2008 bow damage On 22 November 2008,
Costa Concordia suffered damage to her bow when high winds over the
Sicilian city of
Palermo pushed the ship against its dock. There were no injuries and repairs started soon after. Initial repairs were completed by the December following the incident, but dents were still visible. The area was later fully repaired in 2011 during the ship's refurbishment.
2012 grounding and partial sinking On 13 January 2012, under the command of Captain
Francesco Schettino,
Costa Concordia departed
Civitavecchia, the port that serves Rome, Italy, for a seven-night cruise. At 21:45 local time (UTC+1), in calm seas and overcast weather, she collided with a rock off
Isola del Giglio, on the western coast of Italy approximately northwest of
Rome. A long gash was made in the port-side hull, along three compartments of the engine room (deck 0). This resulted in loss of propulsion and loss of electrical systems, which crippled the ship. Taking on water, the vessel
listed to the starboard (right) side. Twenty-four minutes later, strong winds pushed the vessel back to
Giglio Island, where she
grounded north of the village of
Giglio Porto, resting on her
starboard side in shallow waters, with most of her starboard side underwater. Almost half of the ship remained above water, but it was in danger of sinking completely into a trough deep. Despite the gradual sinking of the ship, its complete loss of power, and its proximity to shore in calm seas, an order to abandon ship was not issued until over an hour after the initial impact. Although international maritime law requires all passengers to be evacuated within 30 minutes of an order to abandon ship, the evacuation of
Costa Concordia took over six hours. At the time, she was carrying 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew members. The accident resulted in 32 fatalities. The body of the last missing person, Indian crew member Russel Rebello, was recovered on 3 November 2014. It appears that Rebello died while saving other passengers. Schettino was found guilty of
manslaughter, causing a maritime accident, and
abandoning his ship. He was sentenced to sixteen years in prison in 2015.
Salvage An initial assessment by salvage expert company
Smit International estimated that the removal of
Costa Concordia and her 2,380 tonnes of fuel could take up to 10 months. Smit advised that the ship had been damaged beyond the hope of economic repair and recommended it be written off as a
constructive total loss. Smit was soon contracted to initially remove only Concordia's fuel. During the fuel removal operation, Smit reported that the ship had shifted in the three weeks since her grounding, but that there was no immediate prospect of her breaking up or sinking deeper. Removal of the fuel from the various fuel tanks distributed throughout the ship was completed in March 2012, later than Smit's initial estimates. This cleared the way to arrange for the ultimate salvaging and scrapping of the ship. On 17 September 2013,
Costa Concordia was brought to a vertical position through a
parbuckling procedure. The cost for salvaging the ship increased to $799 million. In addition, the ship had suffered severe hull deformations in two places. Titan Salvage, the company directing the salvage operations, estimated that the next phase of the salvage operation would be completed by early-to-mid-2014. After this "floating" operation, the ship would be towed to a salvage yard on the Italian mainland for scrapping or "breaking". On 14 July 2014, work commenced to refloat
Costa Concordia in preparation for towing. At this point, the costs had risen to €1 billion. Including tow cost, €100 million for the ship to be broken up for scrap and the cost of repairing damage to Giglio island, the estimated final cost was expected to be €1.5 billion ($2 billion). On 23 July, having been refloated, the ship commenced its final journey under tow at a speed of , with a 14-ship escort, to be scrapped in Genoa. It arrived at port on 27 July, after a four-day journey. It was moored to a seawall at the port, awaiting dismantling processes. On 11 May 2015, following initial dismantling, but still kept afloat by the salvage
sponsons, the hull was towed to the Superbacino dock in Genoa for removal of the upper decks. The last of the sponsons were removed in August 2016 and the hull was taken in to a drydock on 1 September for final dismantling. Scrapping of the ship was completed on 7 July 2017. == Aftermath ==