The sight of behemoth pleasure vessel Costa Concordia sideways in the sea became an indelible image around the world. Here’s the full story of how this entirely avoidable vacation-turned-nightmare unfolded.

The surreal sight of the Costa Concordia on Jan. 14, 2012, crippled and capsized off the Italian coast the morning after the accident, became an iconic image worldwide. - AP/Wide World Photos

The COSTA CONCORDIA in a very rough sea would have made the RMS TITANIC look like child play.

Our thanks to Popular Mechanics and Barbara S. Peterson for this excellent story on Carnival Corp’s COSTA CONCORDIA disaster.

Antonello Tievoli, headwaiter on the Costa Concordia, stepped onto the bridge of the cruise ship at 9:15 pm on Friday, Jan. 13, of this year. From the wide windows, Tievoli could see the glittering lights of his home, Giglio Island, drawing closer.

Capt. Francesco Schettino knew that Tievoli’s sister lived on Giglio, and invited him to the bridge as they cruised past. With its 13 brightly lit decks, the ship was more brilliant than anything on the island. The 4200 people onboard outnumbered the island’s residents four to one.

The captain was no longer following his charted course—he had ordered the 952-foot-long ship to cruise at least 4 miles closer to the island. Insiders say that it was a special tradition for Costa liners to salute a beloved former captain, Mario Palombo, as they passed by his home on Giglio. The ship, which had earlier slowed down while Schettino lingered over a meal, accelerated to 16 knots, a brisk speed for a large vessel less than a mile from a coastline.

Great video on Costa Cruises history…

Costa Cruises is the largest Italian group in Tourism and the n.1 cruise company in Europe, which boasts 60 years of history. In 2008 Costa Cruises carried a total of about 1,200,000 guests, a record for the European cruise industry. Its fleet, Europe’s largest and most advanced, has a total of 14 ships in service and 3 on order, each with her own distinctive characteristics and unique style. By 2012 the Costa fleet will be 17 strong with total Guest capacity of approximately 46,400. All of the vessels fly the Italian flag and sail each year to 250 destinations in the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean, South America, the United Arab Emirates, the Far East and the Indian Ocean.

The ship’s printed itinerary mentioned the island’s proximity, but few of the 3200 passengers were looking outside. The Concordia left Civitavecchia, the port city of Rome, about 2 hours earlier, and the passengers were just settling into their vacation routines. Minnesota resident Ronda Rosenthal, who had stopped at her cabin before heading to a 9:30 pm performance by Martin the Magician, looked out her porthole and saw white froth. “The waves were cresting really high, and we could see lights in the distance,” Rosenthal says. “And I thought we are either going very fast or we are very close to shore.”

Schettino spoke to Palombo, only to find out that his friend and mentor was at his winter residence on the mainland. But there was no turning back; the ship was on a direct course for the rocky coast.

9:40 PM – Going Off Course

Modern cruise ships have electronic charts that show their GPS positions on screens. Any deviation from the plan entered into this ­system usually triggers an alarm. “It is possible that he [Schettino] disabled this for the maneuver,” says Ted Thompson, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain and the senior VP of technical and regulatory affairs for the Cruise Lines International Association. “In changing the track line he would have ­disabled the alarm as well. He may have just turned it off and was going manually and visually.”

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Canadian Pacific’s S.S. Princess Marguerite steaming to Victoria, B.C., Canada.   The ship is sailing on the day run from Seattle, Washington, in the 1960s.  Trial Island is seen in the background.  The Canadian Pacific’s princess liners provided service between Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle.  The small liners were called “night boats” and offered first class overnight accommodations between these cities on what CP called the “triangle route.”  The overnight service ended in the 1950s but the seasonal day service between Victoria, Vancouver and Seattle continued into the 1970s.

The Princesses were the finest coastal liners on the Pacific coast. They broke all the intercity speed records between Vancouver, Victoria, and Seattle and established an enduring reputation for elegance and beauty that remained unmatched for over sixty years. Their names became legends along the coast and they were the best and often the only way to travel along the British Columbia Coast. The Princess Victoria, Princess Kathleen, and the lovely Princess Marguerite, the last of the coastal liners, are just a few of the beautiful steamships that operated in this service.