescue contacted the ship a few minutes after 10:00 p.m., but Schettino didn’t tell them what had happened for about 20 more minutes.

A little more than an hour after impact, the crew began to evacuate the ship. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats. Evacuation was made even more chaotic by the ship listing so far to starboard, making walking inside very difficult and lowering the lifeboats on one side, near to impossible. Making things worse, the crew had dropped the anchor incorrectly, causing the ship to flop over even more dramatically.

Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it!” —a recorded sound bite that turned into a T-shirt slogan in Italy.

Schettino argued that he fell into a lifeboat because of how the ship was listing to one side, but this argument proved unconvincing. In 2015, a court found Schettino guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship before passengers and crew were evacuated and lying to authorities about the disaster. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In addition to Schettino, Ferrarini and Rusli Bin, the other people who received convictions for their role in the disaster were Cabin Service Director Manrico Giampedroni, First Officer Ciro Ambrosio and Third Officer Silvia Coronica.

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'We all suffer from PTSD': 10 years after the Costa Concordia cruise disaster, memories remain

GIGLIO, Italy — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship's engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia's wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

► CDC travel guidance: CDC warns 'avoid cruise travel' after more than 5,000 COVID cases in two weeks amid omicron

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month  warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

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'We all suffer from PTSD'

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice," Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

► Royal Caribbean cancels sailings: Pushes back restart on several ships over COVID

'We did something incredible'

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry's top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary," CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement."

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

► Cruising during COVID-19: Cancellation, refund policies vary by cruise line

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

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How the Wreck of a Cruise Liner Changed an Italian Island

Ten years ago the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people and entwining the lives of others forever.

By Gaia Pianigiani

GIGLIO PORTO, Italy — The curvy granite rocks of the Tuscan island of Giglio lay bare in the winter sun, no longer hidden by the ominous, stricken cruise liner that ran aground in the turquoise waters of this marine sanctuary ten years ago.

Few of the 500-odd residents of the fishermen’s village will ever forget the freezing night of Jan. 13, 2012, when the Costa Concordia shipwrecked, killing 32 people and upending life on the island for years.

“Every one of us here has a tragic memory from then,” said Mario Pellegrini, 59, who was deputy mayor in 2012 and was the first civilian to climb onto the cruise ship after it struck the rocks near the lighthouses at the port entrance.

The hospitality of the tight-knit community of islanders kicked in, at first to give basic assistance to the 4,229 passengers and crew members who had to be evacuated from a listing vessel as high as a skyscraper. In no time, Giglio residents hosted thousands of journalists, law enforcement officers and rescue experts who descended on the port. In the months to come, salvage teams set up camp in the picturesque harbor to work on safely removing the ship, an operation that took more than two years to complete.

The people of Giglio felt like a family for those who spent long days at its port, waiting to receive word of their loved ones whose bodies remained trapped on the ship. On Thursday, 10 years to the day of the tragedy, the victims’ families, some passengers and Italian authorities attended a remembrance Mass and threw a crown of flowers onto the waters where the Costa Concordia had rested. At 9:45 p.m., the time when the ship ran aground, a candlelit procession illuminated the port’s quay while church bells rang and ship sirens blared.

What stands out now for many is how the wreck forever changed the lives of some of those whose paths crossed as a result. Friendships were made, business relations took shape and new families were even formed.

“It feels as if, since that tragic night, the lives of all the people involved were forever connected by an invisible thread,” Luana Gervasi, the niece of one of the shipwreck victims, said at the Mass on Thursday, her voice breaking.

Francesco Dietrich, 48, from the eastern city of Ancona, arrived on the island in February 2013 to work with the wreck divers, “a dream job,” he said, adding: “It was like offering someone who plays soccer for the parish team to join the Champions League with all the top teams in the business.”

For his work, Mr. Dietrich had to buy a lot of boat-repair supplies from the only hardware store in town. It was owned by a local family, and Mr. Dietrich now has a 6-year-old son, Pietro, with the family’s daughter.

“It was such a shock for us,” said Bruna Danei, 42, who until 2018 worked as a secretary for the consortium that salvaged the wreck. “The work on the Costa Concordia was a life-changing experience for me in many ways.”

A rendering of the Costa Concordia used by salvage teams to plan its recovery hung on the wall of the living room where her 22-month-old daughter, Arianna, played.

