AS THE crumpled hull of the Costa Concordia rolled slowly upright, Nick Sloane breathed a huge sigh of relief. A few hours earlier, the South African salvage expert had admitted to journalists that even after 14 months of preparation, he was still unsure if the wreck would remain intact during the recovery operation or split open, spilling a soup of rotting food, clothes and furniture into the sea.
The 50,000-tonne Costa Concordia was one of the largest cruise ships in the world. Its grounding and capsize off the Italian island of Giglio on 13 January 2012 resulted in the most expensive wreck-recovery operation ever staged, estimated at more than $1.5 billion. The operation was a huge challenge: it involved untested methods, and more than 500 people who installed 18,000 tonnes of concrete and steel on the seabed, and attached giant ballast tanks – each the size of an 11-storey ...
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