ABOARD the opulent ocean liner, Costa Concordia to celebrate her mother’s 50th birthday, 17-year-old Stefania Vincenzi marvelled at the sheer size and opulence inside.

With restaurants, casinos, theatres – all dripping in gold, marble and glass, lit by ornate chandeliers, the trip appeared to be a dream come true.

The ‘unsinkable’ Costa Concordia cruise ship was sailing up the west coast of Italy when it struck rocks in 2012

Stefania Vincenzi was just 17 when she set sail on the ship. Sadly her mum Maria did not survive

As the ship neared Giglio Island, off the Tuscan coast, on Friday 13 January, 2012, Stefania, from Sicily, and her boyfriend, Andrea, decided to go up on deck. She was greeted by all the romance a teenage girl in love could ever dream of.

“As I opened the door, I felt this fresh breeze,” she says. “Everything was dark but it was lit up by the twinkling lights on the boat. The sparkles reflected on the water. I leant out and was watching the sea and Andrea, who was behind me, hugged me and said, ‘It feels like The Titanic.’

“At that moment I felt a little strange. But it’s crazy, right? So, you just leave that thought behind.”

But just a few minutes later, her worst nightmare was to come true as the ship struck a rock and rapidly took in water as the lights went out and everyone on board had to scramble to get into a lifeboat in the pitch black as the liner dramatically listed to one side.

Captain Schettino was found responsible for a 230-foot gash along the side of the ship that flooded the engine room

Incredibly, in the ensuing panic, the captain abandoned ship himself, leaving others stranded on board, fighting for their lives.

Tragically, 32 of the 4,000 aboard, lost their lives and Captain Francesco Schettino was tried and convicted for manslaughter and is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence.

The lambasting that Schettino received from the coast guard, when he was ordered to go back on his ship, painted him indelibly as a coward.

In the Netflix documentary, Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea, survivors talk about that dreadful night and the programme questions whether Schettino was entirely to blame. If his orders had been carried out correctly, the accident was unlikely to have happened.

Others excited to be embarking on a luxury cruise, with stops in Italy, France and Spain, were Americans John and Meghan Scimone and their 14-month-old daughter, Lila, determined to enjoy a holiday of a lifetime.

Ship dancer, Rose Metcalf from Dorset, was already having the time of her life.

“I was living my dream, being paid as a professional dancer whilst travelling the Mediterranean – my first contract after graduating university,” she says. Rose was destined to become one of the last to be rescued.

Having received a call from her mum, Maria, to join her and her best friend Luisa, in the restaurant, Stephania and Andrea arrived as dinner was being served. At midnight it would be Maria’s birthday

Suddenly, around 9.45pm the ship jolted, there was a loud screeching sound and in the kitchen hundreds of plates smashed to the floor.

Up on the bridge, a startled Captain Schettino ordered all watertight doors at the back to be closed, as he muttered, “God, what have I done?”

The Concordia had struck an outlying rock off Giglio, tearing a huge hole in the stern on the port (left) side and began to rapidly take on water.

“In the dining room, everyone was freaking out,” says Stephania. “I was looking at my mum. She said ‘It’s okay.’ She was trying to make me feel like nothing bad was happening, but I knew it was.”

Meanwhile, John and Meghan were putting Lila to bed when they felt the collision.

“The room slowly started to shift,” says John. “It was incredibly unnerving. I knew something was terribly wrong. I definitely felt panic. Survival instinct kicked in. I yelled to Meghan ‘Grab the baby. We’ve got to go.’”

They then made their way up the staircase to level four, where the lifeboats were, but carrying the baby made it a laborious journey. And then the power cut out and everything was in darkness.

Increasing the general panic was the lack of information about what had happened and what action passengers should take.

Maria Grazia Tricarichi, right, tragically did not survive the shipwreck, but daughter Stefania, left, did

John and Meghan Scimone had to wait an hour and a half before boarding a life boat

Eventually an announcement was made from the bridge by a member of crew: “I speak on behalf of the captain.

We’re currently in a blackout as we’re experiencing electrical failure. At this point, the situation is under control, and our technicians are working to solve the situation. We’ll give you further information as it becomes available.”

A second announcement, asked everyone to go back to their cabins.

But they were not being given the full truth. Panic was also breaking out on the bridge with Schettino seemingly in denial that the collision was life-threatening.

He told the Costa Cruises Crisis Coordinator, “I messed up, right? The whole ship’s flooded. But we’re not sinking. In a bit I’ll drop the anchor. We’ll station here and then we need to get some tug boats to take us away.”

Meanwhile, in the restaurant, Stefania and her family, along with the other diners, were eventually instructed to make their way up to the pool deck. But, dressed for dinner, many women in high-heels found climbing stairs difficult.

“The ship was tilted and my mother began to struggle with her heels,” says Stefania. “She held my hand really tight and said, ‘Don’t let me go.’”

Costa Concordia accidentally took a detour and steered straight into underwater rocks

Realising they were sinking, Rose went to the special muster station for crew on deck four. As passengers were handed life jackets, everyone was awaiting the instruction to get into the lifeboats. But none came.