“She wouldn’t be here if Davide hadn’t come to work on the site,” Ms. Danei said, referring to Davide Cedioli, 52, an experienced diver from Turin who came to the island in May 2012 to help right the Costa Concordia — and who is also Arianna’s father.

From a barge, Mr. Cedioli monitored the unprecedented salvage operation that, in less than a day, was able to rotate the 951-foot vessel, partly smashed against the rocks, from the sea bottom to an upright position without further endangering the underwater ecosystem that it damaged when it ran aground.

“We jumped up and down in happiness when the parbuckling was completed,” Mr. Cedioli remembered. “We felt we were bringing some justice to this story. And I loved this small community and living on the island.”

The local council voted to make Jan. 13 a day of remembrance on Giglio, but after this year it will stop the public commemorations and “make it a more intimate moment, without the media,” Mr. Ortelli said during the mass.

“Being here ten years later brings back a lot of emotions,” said Kevin Rebello, 47, whose older brother, Russell, was a waiter on the Costa Concordia.

Russell Rebello’s remains were finally retrieved three years after the shipwreck, from under the furniture in a cabin, once the vessel was upright and being taken apart in Genoa.

“First, I feel close to my brother here,” Kevin Rebello said. “But it is also some sort of family reunion for me — I couldn’t wait to see the Giglio people.”

Mr. Rebello hugged and greeted residents on the streets of the port area, and recalled how the people there had shown affection for him at the time, buying him coffee and simply showing respect for his grief.

“Other victims’ families feel differently, but I am a Catholic and I have forgiven,” Mr. Rebello explained.

The Costa Concordia accident caused national shame when it became clear that the liner’s commander, Francesco Schettino, failed to immediately sound the general alarm and coordinate the evacuation, and instead abandoned the sinking vessel.

“Get back on board!” a Coast Guard officer shouted at Mr. Schettino when he understood that the captain was in a lifeboat watching people scramble to escape, audio recordings of their exchange later revealed. “Go up on the bow of the ship on a rope ladder, and tell me what you can do, how many people are there and what they need. Now!”

The officer has since pursued a successful career in politics, while Mr. Schettino is serving a 16-year sentence in a Roman prison for homicide and for abandoning the ship before the evacuation was completed. Other officials and crew members plea-bargained for lesser sentences.

During the trial, Mr. Schettino admitted that he had committed an “imprudence” when he decided to sail near the island of Giglio at high speed to greet the family of the ship’s headwaiter. The impact with the half-submerged rock near the island produced a gash in the hull more than 70 meters long, or about 76 yards, leading to blackouts on board and water pouring into the lower decks.

Mr. Schettino tried to steer the cruise ship toward the port to make evacuation easier, but the vessel was out of control and began to tip as it neared the harbor, making many lifeboats useless.

“I can’t forget the eyes of children, scared to death, and of their parents,” said Mr. Pellegrini, who had boarded the ship to speak with officials and organize the evacuation. “The metallic sound of the enormous ship tipping over and the gurgling of the sea up the endless corridors of the cruiser.”

Sergio Ortelli, who is still the mayor of Giglio ten years later, was similarly moved. “Nobody can go back and cancel those senseless deaths of innocent people, or the grief of their families,” he said. “The tragedy will always stay with us as a community. It was an apocalypse for us.”

Yet Mr. Ortelli said that the accident also told a different story, that of the skilled rescuers who managed to save thousands of lives, and of the engineers who righted the liner, refloated it and took it to the scrapyard.

While the global attention shifted away from Giglio, residents have stayed in touch with the outside world through the people who temporarily lived there.

For months, the Rev. Lorenzo Pasquotti, who was then a pastor in Giglio, kept receiving packages: dry-cleaned slippers, sweaters and tablecloths that were given to the cold, stranded passengers in his church that night, returned via courier.

One summer, Father Pasquotti ate German cookies with a German couple who were passengers on the ship. They still remembered the hot tea and leftovers from Christmas delicacies that they were given that night.

“So many nationalities — the world was at our door all of a sudden,” he said, remembering that night. “And we naturally opened it.”

Gaia Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy for The New York Times.  More about Gaia Pianigiani

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Costa Concordia: What happened

Thirty-two people died after the Costa Concordia cruis ship ran aground with more than 4,000 passengers and crew on 13 January 2012, only hours after leaving the Italian port of Civitavecchia. The graphics and maps below reveal more about what happened.

