Costa Concordia captain: symbol of the era?

The Italian judge who put Schettino under house arrest said she found “serious indications” of guilt. 

The captain has since gone through what is described in politics as a series of “fact-free” moments: An electrical problem is to blame, the port authorities were told the situation was under control, the captain left the boat along with much of the crew. The captain seemed to think, despite the ship being on its side, that he could talk his way out of an actual crisis. 

In a set of extraordinary radio communications, Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco, apoplectic with anger that Schettino has left the boat, urges him to go back and take command. That radio exchange has become one of the great moral moments of the incident.

Mr. De Falco indicated he didn't care that it was dark or that the boat is on its side. According to audio transcripts confirmed by Corriere della Sera, he told Schettino, “You go up that pilot ladder, get on that ship, and tell me how many people are still on board.… You need to tell me if there are children, women, or people in need of assistance. … Go on board, [expletive]!,” he says. As Schettino hesitates, De Falco says, “It has been an hour that you have been telling me the same thing. Now, go on board. Go on board!”

Thousands are now wearing T-shirts that read (minus the expletive) “Go on board!”  The Coast Guard captain is being called the real hero.

A continent searching for leaders

Italians have just replaced former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a leader not known for his assidous leadership. For many of them, the Concordia lying on its side is a symbol of a country still somewhat adrift from a debt crisis and longtime leader mired in scandal.

"We had just come out of the tunnel of Bunga Bunga," writes blogger Caterina Soffici on Il Fatto Quotidiano and quoted in the Guardian. "We were just drawing that little, relieved breath that would enable us to toil again up the hill to international credibility. But [now] … We've gone straight into the Titanic nightmare [and] Italy is once again the laughing stocking of foreign newspapers."

The crisis of leadership extends beyond Italy and has been written about extensively – and the Concordia is a good metaphor. The glamorous euro is in crisis, breached on rocky shoals of Greece, Portugal, and Italy. For two years, European captains have equivocated about what to do as the ship lists, taking on more water. 

Historians are still writing about the larger meaning of the Titanic, 100 years later. In 1910, just before the "unsinkable" symbol of man's mastery of the oceans sank, Virginia Woolf wrote, “human nature changed.” The behavior of the Titanic crew – the mistakes, the sinking – have been read almost as a cultural Rorschach, describing the beginning of modernity and an "age of anxiety" and questions about old Anglo-Saxon presumptions of dominance, among many others. 

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