No longer believing there had simply been a loss of power, many panicking passengers rang the police on shore for help.

It wasn’t until 47 minutes after the collision that the emergency claxons sounded and a further 24 minutes until Captain Schettino finally gave permission to lower the lifeboats to take the passengers to shore.

“This was one of the ugliest points of the evening because it was hundreds of people fighting to get to the life rafts and pushing each other over,” says John.

Rose with a fellow dancer before the deadly sinking

Rose was interviewed on the documentary about the horrifying ordeal

He and Meghan waited their turn to get into a boat but, because they were on the high side of the listing liner, when the boar was lowered, it banged into the side of the ship, sending passengers tumbling into each other.

To their despair, they had to climb out and get back onto the Concordia and try to make their way to the opposite side of the ship where the boats were lower to the water.

Here, Stefania and her family were also waiting to evacuate.

“I noticed everyone was wearing a life jacket, but we didn’t find one,” she says. “And I remember Luisa looking at my mother and saying, ‘I can’t swim.’

“My mother said she needed to go to the cabin to get Luisa’s life jacket and she said she will change her shoes while she was there, because she couldn’t walk anymore.

Disgraced Captain Schettino was jailed for 16 years in 2016

Rose, following her nightmare aboard the Costa Concordia

“I said, ‘No! This is the worst idea ever. There is no way I am going back to our cabin, two decks below.’ And she said, ‘We are going. If you don’t want to come with us, you can just wait here with Andrea.’

“As soon as I entered the lifeboat, I called my mother and said, ‘Where are you?’ She told me she was about to get onto a boat, too.”

Meanwhile, Captain Schettino had also got onto one of the lifeboats himself, while plenty of passengers and crew were still aboard.

The ship had now titled so much that people had to walk on the walls of it, trying to navigate the furniture and avoid it hitting them, every time it lurched.

“On this high part of the ship, a lifeboat was trying to be deployed but, because of the angle of the ship, it was rolling and we saw people being tipped out into the water,” says Rose, who took it upon herself to lead her team to safety.

Many of the lucky ones, who landed at Giglio Island, congregated in the local church where there were heartbreaking calls to family members who failed to answer.

Others gathered on the shore to watch the ship go down, desperately waiting and praying that their loved ones had got off.

“The first thing I did was to call my mother but the phone didn’t ring anymore,” says Stefania. “But she said she was on a lifeboat, so she has to be here, somewhere.

“We began to search for her and Luisa. The island was very crowded, and it seemed impossible to find anyone.”

A study demonstrated that if Captain Schettino’s orders had been executed correctly, the impact would have been partial or non-existent

Divers exploring the wrecked ship following its sinking

John and Meghan found themselves essentially on a 200-foot slide across the ship, on their backs, with Lila strapped to John’s chest.

They made it but couldn’t find a lifeboat until they saw a couple of empty ones on the water, that had returned from the island. They managed to get in and were taken ashore.

Rose was still on board with a couple of other members of her team, feeling that no one was going to find them when she heard helicopters above. Remembering she had a torch in her pocket, she flashed it at a boat.

“And then, all of a sudden, this man floats down on a rope, like James Bond!” she says. “We’re pulled up into the helicopter, one at a time and when we flew away, I could see everything that I loved and everything that was my reality, was gone. But I was alive.”

Stephania was desperately hoping that her mum had also survived.

“It was her birthday and I was thinking I should be at the restaurant, singing Happy Birthday, but now I am on Giglio Island, sitting on the ground, just wondering, ‘Where is she?’ I asked myself, ‘Will I ever see her again?’”

She never did. “I had to wait two years,” she says. “My mother’s body was one of the last to be found. Finding her body wasn’t comforting for me at all. She was my entire world, and I was hers.

“Since I was very little, we did everything together. I was about seven years old when she was diagnosed with cancer. But a few months before our departure for the cruise, her cancer was in remission. So, that was definitely another big reason to celebrate her birthday.”

There was public outrage when it was discovered that Captain Schettino had, himself, abandoned ship. The coast guard in Livorno, angrily ordered him to go back on, but he did not.

His trial lasted for several years. The prosecution said he had been grossly negligent but he denied all the charges against him and insisted that others must share responsibility for what happened.

The ship’s black box revealed that the emergency generator of the Costa Concordia had a problem that night and was hardly able to power the emergency devices.

At least two of the lifeboats, on the upper side of the ship, failed because of this and it meant that none of the elevators were working.

A crucial misunderstanding on the bridge had played a crucial part in the disaster.

When Schettino ordered “Hard to port,” as they neared Giglio, the helmsman heard it as “Hard to Starboard,” so for 13 seconds the exact opposite happened.

A study demonstrated that if Schettino’s orders had been executed correctly, the impact would have been partial or non-existent.

On 11 February 2015, Schettino was found guilty of manslaughter and abandoning ship and sentenced to 16 years.

Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea, drops on Netflix today

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/16669225/shipwrecked-nightmare-sea-netflix/