Sinking Feeling
That is the sort of feeling I get when reading silly newspaper articles full of sensationalist speculation as to the motives and failings of the Captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino. Of more interest is the article (not yet online) entitled “Making a Monster of Human Frailty” by Theodore Dalrymple. Dr. Dalrymple starts:
“Courage is a virtue and heroism is admirable, but do we have a right to demand them?”
He then goes on to say of Captain Schettino:
“Could he have know in advance that he was not up to the mark, that no man was less fitted than he for an emergency?”
I have heard this argument many times. Heroism can not be expected of people – this is absolutely true. But what is expected of someone like Schettino is that he should be able to do his job. Let me explain.
Let us picture someone coming upon an accident. They know some basic first aid and could probably help, but they decide not to. We could point to the faults in this person and criticise them, but we could not expect them to render assistance, as they are not obliged to. Consider, however, the same accident victim rushed into the emergency department. What would you think of the doctor if he decided to take his lunch break at that moment? Or if the nurse said that she didn’t like all that blood and left the resuscitation bay. Rightly, we would not merely criticise but condemn the doctor and the nurse for abandoning their duty of care.
The difference in our expectations of the passing stranger and the doctor and nurse, is not due to our expectation of heroism from either, but our assumption that the doctor and the nurse have both been trained to deal with these events. We do not condemn a civilian from running away from gunfire, but we would certainly condemn a soldier.
Schettino is clearly in the latter category. He is not a lay person thrust into an unexpected situation, he is supposed to be a professional who has been trained to deal with precisely this situation – a sinking ship filled with passengers that he must evacuate. There is no doubt that he has been well trained – he did extremely well initially by swinging the ship round and beaching it in shallow waters. He probably saved many lives doing this. He then promptly abandoned ship leaving 4000 people to mill around in panic. Metaphorically, the doctor took a lunch break.
No one expected Schettino to “go down with the ship”, or some such romantic nonsense. No one expected him to attempt heroic rescue missions for trapped passengers. No one expected him to be a brave person.
We just expected him to do his job.
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Jan 21 12 7:03 pm
“We just expected him to do his job.”
As another Captain did.
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/2012/01/photo-of-note-a-juxtaposition.html
Jan 21 12 8:27 pm
Funny, it was Sullenberger that I had in mind when I was writing this post. His landing of that plane in the Hudson river was a text-book perfect ditch over water and evacuation. He was indeed “just doing his job” and we all admire him for it.
Jan 22 12 1:02 am
Please go check this out – written by those who seem to know.
http://gcaptain.com/costa-concordia-3-fatal-flaws-that-led-to-disaster/?37976
They say “No, what the captain did was what caused the loss of life” … please read it all.
Extract
A slowly sinking ship that’s relatively stable and close to shore is not intrinsically dangerous. Yes, you want to get the passengers off before she sinks but you still have time to preform the rescue. What is dangerous is a listing ship!
When a ship lists past 5 degrees she becomes exceedingly dangerous. The smooth steel decks turn into slides that propel equipment and people down it at a high rate of speed. It’s common practice to beach a sinking ship for two reasons. First, it brings the ship closer to shore allowing people to swim to safety (which they in fact did in this case) and limits the time of those who jump overboard from being in the cold water. Second, grounding the ship prevents her from sinking which can allow you more time to rescue those stuck inside her damaged hull.
Some even praise Captain Schettino for running the Costa Concordia aground, but this decision was flawed.
When a ship is grounded to prevent her from sinking, the typical maneuver is to point her bow toward a sandy point on the charge and drive her ahead. This was not possible here because the ship had lost propulsion. Instead the ship was driven by thrusters (or current, the facts remain unclear) sideways toward the beach. When the keel hit bottom her 114,147 tons of steel continued to have momentum but, because she was moving sideways (all sway with very little surge or yaw), the momentum didn’t propel her further onto the beach, rather it seems to have caused her top-heavy build to “trip over itself”.
Why does a ship list to starboard when all her damage is on the port side? This could have been caused by emergency ballasting procedures (pumping water into the starboard side to compensate for the water entering to port) but the more likely answer is that by grounding her starboard-side-to the beach the ship’s momentum pulled her over to starboard.
This was the most critical mistake!
Jan 22 12 12:04 pm
Dalrymple’s piece is on-line at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/9022832/Concordia-disaster-Should-a-captain-go-down-with-his-ship.html