The disgraced captain of the Costa Concordia returned to the shipwreck on Feb. 27. (Courtesy of The Parbuckling Project)
The embattled captain of the Costa Concordia returned to the ship on Feb. 27 as part of his trial on manslaughter, abandoning ship and other charges. Still defiant, Francesco Schettino was angered by journalists and residents of the island of Giglio, according to news reports from Italy. "You're really harassing me," he said to reporters who peppered him with questions, according to a Reuters article.
Schettino reportedly blames some of the Jan. 13, 2012, disaster on malfunctioning generators and water-tight doors. In court previously, he blamed a helmsman for not following an order fast enough, saying the crash wouldn't have happened if the corrective move was made in time.
Also, in a previous court hearing, a trainee officer testified that Schettino jumped into a lifeboat just before the ship sank, countering the captain's previous story that he slipped and fell off the ship, landing in a lifeboat.
The Costa Concordia wreck now is stable and could be ready to be towed away by late June. The vessel was rotated upright in September in a meticulous engineering feat called "parbuckling."
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