Capsizing the Costa Concordia

Capsizing the Costa Concordia Divers wreathe silently through the submerged corridors of a  140,000-ton wreck. Little fish dark haphazardly through the juxtaposition of tilted ballroom, granite bars fixed in place. Black waters lit green by headlamps provide a surreal spotlight for a loveseat drifting by A vase of Chinese dollar plants poised delicately on a marble counter. Across the underwater tomb, toppled chairs, tumbled together, wait patiently to be repositioned outside the dance floor. There was nothing graceful about the dramatic demise of this giantess, listing to her death. She was fatally wounded, being coaxed  too closely to the coast. A hidden reef stood ground to gore a 70ft gash, portside. There was the moaning of mangled metal, the shrieking of splitting steel, as dark torrents were unleashed into her belly, extinguishing her light. “Go back to your cabins!” and corridors flooded “Go back to your cabins!” and pumps failed. “Captain! The passengers are making their own way to the lifeboats!” echoes pointlessly through the abandoned bridge. “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” The Coast Guard thunders across dark waters and the captain is stealing into his own lifeboat to listen from the safety of shore. Listening to the chaos, interrupted by the agonized silence of passengers too terrified to scream. They hold their breath and try to calm each other in the absence of authority. “Vada a bordo, cazzo!” But it’s dark, he pleads, and I can’t see anything... A rope ladder is flung over the bow, drowning passengers slinging, and crawling crablike to Coast Guard boats as the ship sinks to her side, gripping 37 passengers in a horrifying embrace. Scuba clad stewards of the dead open the possessive clutch of an atrium elevator to extract bodies protectively closed and sealed in a grisly pantomime of protection. The remains of the deceased are floated to the light to break the surface one last time. The Costa Concordia shudders heavily, sliding into her death repose.