Super yacht sinking - did the crew bravely survive or did they abandon their the passengers

[mids2019]

So....most of the crew survived this tragedy but the passengers died. Do you think it will emerge the crew should have e done more to alrt the passengers and indeed put their lives in danger to attempt a rescue? Maybe it was all just too fast?

I just think there seems silence from the crew at moment despite being survivors of a sinking vessel who have a story to tell. Are lawyers advising they stay quiet on this?

I suspect it will be her late husband's estate that's in the frame rather than Ms Bacares unless she was a part owner.

The reports I’ve seen say she owned the yacht.

My mistake, I've seen that now.

The crew are responsible for the safety of a vessel and the passengers on board.
It has nothing to do with wealth or otherwise, it has to do with responsibility and doing the job properly.

Letting the fact that the passengers were wealthy should not cloud our judgement.

That’s not why he ended up in prison. He ended up in prison because he caused the accident by being an idiot and showing off by sailing where he shouldn’t.

They are not that low paid.

https://www.flyingfishonline.com/news/superyacht-crew-salary-guide/

So €2500-3000 per month tax free, free food and board, and tips which can be 000’s per month for the lowest paid.

The charges against him included abandoning ship.

@Carebearsonmybed She is the sole shareholder in the limited company that owns the boat. It's done that way specifically to limit liability. No one with that much money is stupid enough to not put it through a limited liability company.

Came to say what Tritter said. Angela Bacares is not personally the owner. The company (let’s call it AB Ltd) will own the yacht, pay the maintenance bills, pay the insurance policy. If people try to sue AB Ltd, they will be referred to the insurer.

@Carebearsonmybed

I wonder if this will have an impact on the super yacht market? They certainly won't be as appealing to billionaires now.

I’m not sure, by way of comparison quite a few Billionaires and multimillionaires have been the victims of exec helicopter crashes and exec/biz jet accidents over the years but it’s still a massive industry.

“Included”. That alone is unlikely to have got him a prison sentence.

Goodness, what a lot of speculation & conjecture-along with a handful of helpings of vindictive nastiness.

This yacht sank because of what insurers classify as an 'act of god' (regardless of what anyone's personal position on god is)!

The Italian system clearly has a process to investigate any and all lines of inquiry where there is interaction which may give rise to circumstances of manslaughter.

As a UK flagged yacht, the MAIB will also need to conduct a full investigation and report.

It is deeply unlikely that a bunch of non-specialist gossips on Mumsnet will be the ones to get to the bottom of this!

But for the avoidance of doubt - the captain may have done nothing wrong. The crew may have done nothing wrong. And the builders may have done nothing wrong.

If the keel was partially up, that may have been a contributing factor. If watertight compartments were left unsecured, that will have been a contributing factor.

I've found some of the comments about waking guests & having them sat around on deck for hours in life jackets almost laughable - even from some of the Italian investigators/builders. Do you have any idea how many time guests on a superyacht will go to bed with a storm front of 50 knot winds forecast, the yacht drags anchor a bit - and all they know about it is that they wake up in a different, incredibly beautiful bay? Often enough!

This storm front contained an extreme weather incident of some kind which created a direct hit (which didn't directly hit another yacht within half a mile). We don't know that the captain didn't have the engines on trying to prevent the anchor from further dragging.

We don't know what structural damage may have occurred on the starboard side the boat is resting on on the seabed - which the divers can't assess.

We don't know whether the keel WAS fully deployed but folded up somewhat as the boat settled-this seems perhaps less likely, but is still a possibility.

Even if the keel wasn't fully deployed, there may be reasons, including 'the boss' asking for it not to be all the way down because of how it makes the boat behave at anchor (affecting swing circle size, movement and jerking at the edges of the swing). We DON'T know.

Investigators will ask the questions to try to find out.

Some suggestions will come out of the investigation (which may or may not include additional rules on securing matresses; weight/volume limits of unsecured furnishings per cabin; linked speakers & emergency button for a muster alarm the same as you have on a ferry; and/or rules about when everyone on board MUST be woken & mustered - so the next poor sod who tries to do the right thing & wakes the guests at 4am to sit around with life jackets for 3 hours isn't just fired for "ruining their holiday for no reason").... you can see that the judgement required for the decisions taken at the time are well outside our sphere of understanding because WE WEREN'T THERE at the time.

Please let the survivors get on with their recovery (as traumatic as that will be). There are so many holes in the few facts which have been reported in the press (even the timeline is unclear, with poor witness accounts and potentially offset CCTV timestamps).

To gossip is human but you WILL not resolve answers here.

Let the investigators get on with their investigation.

And if you dwell on anything, perhaps let it be what you personally can do to reduce your personal fossil fuel footprint, so the power of extreme weather events such as this can at some point eventually start reducing, too!