The Costa Concordia left the Italian port of Civitavecchia at 19:18 local time ( 18:18 GMT).

The ship was heading out on a week-long cruise around the Mediterranean with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew onboard.

As it made its way north-west along the Italian coastline, Captain Francesco Schettino ordered the ship to be steered close to the island of Giglio as a "salute".

Automatic positioning data from Dutch firm QPS showed the ship's position as it approached land, and what happened next.

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QPS reconstruction of the Concordia's final minutes

Italy's Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport published a detailed timeline of events in its report into the accident (PDF), released in May 2013.

Other details emerged at pre-trial hearings, including excerpts of the frantic conversations between the Captain and his crew in the aftermath of the accident, captured by the ship's "black box" voice recorder.

Nearing Giglio just after 21.30 , the captain gave the helmsman coordinates, followed by the warning "otherwise we go on the rocks".

Minutes later, at 21:45 , the Costa Concordia hit a rocky outcrop while travelling at around 16 knots.

How the Costa Concordia capsized

The ship was holed on the left-hand side, started taking on water and began to tilt. Engine rooms were flooded and power was lost.

The crew struggled to assess the situation and relayed incomplete information to the Italian authorities.

At 21:52 the chief engineer and electrical officer tried and failed to start the ship's emergency diesel generator.

Shortly afterwards, passengers were told that the ship was suffering a "blackout", but that the situation was under control. The same information was given to the harbour master at Civitavecchia.

Costa Concordia crew member tells coastguard "we have a blackout"

Positioning data shows that the Costa Concordia turned and began to drift back towards the island's port soon after 22:00 due to, investigators say, a combination of the wind and the rudder positioned to starboard (right).

As it drifted, the ship then began to list in the opposite direction, possibly caused by water in the damaged hull rushing to the far side during the turn.

At 22:12 , the coastguard called the ship to say passengers were reporting problems to the local police, but the captain replied: "We have a blackout and we are checking the conditions on board."

At 22:22 the captain gave orders to tell the coastguard that they had had a "failure" and needed help from tug boats. The radio operator did this and added that all the passengers had been given life jackets, none was injured and there was a gash in the left side of the ship.

At 22:33 the general emergency alarm was raised and passengers told to go to muster stations and await instructions.

By 22:48 the ship had settled on the rocky sea bed, tilted by more than 30 degrees. The captain finally gave the order to abandon ship at at 22:54 .

Most passengers escaped in lifeboats, but evacuation efforts were hampered by the angle of the tilting ship. The coastguard launched boats and helicopters to carry stranded passengers to safety.

At 23:19 Captain Schettino abandoned the bridge, leaving the second master to co-ordinate the evacuation.

However by 23:32 the second master also left the bridge. Around 300 passengers and some crew were still on board.

At midnight dozens of passengers remained, many clinging to the exposed side of the ship.

In a conversation recorded at 00:42 , a coastguard commander ordered the captain to get back on board. He did not, and went ashore.

The rescue continued over the weekend, with the ship's safety officer, Marrico Giampietroni, being discovered and evacuated with a broken leg at 12:00 on Sunday . A South Korean couple were also rescued.

A recording was released in which the coastguard ordered Captain Schettino to 'get back on board'

Capt Schettino was arrested and later went on trial, charged with multiple counts of manslaughter and abandoning ship.

He admitted making a navigational error, and told investigators he had "ordered the turn too late" as the ship sailed close to the island.

The ship's owners, Costa Cruises, said the captain had made an "unapproved, unauthorised" deviation in course, sailing too close to the island in order to show the ship to locals.

Automatic tracking systems show the route of the Costa Concordia until it ran aground on 13 January. Data from 14 August 2011 show the ship followed a similar course close to the shoreline, according to Lloyd's List Intelligence. On 6 January 2012 , it passed through the same strait but sailed much further from the island.

Divers searched the ship as it rested on the seabed in about 20m of water. The operation had to be suspended a number of times as the ship shifted position. The sea floor eventually drops to about 100m.

Before salvage work could begin, 2,400 tonnes of fuel had to be extracted from its tanks.

