General Chat

Some reports have likened it to the Titanic. Apart from the lack of icebergs, 1500 fewer fatalities, Twice as many lifeboats, a ship that hasn't sunk in 2.5 miles of water, the warm water and a captain who wasn't called Smith, the similarities are striking.

As far as good old seamanship skills and old fashioned navigation, a quick check of the Times online for, say, 130 years ago shows hundreds of shipwrecks a month. As long as humans control things, errors will happen. They shouldn't but they will and yes, any loss of life is tragic but given the sheer number of people on board, it's remarkable that the death toll wasn't a lot higher. I'd much rather depend on sophisticated technology that some old man with a wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder saying 'arr, that be a bad moon tonight we'll splice the mizzen and batten down the mainbrace me hearties'.

Whilst no-one is denying that this is a tragedy it is no more dangerous than driving round our roads.The sat navs don't indicate deep potholes
Last year according to statistics 1850 were killed on the road far more than any Titanic disaster.All loss of life is sad but situations like this only make for improvements in safety standards so that other people won't suffer the same loss. This is likely to be the best time to go on a cruise as many captains will be thinking " but for the grace of God ....."-jl

sadened to hear another body has been found
my sympathies to their family and friends

No Stray the captain should not have stayed on until now but he and his officers were in charge of the ship and, like it or not they should have at least supervised the evacuation. I have no way of knowing if they did or didn't except for hearsay but, if they were found to have abandoned the passengers to look after themselves then it will be revealed in the investigation. And that may then be punishable.

they probably will get punished, by the sounds of it the captain and some crew were at fault, but like you say could be hersay,

im not saying it wasmt proffetionally wrong, but, i do understand, if he left, why he did, i would have done the same,

Its all pure speculation, once again media fueled rumour mongering desperate to get a new angle on a not very serious disaster on the scale of things.

If we are measuring it by loss of life, that is really sad. More people die in one afternoon on the roads in this country alone. 13 people died in a building collapse in beirut yesterday. 50 were killed in iraq on saturday by a suicide bomber. It always makes me wonder why things like this are blown up out of all proportion.

It is the shock factor Eldrick, the totally unexpected event and the fact that we can see it with our own eyes on the TV etc and hear the reports by survivors, feel their fear if you like.

Stray, Yes he is only human and I can understand him panicking, if he did.

A Master Mariner takes full responsibility for his ship, the cargo and all those person aboard it.

The disgrace of losing a ship is I expect still here today but in days gone by the Captain would go down with his ship rather than face the disgrace which would have awaited him ashore. (Captain Smith of Titanic is an example)

We no longer expect this but do expect the Master to be responsible for that which is put in his charge.

I just read this:

"The captain of the luxury liner shipwrecked off Italy has explained his early escape from the vessel by claiming he stumbled into a life raft and was unable to get out."

In our paper http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10779773

Persie :-0