Concordia captain blames crew member
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The captain of the Costa Concordia has blamed an Indonesian helmsman for the incident which led to the ship hitting rocks off the coast of Giglio in January last year.
Captain Schettino, who is on trial for manslaughter, causing shipwreck and abandoning ship, says he has been used as a scapegoat for the errors of others.
According to the BBC, Schettino has claimed a helmsman failed to obey his orders to slow down, which led to the death of 32 people. The helmsman has been convicted of manslaughter in a separate trial.
“If it weren’t for the helmsman’s error, to not position the tiller to the left… the swerve (toward the reef) and the collision wouldn’t have happened,” Schettino said.
However, a naval expert, who was brought in to speak at the proceedings, refuted the claim.
“The helmsman was 13 seconds late in executing the manoeuvre, but the crash would have happened anyway,” Italian naval Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone said.
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