The Dutch salvage firm Smit brought a barge alongside the ship and divers installed external tanks to collect the diesel. More than 2,200 tonnes of fuel was eventually extracted, but the engineers were unable to remove all of it from some of the most inaccessible tanks.

The decision to salvage the ship, rather than break it up, was taken in May 2012, four months after the disaster.

The contract - awarded jointly to salvage companies Titan and Micoperi - was described as an unprecedented operation.

The ship was eventually refloated in July 2014 and taken to Genoa, where the scrapping operation is expected to take two years.

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Ten years on, Costa Concordia shipwreck still haunts survivors, islanders

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Where is the Costa Concordia Now?

The ship that went aground one year ago is slowly but surely being turned upright and salvaged

Maritime Nightmare

More than a year after it ran aground with 4,252 people aboard, shocking viewers worldwide, the cruise ship Costa Concordia remains wedged on rocks near the Italian island Giglio. But the luxury liner might float one last time. Its owner, the Carnival Corporation, is spending $400 million on one of the largest salvage operations ever attempted, the Parbuckling Project.

The Parbuckling Project

Parbuckling is a centuries-old method that winches a sunken or listing ship upright while it is anchored at a pivot point known as the “deadman.” Sounds simple, right? But the Costa Concordia is 951 feet long and weighs 60,000 tons. To hoist it, nine enormous rectangular compartments, called sponsons, will be bolted to the ship, each equipped with a hydraulic pulley; the pulleys lead to 36 steel cables as thick as lampposts that attach to six underwater platforms. As the pulleys tighten the cables, the ship will be lifted upright.

If all goes well, the two-hour par­buckling maneuver will climax months of work by 450 technicians. Steps include drilling 26 holes in the granite coast to hold pillars for the platforms. The sponsons will be filled with seawater to act as a counterweight as the ship is lifted.

End of the Line

Once it’s upright, the sponsons will be drained, and additional ones will be attached to the other side. They’ll all be filled with air, providing buoyancy like a giant life preserver. With luck, the liner will be towed into an Italian port, where ship breakers will spend two years turning it into scrap metal, which will be sold.

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10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster vivid for survivors

FILE — The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia lays on its starboard side after it ran aground off the coast of the Isola del Giglio island, Italy on Jan. 13, 2012. Italy is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Giuseppe Modesti)

FILE— The grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen through a window on the Isola del Giglio island, Italy, Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Oil removal ships near the cruise ship Costa Concordia leaning on its side Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, after running aground near the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, last Friday night. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— The Costa Concordia ship lies on its side on the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Monday, Sept. 16, 2013. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

FILE— A sunbather gets her tan on a rock during the operations to refloat the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia on the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Once the ship has refloated it will be towed to Genoa’s port, about 200 nautical miles (320 kilometers), where it will be dismantled. 30 months ago it struck a reef and capsized, killing 32 people. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— The wrecked hulk of the Costa Concordia cruise ship is towed along the Tyrrhenian Sea, 30 miles off the coast of Viareggio, Italy, Friday, July 25, 2014. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Fabio Muzzi)

FILE— A view of the previously submerged side of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, off the coast of the Tuscan Island of Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 13, 2014. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— A passenger from South Korea, center, walks with Italian Firefighters, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012, after being rescued from the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia which ran aground on the tiny Italian island of Isola del Giglio. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE— A woman hangs her laundry as the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen in the background, off the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap.(AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, Francesco Schettino, right, the captain of the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, is taken into custody by Carabinieri in Porto Santo Stefano, Italy. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Giacomo Aprili)

Experts aboard a sea platform carry oil recovery equipment, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, as they return to the port of the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, where the cruise ship Costa Concordia, visible in background, ran aground on Ja. 13, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Seagulls fly in front of the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

FILE— Italian firefighters conduct search operations on the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia that ran aground the tiny Tuscan island of Isola del Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012. Italy on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration, honoring the 32 people who died but also the extraordinary response by the residents of Giglio who took in the 4,200 passengers and crew from the ship on that rainy Friday night and then lived with the Concordia carcass for another two years before it was hauled away for scrap. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

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GIGLIO, Italy (AP) — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises , regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

Winfield reported from Rome.

July 1, 2014

Capsized Costa Concordia Is Finally Set to Leave Its Watery Grave

Final preparations are under way to refloat and remove the Costa Concordia from the pristine waters off Giglio in what has been the largest and most expensive maritime salvage operation ever attempted. 

