Cruise Ship Sinking: 4-Minute Audio of Costa Concordia Captain Abandoning Ship [LATEST PHOTOS]
Update: An Italian judge has placed Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino under House Arrest.
The captain of the Costa Concordia, the sinking cruise ship that ran aground in Italy on Friday, was ordered by Italian coast guard to return to his ship and coordinate the rescue operation. However, the transcripts of radio calls and telephone conversations published on Tuesday showed that the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, told the coast guard that the evacuation was almost done when it never got underway.
Here's a portion of the transcript reported by CNN:
Port authority: Concordia. We ask you if all is well there.
Concordia: All is well. It is only a technical failure.
Port authority: How many people are on board?
Schettino: Two-three hundred
Port authority: How come so few people? Are you on board?'
Schettino: No, I'm not on board because the ship is keeling. We've abandoned it.
Port authority: What? You've abandoned the ship?
Schettino: No. What abandon? I'm here.
Port authority: You must return on board. Climb the ladder (rope ladder), return to the fore (stem) and coordinate the work.
Schettino does not reply
Port authority: You must tell us how many people are on board, how many women, how many children. You have to coordinate the rescue operation. Commander, this is an order. Now I'm in charge, you have abandoned ship and now you are going to go to the stem and coordinate the work. There are already dead bodies.
Schettino: How many?
Port authority: You should be the one telling me this...What do you want to do? Do you want to go home?...Now go back on the stem and tell me what to do..
More than 4,200 people were on board the Costa Concordia when it ran aground on Friday. The ship hit a reef and ripped a 70- to 100-meter hole in its hull, according to the Agence France Press.
Reports are that the death toll from the incident has risen to 11 after rescuers found five more bodies in the submerged portion of the ship. Twenty-nine people are still missing.
The coast guard has said the missing includes 14 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans, one Hungarian, one Indian and one Peruvian.
Schettino remains in custody and is facing multiple manslaughter charges. He is also accused of causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship, according to Reuters.
Schettino wanted to show the boat to locals
Pier Luigi Foschi, the boss of Costa Cruises, told the BBC that Schettino sailed too close to a nearby island in order to show the ship to locals. Foschi has apologized for the accident and admitted that Schettino changed the course of the journey.
The company will be close to the captain and will provide him with all the necessary assistance, but we need to acknowledge the facts and we cannot deny human error, Foschi said. This route was put in correctly. The fact that it left from this course is due solely to a maneuver by the commander that was unapproved, unauthorized and unknown to Costa.
He wanted to show the ship, to [go] nearby this island of Giglio, so he decided to change the course of the ship to go closer to the island.
Listen to the audio in the video below. Then start the slideshow to see the latest photos of the search.
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