10 Scary Details Left Out of Netflix’s “Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea”

Caroline BlairWed, July 15, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC

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The cruise ship Costa Concordia lies stricken off the shore of the island of Giglio, on January 14, 2012Credit: Laura Lezza/Getty -

The Netflix documentary Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea revisits the tragic events of the Costa Concordia crash

The Italian luxury cruise ship collided with an underwater rock outside of Tuscany, Italy, on Jan. 13, 2012

While the documentary included firsthand accounts from several passengers, it didn’t delve into several details from the horrific crash

Tragedy struck on Jan. 13, 2012, when Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia hit a rock and began sinking.

The luxury cruise was riding near Giglio Island outside of Tuscany, Italy, when the port side of the ship crashed into an underwater rock. The crash immediately affected the boat and resulted in a 174-foot gouge, per Britannica.

As a result of the devastating blow, the boat lost power, steering ability and electrical connection. At the same time, the cruise’s leader, captain Francesco Schettino struggled to communicate with the first responders, coast guard, colleagues and passengers.

The miscommunication and lack of direction resulted in mass panic and chaos with people trying to escape on lifeboats or jumping out to swim to shore. The shipwreck ultimately resulted in 32 fatalities and over 150 injuries.

The Netflix documentary Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea, which hit the streamer on July 10, recapped the tragic shipwreck and included interviews from survivors, recorded conversations of Schettino and black box information.

While the doc included never-before-seen videos recounting the incident and crucial pieces of information, it left out some more intimate details — including Schettino’s allegations, subsequent civil lawsuits and criminal trials.

Here are the 10 scariest details left out of Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea.

01 of 10

Survivors recalled the song from Titanic was playing on the night of the crash

Survivors of the Costa ConcordiaCredit: RICHARD BOUHET/AFP via Getty

After the Costa Concordia made headlines for the tragic crush, many people — including passengers — compared it to the 1912 Titanic crash.

The historic accident, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,500 people, was dramatized in the 1997 hit movie Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. In the movie, Céline Dion’s famous song “My Heart Will Go On” plays in the background.

In a strange turn of events, two of the survivors recalled hearing the same song on the speakers after the boat crashed and chaos erupted, per Business Insider.

02 of 10

Captain Schettino, who wasn’t wearing glasses at the time of the crash, was navigating by sight

Captain Francesco SchettinoCredit: Photonews via Getty

Captain Schettino, who made the call to pass by Giglio Island, was allegedly not wearing his reading glasses while navigating the boat from sight. He further allegedly asked the ship’s first officer, Ciro Ambrosio, to check the radar.

“Schettino had left his reading glasses in the cabin and repeatedly asked Ambrosio to look at the radar to check the route,” Ambrosio’s lawyer Salvatore Catalano claimed, per NBC News.

Schettino allegedly wasn’t wearing his glasses, said that he wasn’t using the navigation system and instead was relying on his sight.

“I was navigating by sight, because I knew those seabeds well. I had done the move three, four times,” he said in court, per The Wall Street Journal.

03 of 10

A language barrier between Schettino and a helmsman allegedly caused the ship to change course

Captain Francesco Schettino on Feb. 27, 2014Credit: Laura Lezza/Getty

Before the ship horrifically crashed into the underwater rock formation, the boat didn’t appear to slow down.

Schettino shifted that blame to his Indonesian helmsman, Jacob Rusli Bin, as he alleged in court that he told Bin to slow down and change course before approaching the rocks. Schettino further claimed that if Bin had listened to him, the boat would have avoided the crash entirely.

“If it weren’t for the helmsman’s error, to not position the tiller to the left ... the swerve (toward the reef) and the collision wouldn’t have happened,” Schettino testified, per the BBC.

However, investigators later discovered that Bin may not have understood what Schettino said because of a language barrier.

04 of 10

Schettino’s mistress was onboard

Captain Francesco Schettino at his trial in Grosseto, Italy, on Feb. 11, 2015Credit: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

Prior to the crash, Schettino was seen socializing with Domnica Cemortan, a 25-year-old Moldovan dancer who Schettino was romantically involved with, while he was also married to Fabiola Russo.

Cemortan testified that Schettino invited her onboard without a ticket.

“When you’re somebody’s lover they don’t ask you for a ticket,” she said, per NBC News.

On the night of the crash, Cemortan claimed that she had dinner with Schettino and said they spent time together on the bridge.

Although the extramarital affair made headlines at the time of Schettino’s trial, there was no evidence presented to say that he was distracted as a result of Cemortan’s presence.

05 of 10

Captain Schettino alleged that he accidentally fell into a lifeboat

Captain Francesco Schettino after his trial on Dec. 2, 2014, in Grosseto, ItalyCredit: Laura Lezza/Getty

In the midst of the panic and chaos that overwhelmed the boat, Schettino — who downplayed the situation and maintained to the Italian Coast Guard that they were only experiencing a blackout — abandoned the ship and got onto a lifeboat around four hours after the crash.

