Gawkers arrive amid stowaway fears on Costa Concordia
Rescue teams working on the stricken Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia yesterday found the bodies of another two women, amid concern that “unregistered passengers” may have been aboard the ship when it hit rocks and keeled over.
The discovery of the latest latest bodies brings the total of confirmed dead after the sinking to 15.
The presence of stowaways could make the number of missing passengers difficult to confirm. A stowaway is defined as a person who hides aboard a ship or plane in the hope of getting free passage. The practice is as old as navigation. In the case of Costa Concordia, however, some people may have been legitimately aboard as passengers or guests of crew, but somehow not recorded on the official lists, perhaps through oversight. Investigations continue.
At least 15 people are still unaccounted for but the true total could be higher if stowaways or unrecorded passengers are involved. Relatives of a missing Hungarian woman insist she was on the ship with a crewmember – yet there is no record of her on the passenger list. Such discrepancies have given rise to the suspicion that “unofficial passengers” may have gone down with the ship.
In last-minute surprise, however, the Hungarian foreign ministry stated this morning that the Hungarian woman reported missing had in fact died three years ago, raising suspicion of some sort of scam attempt.
On the tiny island of Giglio where the ship lies just offshore, meanwhile, villagers are relieved that none of the heavy fuel oil in the ship’s tanks appears to be leaking. With good fortune, salvage teams may be able to drain it out without major spillage or pollution, sparing the coast an environmental catastrophe. Italian authorities now say it should be possible to start removing the oil from fuel tanks aboard while the hunt for bodies continues.
In the meantime, the surreal sight of a 114,000-ton ship lying incongruously on its side has spurred hundreds of “tragedy tourists” to grab their cameras or camera-equipped smartphones and head for the scene.
Usually, the island and adjoining coast would get perhaps 200 day-trippers over a weekend at this time of year, low season, if the weather was fine. Now the number is in the thousands.
Armed with cameras, hundreds of disaster day-trippers sit on rocks just a short distance from where coastguard, firefighters and navy dive teams are searching the liner, Britain’s Daily Mail reports. Some carry binoculars and picnic baskets.
At the same time, news teams, cameramen and photographers (some from the Daily Mail) and dozens of freelance paparazzi line the shore.
The Mail quoted a ferry ticket booth clerk saying he had never seen anything like it. “In the winter we wouldn’t get as many tourists as this coming over for the day. The weekend before the accident we had 131 people visiting – now it’s 10 times that.”
Written by : Peter Needham
