A Jacksonville company accomplished what is considered the most technically demanding salvage operation attempted on a ship of its size in maritime history.
The Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground and capsized off the coast of Italy in January 2012. About two years later, it was towed away from the site after being rolled upright and refloated.
“Not a lot of people have heard this story,” said Chuck Nygaard, manager of government business development for Crowley Maritime Corp. One of its subsidiaries, Titan Salvage, did the job.
He shared the story of the salvage on Monday with the Rotary Club of Jacksonville.
“A local, hometown company did something legendary,” he said.
At about 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, with calm seas and overcast weather, Capt. Francesco Schettino ran the ship aground in the Tyrrhenian Sea near Tuscany on the west coast of Italy.
Striking an undersea outcropping, a 160-foot gash was torn in the port side, causing the vessel to flood and eventually capsize on its starboard side only 550 yards from shore.
Thirty-two people died in the accident. The captain was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his negligence that led to the deaths and the total loss of the cruise ship.
Of the 10 bids submitted to the Italian government for the salvage, Nygaard said Crowley’s was the only bid that proposed refloating and removing the wrecked vessel intact rather than cutting it into thousands of pieces at the site and then removing the debris.
He wouldn’t comment on the exact amount of the contract, other than to say it was more than $1 billion.
The project began in May 2012 and was completed when the Costa Concordia was towed away from the wreck site in July 2014.
Removing the hulk intact was important due to the environmental sensitivity of the area and the government’s wish to have as little negative impact on the seacoast tourism-based economy of the area as possible.
Marine animals and plants were carefully removed, relocated to a secure area during the salvage operation and then returned to their original locations after the vessel was removed.
Sea grasses and even crabs were catalogued for environmentally accurate replacement, Nygaard said.
Planning the historic project required 48,000 engineering man hours.
More than 1,200 salvage workers from 26 countries participated.
More than 22,000 dives were completed totaling 30,000 hours to install a platform to stabilize the vessel and to attach buoyancy tanks called “sponsons” to the hull.
Also installed was a complex system of cables, chains and pulleys that were used to roll the ship onto a platform in preparation for its removal.
The custom fabrication of the chains, platform and tanks put back in business two shipyards that were previously idle, said Nygaard.
According to data provided by Crowley, the chains had to be custom-fabricated with each link 27 inches in diameter and each weighing 900 pounds.
Nygaard said the Costa Concordia was 950 feet long and weighed more than 44,000 tons –– much larger than the Titanic and even the Exxon Valdez.
The only way to remove the wreck in one piece was to attach the sponsons and pump air into them to provide buoyancy on the underside of the ship and then pull with the cable system until the vessel rolled upright, a round-the-clock process that took nearly two days.
It then was pumped out and floated off the platform, allowing its removal from the site.
After the Costa Concordia was towed to a marine scrapyard in Genoa, Italy, divers began the final phase of the operation, removing the platforms and other structures that were used for the salvage.
All debris was recovered from the seabed and the marine life protected during the salvage was restored to the area.
Titan was recognized internationally in 2014 for successfully completing the project and its efforts to preserve the ecosystem.
The company received the 2014 Maritime Casualty Response Award from Lloyd’s List, a maritime-focused media group, and the Marine Environment Protection Award from the North American Marine Environment Protection Association.
The Costa Concordia is planned to be dismantled and recycled.
“It will be cut up and tuned into razor blades. You’ll be shaving with it one day,” said Nygaard.
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