However, Schettino said in court that he sailed by for “commercial reasons” and that his passengers were the ones he really wanted to please.
His three goals, according to the captain, were to entertain his guests, honor a retired captain who resided on Giglio, and please the ship’s head waiter, who was from the island.
Schettino said, “I wanted to kill three birds with one stone,” adding that he didn’t believe the ship’s owners, Costa Crociere, needed to be informed of the detour since it was seen as “an approach” rather than a “touristic route.”
The ship was “sailing too close to the coastline,” according to an investigation into the accident conducted by Italy’s Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports.
“The Costa Concordia’s ‘unsafe distance at night time and high speed (15.5 kts)’ and the ‘poorly lit shore area’ also contributed to the fatal incident,” the investigation said.
In the end, 33 individuals died in the catastrophe, and the last victim’s corpse wasn’t found until November 2014, two years after it happened.
After the Costa Concordia accident, Schettino and his staff were eventually prosecuted with many offenses, including homicide.
