The focus of the investigation into the Costa Concordia disaster off the coast of Italy shifted Sunday to its captain, Francesco Schettino, who is being detained by Italian prosecutors.
“While the investigation is ongoing, preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences,” the cruise line said in a statement.
“The route of the vessel appears to have been too close to the shore, and in handling the emergency the captain appears not to have followed standard Costa procedures,” said the Genoa-based line, which noted that the government prosecutor has leveled “serious accusations” against Schettino.
Italy’s state news agency said the captain could face multiple charges of manslaughter in the Jan. 13 incident. Schettino joined Costa in 2002 as a safety officer and was appointed captain in 2006.
The Concordia, carrying 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew, slammed into a rock near the island of Giglio, off the Tuscany coast, a few hours after leaving Civitavecchia on a seven-day Western Mediterranean cruise.
With a gash estimated at 150 feet long across its hull, the ship almost immediately began to list, making evacuation by lifeboat extremely difficult.
The number of confirmed dead increased on Sunday, when search teams inside the crippled ship found the bodies of two elderly passengers.
Three passengers had earlier been confirmed dead, and others still are unaccounted for, although the number cannot immediately be determined.
Costa, a Carnival Corp. brand, said on Sunday it engaged a salvage company to develop an action plan for the eventual removal of the ship.
Costa said that the Italian prosecutor “has seized the ship and the DVR — the so-called black box containing all navigation data — and the vessel can be accessed by Costa only with permission from the authorities.”
Follow Donna Tunney on Twitter @dttravelweekly.