You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Captain Coward.
The Captain is suppose to go down with the ship. It’s one of the oldest sayings in recorded human history.
Christopher Columbus was willing to sail off the edge of the Earth following this maritime principle.
The Skipper and Gilligan hung in there during a tumultous storm.
It simply is the law at sea. Always has been, always will be.
That’s what makes news out of Italy so appalling.
Instead of being heroic, instead of drinking brandy on the bridge, while violinists play and customers get into life boats, the Italian captain of the Carnival Cruise line fled like a thief in the night.
If reports are true, Captain Coward was eating dinner while the ship was sinking. While people were drowning and terrified and looking for direction, the Captain selfishly took care of his own needs, had some desert, dabbed the corners of his mouth with a fine linen napkin, then like a rat hording cheese, he left the sinking vessel.
His name Schettino. Which not surprisingly, sounds a lot like a common curse word for excrement.
The story is unbelievably unsettling. The stories of survivors are terrifying.
But the newly released coast guard tapes between Captain Coward and the Coast Guard are just so unbelievable, Poseidon is rolling over in his sea grave.
According to published reports, the Italian coast guard is talking by radio to Schettino who is reportedly on a rescue boat watching his boat sink and his crew struggle to help people survive, while passengers swan dive into 50 degree water.
COAST GUARD: You go on board the ship and you tell me if there are children and women or people who need assistance. Look Schettino, you may have saved yourself from the sea but this will put you through a lot of trouble. It will be very bad for you, get back on board. There are all ready bodies Schettino, Go!
The Coast Guard yells at the yellow bellied loser like a child being disciplined for not eating his spinach.
Schettino sounds like a weasel, like a man who has soiled the carpet and his master has taken him by the scruff of the neck and shoved his face into it.
SCHETTINO: how many bodies are there?
COAST GUARD. I heard about one.
SCHETTINO: Do you realize it is dark out here and we can’t see anything.
COAST GUARD: What do you want to do? Do you want to go home? It’s dark so you want to go home?
The captain is a limp prick, lacking guts, integrity, fortitude. He would make an excellent foot stool, but sadly he is in charge of a ship bigger than the Titanic with more souls on board.
SCHETTINO: We can no longer get on board, the ship has sunk completely.
COAST GUARD: And with a 100 people still on board you abandon ship?
SCHETTINO: I didn’t abandon ship. The ship was sinking so we jumped into the water.
It is an appalling back and forth. The captain should be publicly flogged in the town square. He should be neutered by Bob Barker in a spectacle made for HBO.
Karen Kois is a passenger who escaped. She described it this way: “It was mass hysteria. there was no leadership on the boat. He (the Captain) is a coward. We are all fighting for our lives and he is more concerned about his health.”
This all plays out today, while brave men, 100’s of them, are risking their lives, diving under the boat, and blowing holes in the boat, looking for survivors.
All the while, the men report hearing the unmistakable sound of shifting metal as the ship teeters on the precarious abyss of what’s next.
The sad irony; there are unused life boats still tethered to the vessel.
With a little leadership, all aboard could have gotten off the boat to safety.
Instead, Captain Coward now sits in an Italian jail pondering a life time of being thought of in the same vein as Benedict Arnold and the drunken captain of the Exxon Valdez.
Sure hope they find that Minnesota couple alive.
Chances are they won’t.
Think about that Captain Coward.
And that is crazy.