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Editor’s Note: For Scientific American’s complete coverage of the Costa Concordia disaster see links at the end of this story.

After more than two and a half years and $1 billion, the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia is about to set sail again, although it won’t be under its own power. The move could not come too soon, because the risk that it will damage the environment is much higher now than when the ship originally crashed near the Tuscan island of Giglio in January 2012.

If all goes well, the crippled vessel , which was rotated to an upright position (parbuckled) in September, will be lifted to the surface in an even riskier operation sometime around the middle of July—likely the 14th because the salvors working on the operation are superstitious enough to avoid having the refloat in progress on the 13th.

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So far, the biggest problem the uplift team has faced was detachment of a flotation caisson in April. These caissons are large metal boxes into which compressed air will be pumped to float the ship. Salvage crews repaired and remounted the escaped caisson and are now finishing installation of the remaining ones. The Concordia will have 30 caissons in all to carry out the refloat. Once the ship has been lifted, two of the caissons will have to be refitted to help keep the craft ship afloat while it is being towed 240 kilometers to Genoa, where it will be dismantled.

Lifting the ship more than 12 meters off the giant underwater platforms that have been supporting it since September will take three or four days, but raising it the first two meters will be the most dangerous part of the exercise. That’s when the hull could crack and spill out a toxic stew of chemicals, rotten food and debris trapped since the shipwreck that has been swilling around inside the sunken ship for more than two years. If the hull breaks apart, the ship would likely never be removable from Giglio in one piece and would have to be dismantled in situ.

Once the ship is floated two meters off the platforms, salvors will carry out crucial checks to make sure the ship has no hidden fissures or further structural damage. Then they will move it eastward some 30 meters to begin the full refloat. Franco Porcellacchia, project manager for Costa Cruises, told Scientific American that the ship will be then be lifted above the surface deck by deck, with salvage crews stopping after each new deck emerges to look for environmentally harmful substances as well as clean the debris so that it does not leak into the sea. Italy’s environmental ministry is “greatly concerned” that the wrecked ship will spew flotsam and contaminants all the way to Genoa. But the engineers working on the project and Costa Cruises (which is owned by American Carnival Cruises) have assured them that the pollution produced en route to Genoa will be “temporary and of little significance.”

The superficial debris that salvagers will remove before the vessel sets sail includes mattresses, suitcases and personal effects belonging to guests as well as fully stocked freezers (that could pop when the water pressure is eased) and entire restaurants with plates, utensils, tables and chairs. And even if the hull remains intact, bunker fuel left in the tanks and engines, along with other harmful chemicals such as cleaning supplies could also befoul the water if not removed promptly.

The risks posed by raising the ship are real but leaving the Costa Concordia in place is not an option because as the ship decays and saltwater and waves crash against it, the likelihood of pollution fouling the waters off Giglio rises. Salvors have told Scientific American that they cannot guarantee the ship would survive another winter intact. “It’s far more dangerous to the environment to leave it where it is than to tow it away,” said Franco Gabrielli, Italy’s Civil Protection chief, when he met with Giglio residents this week to explain the process. “It must go as soon as possible.”

Barbie Latza Nadeau is an American journalist who has worked from Rome since 1996. She is author of the upcoming book, Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast , about sex trafficking and organized crime in Italy.

10 years later, Costa Concordia disaster vivid for survivors

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Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship’s engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia’s wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises , regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice,” Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry’s top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary,” CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement.”

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 300-meter (1,000-foot) long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

Winfield reported from Rome.

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Captain who commanded Costa Concordia in cruise disaster that killed 32 begins 16-year prison sentence

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Francesco Schettino, the former cruise ship captain sentenced to 16 years for steering the Costa Concordia into rocks, was finally jailed Friday after his lengthy appeals process ran out.

Dubbed “Captain Coward” for fleeing the capsizing cruise ship in 2012 as 32 passengers and crew drowned, Schettino handed himself over to police on Friday evening after Italy’s supreme court upheld his 2015 conviction.

“I trust in the justice system; the verdict must be respected. I’m handing myself in right now,” he told his lawyer, Saverio Senese, by telephone after the verdict, adding he was standing outside a jail in Rome.

