Credit: Netflix

Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea on Netflix details one of the most devastating real-life catastrophes of maritime history, the tragic 2012 sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise liner, which was carrying over 4,000 passengers and crew members.

On the night of January 13th that year, the Costa Concordia vessel set sail on the Mediterranean Sea when it travelled too close to Giglio Island to perform a sail-by-salute, inadvertently striking a reef and causing the ship to capsize. Although a six-hour rescue effort took place, 32 people died, with a dozen more heavily injured.

Shortly after the tragedy, which is the subject of Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea, Costa Cruises blamed the captain, Francesco Schettino, who was reportedly accused of steering the ship too close to the shore, altering its course and crashing in the process. Schettino drew heavy criticism for “navigating by sight” instead of using advanced GBS and radar technology, underestimating the damage, abandoning the ship, and failing to alert authorities.

“We believe it has been a human error here,” then-Costa Cruises CEO, Pier Luigi Foschi, said in the documentary. “The captain did not follow the authorised route.”

As revealed by the Costa Concordia hotel cabin services manager, Manrico Giampedroni, Schettino had reportedly called him at 9 that night to inform him that a head waiter had requested a sail-by salute near Giglio Island because his mother and sister resided there. “He asked me if I would like to join him on the bridge for the sail-by,” Giampedroni recalled. “To me, it sounded a bit unusual, because as it was night, all dark, there wasn’t much to see. But, as this was the captain’s decision, we complied.”

What followed was a misjudged deviation, causing the cruise liner to strike the Scole Rocks, ripping the hull and listing the ship. At first, the crew urged the guests to return to their rooms, citing an electrical blackout and claiming that the situation was under control, which was allegedly the same message that was also relayed to the nearby Livorno Coast Guard.

Roughly 70 minutes after the collision, the abandon-ship order was issued, and rafts were launched. However, Schettina was reportedly seen on a lifeboat abandoning the ship while others were on board, although he claimed otherwise later.

Schettina was eventually detained on suspicion of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck “owing to… negligence and incompetence” resulting in death, abandoning 300 people “unable to fend for themselves,” and “not having been the last to leave” the shipwreck (via The Guardian and court documents).

According to BBC News and ABC News, following a 19-month trial, he was sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment plus five years of interdiction. Schettino has been serving the sentence at Rebibbia Prison in Rome since May 2017.