You remember Captain Francesco Schettino, don’t you? He was the fellow tasked with piloting the Costa Concordia cruise ship the night it ran aground on an island, killing 32 people. Or perhaps you might better recall him as the man who, in the aftermath of the disaster when his decisions were called into question, told the world that he had not abandonned the ship in its time of need, but had tripped and fallen into a lifeboat that then took him to shore…completely by accident, of course. Yeah, that guy. You know the one.
Well, in spite of the fact that he’s currently on trial for multiple counts of manslaughter and charges that most of the time people don’t just fortuitously bumblefuck into lifeboats like that, he’s managed to find himself a new way to pass the time and presumably pay some bills.
In a decision one might compare to hiring Jeffrey Dahmer to teach cooking or dating safety, a university in Rome recently invited the Captain (Are we still allowed to call him that?) to give lectures on panic management. You know, because that worked out so well on tip over near the island day.
Schettino, who infamously claimed that he did not deliberately abandon the ship but instead “accidentally tripped” into a lifeboat that took him ashore, delivered a lecture to postgraduate students at Rome’s La Sapienza University on July 5.
The captain, whose trial will resume in the autumn after a summer break, reportedly used a 3D graphic of the night of the disaster to illustrate how he supposedly managed the chaotic evacuation of the 950ft-long ship, which is twice the size of the Titanic.
He has been accused of dithering over giving the decision to abandon ship and of scrambling ashore while hundreds of traumatised passengers and crew were still trying to evacuate.
When asked if maybe his choice of topic wasn’t exactly appropriate given his circumstances, Schettino removed his monsterous testicles from his trousers and began waving them like he just didn’t care.
“I was invited because I’m an expert,” the disgraced skipper told La Nazione newspaper. “I illustrated how situations of panic should be managed, discussing the human element in these situations.
“After all, I’ve sailed across every sea in the world. I know how one should behave in cases like this, how one needs to act when there are crew members of different nationalities.”
So presumably, the students learned how to say handy words and phrases such as “How many times have I told you guys not to just leave those damn boats lying around?” and “Let’s get outa here!” in several different languages.
Capt Schettino has consistently maintained that it was only thanks to his expertise and quick-thinking that the ship capsized in shallow water just a few hundred yards from the shore, rather than drifting out into deep water.
Had the ship sank there, there could have been hundreds, even thousands of casualties, rather than the 32 people who lost their lives in the tragedy.
“How come that after the attacks on the Twin Towers, people were throwing themselves out of windows, while during the capsizing of the Concordia nobody did anything like that?” he asked, apparently ignoring the fact that many passengers and crew felt compelled to leap into the sea from the listing ship.
Naturally there is much outrage over this, which prompted lecture organizer Vincenzo Mastronardi to issue a statement saying that he hadn’t invited Schettino, but that he had shown up “by surprise” and then spoken for 10 minutes.
So he just kind of fell into the classroom and spat out a faceful of lecture, basically.
Man, why can’t the rest of us trip and fall like that?
The part I don’t get is if he just showed up and stood up there and started yabbering at the class…why didn’t the organizer sort of step in and stop things, asking if he had approval to be up there? Seems the organizer would fall into a lifeboat too when the time comes to figure out where blame should be placed.