Schettino, 56, was convicted for shipwreck, manslaughter and abandoning ship after he steered too close to rocks on the Italian island of Giglio on Jan. 13, 2012, while showing off to a Moldovan dancer with whom he was having an affair.

The collision tore a hole in the hull of the 114,000-ton ship, which limped on without power before going aground in shallow water close to the shore of Giglio.

Appearing bewildered and indecisive as the cruise ship slowly toppled onto its side, Schettino delayed lowering lifeboats then jumped into one himself, as 32 of the 4,229 passengers and crew on board died.

Some were sucked underwater by whirlpools caused by the keeling ship as they struggled to swim the short distance to shore, while others died trapped in the ship’s flooded elevator shaft.

Schettino was turned into both a laughingstock and a national embarrassment in Italy after a recording emerged of a coast guard official, Gregorio De Falco, urging him by radio to get back on board to look for passengers.

“You may have managed to save yourself from the sea, but it will really go badly. ... I will create a lot of trouble for you. Get on board, damn it!” De Falco shouted as Schettino meekly tried to justify being onshore.

Schettino later claimed he slipped and fell into the lifeboat. At his first trial, his then lawyer, Domenico Pepe, said, “No one but Spider-Man could have stayed on his feet on that deck, which was tilted at 40 degrees with a slippery floor.”

Schettino added, “I will fight forever to prove that I did not abandon the Costa Concordia,” a claim that prompted further jibes from the public as his name became synonymous with cowardice.

“May God have pity on him because we can’t,” one prosecutor said.

During Schettino’s two appeals, during which he was not held in custody, his lawyers tried to blame his Indonesian helmsman for the crash and claimed the breakdown of the ship’s emergency generator slowed evacuation.

The ship’s owner, Costa Crociere, paid a fine of 1 million euros for its role in the tragedy to avoid a trial, a payment that was criticized as being too low. Four crew members and a member of Costa Crociere’s onshore emergency unit received short sentences for manslaughter and negligence after plea bargaining.

On Friday, defense attorney Senese asked to show the court a video detailing alleged malfunctions in the ship’s watertight doors, which he said contributed to the ship’s filling rapidly with water after it was holed. His request was denied.

Proof of that malfunction was destroyed, he said, when the ship was raised, towed to Genoa in Italy and scrapped.

In their summing up before the supreme court, prosecutors accused Schettino of “unprecedented negligence” and bringing “dishonor” to his profession.

Schettino was absent during the supreme court hearings, following memorable appearances at his initial trial, where he broke down in tears while addressing judges.

After the final verdict Friday, Senese said, “I am extremely bitter that only Schettino has paid for this. As always happens in Italy, we need scapegoats.”

On Twitter, Italians angrily claimed that Schettino’s 16-year sentence would likely be reduced thanks to Italy’s generous cutting of jail time for good behavior.

But Michelina Suriano, a lawyer representing the victims, said she was grateful that the long appeals process had come to an end.

“Finally, Schettino begins to pay for his wrongdoing,” she said.

Kington is a special correspondent.

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A Current Look At and Inside the Dismantled Costa Concordia

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The effort to dismantle the ill-fated Costa Concordia continues in Genoa, Italy with approximately 200 technicians now working to cut up and remove all fittings and structures from the vessel.

According to the latest update from the Ship Recycling consortium released Wednesday, the lightening of the cruise ship has allowed the removal of the first  giant steel sponsons that have provided buoyancy for the wreck since it was refloated in July 2014.  The update said that what started from the top decks down, cutting operations are now taking place on decks 8 to 7 while stripping is down to decks 2 and 1. 

Once that work completed, crews will begin to remove all external structures from the ship, including all 30 sponsons, and seal the hull so that what’s left of the vessel can be transferred to dry dock for demolition. 

Check out the photos of the ongoing operations below:

Photos above courtesy the Ship Recycling Consortium

Photo below posted by someone on our social media shows the Costa Concordia as of November 10th. You can see how much progress they are making on the upper decks:

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Costa Concordia: Live video of the massive salvage operation

The Costa Concordia is being righted by a vast system of steel cables and pulleys in a $827M operation: Live video

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The crippled Costa Concordia cruise ship was pulled completely upright early Tuesday during a complicated, 19-hour operation to wrench it from its side where it capsized last year off Tuscany, with officials declaring it a “perfect” end to a daring and unprecedented engineering feat.

