Ship of fools

Ah, those Italians. Let’s just blame the bloody Eyeties for the catastrophe of the Costa Concordia and have done with it, shall we? That way we don’t have to think too much about the perils of floating citadels in general.

There was something peculiarly Italian about this disaster. The night his ship went down Francesco Schettino, the 52-year-old captain, was in the bar with a striking blonde on his arm who was not his wife. He stayed glued to her side until the moment the ship struck the submerged rock — which it only did because he had changed course to get in nice and close (he says 300 metres, the prosecuting judge 150) to the tiny island of Giglio, ten miles or so off the Italian mainland, and give a three-foghorn salute to the daughter of the ship’s head waiter, who lives there. In a word: a womaniser and a show-off.