Titanic 100 years ago. In the aftermath of the incident, many efforts have been made and are continuing
to be made to salvage what is left of the disaster. These salvage efforts range from the search and
rescue of passengers and crew to even the extracting of over a half million gallons of oil from the ship
since it listed 137 meters off the coast of Giglio Island, Italy on January 13, 2012. From the 3,229
passengers and 1023 crew members, 32 people have been presumed dead and the most of the bodies
have been found. The most serious challenge of the tragedy was the crew’s initial assistance of the
lowering of lifeboats for passengers, …show more content…
However, some counter that notion of the crew not being helpful, especially one officer on
the bridge, stating that “If we hadn’t been trained and if we weren’t ready or capable, there would have
been a thousand dead. We heard passengers complaining that the cooks were manning the lifeboats.
Well, the kitchen crew and the waiters were trained to run the lifeboats. They were doing their duty.”
(Jewkes) The company seemed to agree, noting that even under the dire circumstances that the crew
faced in wake of the accident, evacuating the ship in two hours and rescuing 4,200 people warranted
“hero” like behavior. (Jewkes) Consensus among the coast guard community is that if the crew made
errors in their handling of the incident, it was due to the fact that their leader was missing, and not in
their lack of preparation or training. (Griggs)
For this incident to occur, several things fell into place that should never have been allowed. To
begin, Captain Schettino had forgotten his glasses, and had to ask crew to adjust the radar because he
could not see what the screen said. (Kington) The radar (along with GPS) would have told the captain
exactly where the ship was and where to avoid. In addition, ships are normally equipped with