Yorkshire firms join fight to refloat liner

The mammoth task of moving the luxury liner from the reef where it has been stuck since capsizing off Tuscany in January last year began yesterday, and experts are now cautiously optimistic they can rotate it upright and eventually tow it away.

Never before has such an enormous cruise ship been righted, and the Concordia did not move for the first three hours, until 6,000 tons of force were applied using a complex system of pulleys and counterweights. Engineer Sergio Girotto said cameras had not revealed any sign of the two bodies that were never recovered from among the 32 who died when the 115,000-ton vessel slammed into a reef.

“Rotation has gone according to predictions,” said Franco Gabrielli, chief of Italy’s Civil Protection agency, which is overseeing the operation.

Beverley firm Dalby Offshore has played a key role in the multi-national effort, helping to construct the concrete platform being used to stabilise the vessel.

It is also providing floating accommodation for 120 workers on its vessel The Pioneer, and preparing up to 20,000 meals a month – with up to eight tonnes of meat being shipped in from a butcher’s in Whitby.

Speaking to the Yorkshire Post from the scene, managing director Stuart McNiven said: “Today’s a big event and how it goes will determine how the project moves forward. We are hoping to float off next summer.”

The operation, known in nautical parlance as parbuckling, is a proven method to raise capsized vessels. The USS Oklahoma was parbuckled by the US military in 1943 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

The captain of the Concordia, Francesco Schettino is on trial on charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship during the evacuation.