Review: Disaster at sea
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 21, 2012
Another night to remember, the sinking of the "RMS Titanic" in the icy cold North Atlantic a hundred years ago, the "SS Andrea Doria's" collision with the "MS Stockholm" and its capsizing in 1956 off Nantucket, and now on January 13, 2012, the Italian cruise liner "MS Costa Concordia" strikes bottom and flounders off the coast of a small island in the Tuscan Archipelago.John Hooper tells the story as it should be told. He uses a reporter's instinct for observation and detail and from the facts weaves a great narrative involving many of the people aboard the pleasure liner.Among the 4,000 passengers were Dean Ananias, 64, a Vietnam vet and retired schoolteacher from Downey, Calif., his wife Georgia and daughters Valerie, 31 and Cindy, 23. The Ananias family was on holiday, getting away and hoping for a relaxing cruise through western Mediterranean.At 9 p.m. on that cold Tuscan evening they were enjoying a late dinner in the ship's two-story restaurant, in the middle of their salad course, when they felt the Concordia shudder. It seemed they said as if they were in the middle of a mini-earthquake.Then the thumping stopped and with a boom, everything went black and they began being pelted from the restaurant's upper level by a cascade of dishes, glasses and silverware. That was the beginning of their five-hour ordeal during which four times they said their goodbyes, feeling certain that they were going to die.At one point with the ship listing almost perpendicular to the water they found themselves clambering on the hull, hanging on while fearing that the ship was about to roll and capsize taking them under. They were clinging to the port side of the ship and totally unaware that the Concordia had settled on a shoal only 70 meters from shore and that safety was less than a football field away. The Ananias' story is one of many personal accounts Hooper reports. All of them are harrowing.Videos of heated arguments between crew and hysterical passengers went viral. Rumors circulated about a drunken captain showboating and then cowardly deserting the ship for safety and leaving hundreds of terrified passengers in a panic, struggling to survive. Hooper takes a close look at events sorts through the facts and speculation and creates a vivid account of what it must have been like during those five hours of pandemonium.When it was over 17 people had been confirmed dead and 15 were still missing. Although Hooper's story is relatively short, more like a long magazine article, it feels comprehensive and as accurate as it is captivating.