[Mike Cash]

How many passengers will a dinghy hold anyway?

The only thing he's going to be sailing is a paper boat in the sink in his prison cell.

[Don From The Radio]

The (aptly named? ) Herald of Free Enteprise was apparently salvaged by re-floating, but it then turned out that nobody wanted to buy the ship and it ended up scrapped. Costa Concordia is much larger though which makes salvage tougher (and prospective buyers scarcer? - I suppose the way it works is that the insurance company ends up in possession of the wreck so they'd need to find a buyer who wants to run it?)

Put a different funnel on it and sell it to a Pacific Rim based cruise company like Star, and no one would even know it was the same ship.

Remember the Andrea Doria disaster? The ship that rammed her, the Stockholm, is still in service under a different name.

[jogiba]

Put a different funnel on it and sell it to a Pacific Rim based cruise company like Star, and no one would even know it was the same ship.

Remember the Andrea Doria disaster? The ship that rammed her, the Stockholm, is still in service under a different name.

Ss Stockholm, launched in 1948, is one of the oldest still operating cruise ships. Stockholm gained a notorious reputation by sinking Andrea Doria in a collision in 1956. It's most likely going to be scrapped after this season.

[jolepp]

The Italian company that owns the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia has offered passengers 11,000 euros (£9,000; $14,000) each in compensation.

The deal comes after negotiations between the company, Costa Cruises, and several Italian consumer groups.

The company also promised to refund medical and transport expenses, as well as the cost of the cruise.
...

BBC News - Costa Concordia company offers passengers compensation

[jogiba]

It's a good thing it was not MS Allure of the Seas that has a capacity of 8,684 ( 6,300 passengers & 2,384 crew ) !

[Alliecat]

Last week's CBC documentary about the wreck.
The Wreck of the Costa Concordia - the fifth estate
The whole episode is only viewable in Canada, but there is a bunch of other stuff which can supposedly be seen worldwide.

[adwb]

My eyes hurt from rolling so much over people saying it was "just like the Titanic".

Uhhhh......how about it was EFFING NOTHING LIKE THE EFFING TITANIC......Jesus.

Unless the Titanic gently settled to rest on a shallow bottom within spitting distance of a Mediterranean port, with the loss of one-fifth of one percent of those aboard, the rest being taken off by the swift action of fire, police, coast guard, and other services' boats and helicopters, that is. I suppose that must be what happened to the Titanic, but over the decades things just got exaggerated by Hollywood.

Compared to the disaster that was the Titanic, in the annals of maritime tragedies this hardly rates as more than a minor incident and would be entirely unworthy of note were it not for the honking huge-assed size of the ship and the utterly stupid manner in which a half-billion dollar investment sank to the bottom with it.

Is it just the current generation which feels a need to sensationally over-horribilize things in order to feed their sense of historical relevance? Or is it a basic trait we've always had and the Information Age just magnifies it?

That I would agree to, there was a interview on the tv here with a crew member [dancer] and her description on trying to get around in the hull with passage ways that ran from port to starboard now being like lift shafts and walking on the wall of the fore and aft ones was a stricking reminder of what it must be like to be on any ship that has capsized or has a heavy list.

[Don From The Radio]

It's a good thing it was not MS Allure of the Seas that has a capacity of 8,684 ( 6,300 passengers & 2,384 crew ) !

That's the Oasis of the Seas, by the way.