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Shortly after 4 a.m., a foghorn wailed on Giglio Island and the head of Italy’s Civil Protection agency, Franco Gabrielli, announced that the ship had reached vertical and that the operation to rotate it – known in nautical terms as parbuckling – was complete.

“We completed the parbuckling operation a few minutes ago the way we thought it would happen and the way we hoped it would happen,” said Franco Porcellacchia, project manager for the Concordia’s owner, Costa Crociere SpA.

“A perfect operation, I must say,” with no environmental spill detected so far, he said.

Applause rang out among firefighters in the tent where the project engineers made the announcement. An hour later, Nick Sloane, the South African chief salvage master, received a hero’s welcome as he came ashore from the barge that had served as the floating command control room for the operation.

“Brilliant! Perfetto,” Sloane said, using some of the Italian he has learned over the past year on Giglio preparing for Tuesday’s operation. “It was a struggle, a bit of a roller coaster. But for the whole team it was fantastic.”

The Concordia slammed into a reef off Giglio Island on Jan. 13, 2012, after the captain brought it too close to shore. The cruise ship drifted, listed and capsized just off the island’s port, killing 32 people. Two bodies were never recovered.

The operation to right it had been expected to take no more than 12 hours, but dragged on after some initial delays with the vast system of steel cables, pulleys and counterweights. The final phase of the rotation went remarkably fast as gravity began to kick in and pull the ship toward its normal vertical position.

Parbuckling is a standard operation to right capsized ships. But never before had it been used on such a huge cruise liner.

The Concordia is expected to be floated away from Giglio in the spring and turned into scrap.

Sloane said an initial inspection of the starboard side, covered in brown slime from its 20 months underwater while the ship was stuck on a rocky seabed perch, indicated serious damage that must be fixed in the coming weeks and months. The damage he said was caused by both the capsizing and the operation to rotate the ship.

“We have to do a really detailed inspection of the damage,” to determine how to shore it up so it can withstand towing.

But he seemed confident: “She was strong enough to come up like this, she’s strong enough to be towed.”

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Carnival Firenze cruise ship arrives at new home in Long Beach

by: Travis Schlepp

Posted: Apr 23, 2024 / 12:03 PM PDT

Updated: Apr 23, 2024 / 12:17 PM PDT

The Long Beach Cruise Terminal has a new resident — a 1000-foot-long, 5,200-guest cruise ship by the name of Firenze .

The Carnival cruise ship arrived Tuesday after traveling from Europe to Long Beach , which will be its permanent home base as it sails year-round, offering multi-day cruises to the Mexican Riviera.

The Firenze is an Italian-inspired ship that is named after the city of Florence. It was originally part of a fleet of cruise ships belonging to Costa Cruises, a popular cruise line in Italy, and a subsidiary of Carnival.

It was built and delivered to Costa Cruises in December 2020, but in June 2022 , it was announced Firenze would be coming stateside as part of the company’s “ Costa by Carnival ” initiative, alongside its sister ship, Carnival Venezia, which calls New York City home.

Both cruise ships feature Italian-themed restaurants, bars and entertainment, and unique Italian-inspired design and architecture.

It’s the third Carnival cruise ship to sail from Long Beach to Baja Mexico and the Mexican Riviera, joining the Carnival Panorama and Radiance ships. Firenze is the largest of the three and has the highest maximum passenger capacity of more than 6,500 combined guests and crew.

The ship is over 323 meters long with 135,300 gross tonnage, a measurement of a ship’s total internal volume, and has more than 2,100 passenger cabins, according to its  specification page .

Firenze’s maiden voyage —from Long Beach, at least — will take place on Thursday, with an “Italian-inspired” inaugural event and naming celebration being held the day before at the Carnival Cruise Terminal.

Carnival Cruise Line executives will be on hand, as well as actor Jonathan Bennett, known for several holiday romance films and his portrayal of Aaron Samuels in the classic teen-comedy “Mean Girls.”

Bennett is a longtime Carnival cruiser and even honeymooned on one of its ships, Carnival officials said. He sailed the first voyage of Venezia last May and has been given the unofficial title of Firenze’s “godfather.”

Firenze will offer several different itinerary options, with cruises ranging from three-day quick tips to seven-day excursions.

Cruises can be reserved by phone or online at  carnival.com .

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