While I applaud most of your post there’s no need to be so snotty. Nobody on here THINKS they are going to solve the puzzles about what happened just by chatting on Mumsnet. A lot of the posts are people who know a small amount correcting misapprehensions by people who know still less, and I don’t see what’s wrong with that on a discussion forum.

Well said @TheCountessofFitzdotterel

Exactly.

And I think most people know it will be multifactorial

Hypocritical, condescending and sanctimonious 😆🙈 with a side helping of misogyny (‘a bunch of gossips on mumsnet’ to sum up a thread that has largely been people sharing experience of sailing, crewing, or some other relevant domain).

— Tells everyone off for supposed speculation and conjecture and proceeds to spend 17 subsequent paragraphs sticking their oar in and airing their own personal thoughts on the matter. —

Top work 😉

@MeandT
It is deeply unlikely that a bunch of non-specialist gossips on Mumsnet will be the ones to get to the bottom of this!
Since this is an anonymous forum you have no idea of other people's education, careers or professional hobbies. There are plenty of people here who have enough knowledge to explain to the rest of us. The Titan threads for instance had lots of informed, intelligent posters.

And if you dwell on anything, perhaps let it be what you personally can do to reduce your personal fossil fuel footprint, so the power of extreme weather events such as this can at some point eventually start reducing, too!
Oh I agree. Perhaps the first thing you can do is stop using the Internet. Server farms are adding horrifically to the Earth's temperature. Or failing that perhaps start petitioning the various government's to ban bitcoin farming. I'll sign that.

To gossip is human but you WILL not resolve answers here.

You’re not wrong but I’m afraid you won’t stop the more extreme speculation.

It’s happening more and more on aviation specific forums following accidents and incidents, in part fueled by the partially informed playing crash investigator and looking at social media and the fashionable tracking sites without realizing those sites limitations/lack of resolution, then hoping to be quoted in the MSM as an expert (and sometimes actually succeeding).

It’s maybe fair enough to discuss in an abstract manner some of the general technical stuff that’s gone on with the accident under discussion here but when it gets into trying to be forensic or worse still speculation about behaviour……..

Of course they did, but that alone wouldn’t have resulted in a prison sentence. He was the sole cause of the accident. He deviated from the chartered course with no authorisation and overrode safety procedures to sail closer to the island of Giglio - he gave various reasons for this but was essentially showing off to his girlfriend, who was on the bridge with him at the time. The ship hit rocks and 32 people died - dozens more seriously injured - as a result of his actions. He was tried on multiple charges relating to the incident, but he alone was charged with manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, reckless endangerment and abandoning ship. He also faced charges in relation to interfering with the rescue operations.

The charge of abandoning ship was in relation to failing to initiate proper emergency protocols and helping with evacuation before leaving the ship himself. Schettino denied that charge in court, saying he was thrown into the water, despite the coastguard giving evidence that he ordered Schettino back to the ship to help the passengers. He was given a 16 year prison sentence after being found guilty on all charges.

His abandoning ship and refusing to reboard contributed to the many deaths and therefore his charges for manslaughter of those people.

It was an integral part of the charges against him, and the sentence he received.

The charge of abandoning ship was in relation to failing to initiate proper emergency protocols and helping with evacuation before leaving the ship himself.

Which is reasonable to conclude contributed to the deaths, and therefore those man slaughter charges.

Schettino denied that charge in court, saying he was thrown into the water, despite the coastguard giving evidence that he ordered Schettino back to the ship to help the passengers.

He claimed he tripped and fell into a lifeboat.

This yacht sank because of what insurers classify as an 'act of god'

You've contradicted your entire post vehemently stating that we don't know what happened by saying this.

You have no idea if human error or design faults/weaknesses etc. meant that the act of god sank the yacht, where it otherwise may not have sunk.

You don't know, we don't know ...so you likewise can't state it sank because of an act of god.

I hope she won’t be. That poor, poor lady, waiting for the body of her DD to be found, all the while knowing her DH had died, and then the discovery of her DD’s body all alone in a cabin.
That doesn’t detract from the fact that tragic things happen to people day in, day out. I’m not trying to make her tragedy somehow greater. But my heart still goes out to her.
I also feel, (without further information), for the captain and his family. And of course the families of all those deceased.

No, the charge of abandoning ship was as a result of Schettino disregarding a direct order from the coastguard to go back to the ship to help the passengers. There was a recording played in court, of the telephone call between the two men, in which the coastguard repeatedly orders him back to the ship to oversee the evacuation, and Schettino refuses. It wasn’t specifically linked to the number of deaths - that was addressed in the charge of the manslaughter of the 32 passengers who died as a result of Schettino’s actions causing the shipwreck