Cruise disaster captain failed to tell coastguards his ship hit reef

The tape is of the first contact between Livorno port officials and Capt Francesco Schettino.

The captain, who left the ship before everyone was safely off the vessel, is under house arrest, facing possible charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship.

The Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into well-charted rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio after Schettino made an unauthorised diversion on Friday. The ship then keeled over on its side.

Eleven people have been confirmed dead and 21 are missing.

The recording between Schettino and port officials began at 10.12 pm on Friday, a good 30 minutes after the ship violently hit a reef and panicked passengers had fled the dining room to get their lifejackets.

Recordings of Schettino’s conversations with coast guard officials after the ship capsized on its side have shown how he resisted repeated orders to return on board to oversee the evacuation.

In the newly released recording, detailing the first communication between the ship and Livorno port authorities, Schettino is heard assuring the officer that he was checking out the reasons for the blackout. But he does not say that the ship had hit a reef.

Rather, the port officer tells Schettino that his agency had heard from a relative of one of the ship’s sailors that “during dinner everything fell on their heads”.

Passengers in the dining area reported plates and glasses slamming down onto diners.

“We are verifying the conditions on board,” Schettino replies. Asked if passengers had been told to put on life jackets, he responds: “Correct.”

Crew members and passengers alike have complained about the chaotic evacuation and the lack of direction from the ship’s officers.

Divers, meanwhile, restarted the search yesterday for those still missing, but a forecast of rough seas added uncertainty to the operation and to plans to begin pumping fuel from the vessel.

The divers were focusing on an evacuation route on the fourth level, now about 18 meters (60 ft) below the water, where five bodies were found earlier this week.

Crews set off small explosions to blow holes into hard-to-reach areas for easier access by divers after determining the ship had stabilised after shifting on the rocks 24 hours earlier.

Another seven of the dead have now been identified by authorities: French passengers Jeanne Gannard, Pierre Gregoire, Francis Servil, 71, and Jean-Pierre Micheaud, 61; Peruvian crew member Thomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza; Spanish passenger Guillermo Gual, 68, and Italian passenger Giovanni Masia, who news reports said would have turned 86 next week and was buried in Sardinia yesterday.

Authorities have identified 32 people either dead or missing: 12 Germans, seven Italians, six French, two Peruvians, two Americans and one person each from Hungary, India and Spain.

The movement on Wednesday had also postponed the start of the operation to extract the half-million gallons of fuel on board.

Italy’s environment minister issued a fresh warning about the implications if the ship shifts and breaks any of its oil tanks.

“We are very concerned” about the weather, said minister Corrado Clini. “If the tanks were to break, the fuel would block the sunlight from getting to the bottom of the sea, making a kind of film, and that would cause the death of the marine system in the area.”

Crew members returning home have begun speaking out about the chaotic evacuation, saying the captain sounded the alarm too late and did not give orders or instructions about how to evacuate passengers. Eventually, crew members started lowering lifeboats on their own.

“They asked us to make announcements to say that it was electrical problems and that our technicians were working on it and to not panic,” said French steward Thibault Francois. “I told myself this doesn’t sound good.”