Although the coast guard demanded that Schettino return to the boat, he refused and left approximately 300 passengers onboard.

However, Schettino later vehemently denied purposely getting onto a lifeboat and leaving his crew. He alleged that he accidentally fell onto the roof of a lifeboat while the ship was tilting to one side, per History.com.

“I had no intention of escaping,” Schettino testified in court, according to ABC News. “I was helping some passengers put the life boat to sea. At a certain point the mechanism for lowering it, blocked. We had to force it. Suddenly the system unblocked itself and I tripped and I found myself inside the lifeboat with a number of passengers.”

Schettino alleged that once the lifeboat was lowered into the water, it was “impossible to go back onboard.”

06 of 10

The victims ranged in age from 5 to 86 years old

Passengers and crew members evacuating the Costa Concordia on Jan. 13, 2012Credit: SKY TV ITALY/AFP via Getty

While the doc goes into extensive detail about the chaos that erupted as a result of the 174-foot gash, it didn’t share information about the 32 people who lost their lives.

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At the end of the search and recovery operation, investigators determined that 27 passengers and five crew members had died. The passengers ranged in age from 5 to 86 years old and included people from Germany, France, Spain, the U.S., Italy, Peru, Hungary and India.

The youngest victim was 5-year-old Dayana Arlotti, who died alongside her father Williams Arlotti, who drowned while trying to find a lifeboat, according to court documents obtained by The Guardian.

Another victim, musician Giuseppe Girolamo, was working on the ship and died after he gave up his seat in a lifeboat for someone else. Fellow employee, bartender Erika Fani Soria Molinala, died while trying to climb onto a lifeboat.

Passenger Maria D’Introno died after she had to jump out of a lifeboat when it got stuck and wouldn’t lower.

Italian passenger Giovanni Masia was the oldest victim at 86 years old.

In addition to the 32 people who died, there were 157 people listed who suffered injuries or mental or psychological effects as a result of the crash.

07 of 10

Costa Cruises didn’t face criminal suits, but they were involved in several civil suits

The Costa Concordia after the collisionCredit: FRANCESCO ORLANDINI/AFP via Getty

As the documentary pointed out, neither Costa Cruises nor its parent company, Carnival Corporation, ever faced criminal charges or had to go to trial for the 32 people who died on the ship.

Although the corporation didn’t face criminal consequences, they settled several civil lawsuits with passengers. Approximately 3,200 of the 3,229 passengers agreed to a $14,460 payout for their loss of luggage and personal trauma suffered, per ABC News.

In addition to the one-time payment, the company also agreed to reimburse passengers for all travel, cruise and medical costs.

Some of the passengers who didn’t participate in the settlement were eligible to sue Costa Cruises and Carnival. For instance, Ernesto Carusotti won his civil suit and was granted $105,000, according to Courthouse News Services.

Meanwhile, the company also accepted a €1 million fine (approximately $1.1 million) in exchange for avoiding criminal charges, per Reuters.

08 of 10

In addition to Schettino, five additional crew members faced criminal charges

Manrico Giampedroni in ‘Shipwrecked’; first officer Ciro Ambrosio leaving the prosecutor’s office in Grosseto, Italy, in January 2011Credit: Courtesy of Netflix; AP Photo/Giacomo Aprili

While much of the doc focuses on Schettino and his negligence the night of the collision, it only briefly mentioned that other people were also charged in connection with the tragedy.

Director of the Italian cruise company’s crisis unit Roberto Ferrarini, cabin service director Manrico Giampedroni, first officer Ciro Ambrosio, helmsman Bin and third officer Silvia Coronica were all charged with manslaughter and negligence.

In July 2013, all five defendants agreed to plea bargains and received various sentences. Ferrarini, who wasn’t present on the boat and was in charge of handling the crisis from afar, received two years and 10 months.

Meanwhile, Giampedroni received a two-and-a half-year sentence, Ambrosio and Coronica were each given one year and 11 months behind bars and Bin got sentenced to one year and 8 months.

“Justice is beginning to be done but there will be real justice in the end, when we can determine with certainty what the responsibilities of the captain are,” Prosecutor Francesco Verusio said at the time, per the BBC.

Verusio was referring to the separate trial of Schettino, which took place from 2013 to 2015. After a 19-month trial, Schettino was found guilty of manslaughter, causing the crash and abandoning ship in February 2015, per The New York Times.

Schettino was sentenced to just over 16 years in prison.

09 of 10

It took $2 billion and five years to salvage and refloat the ship

The Costa Concordia standing vertical on July 27, 2014Credit: Jacopo Raule/Getty

In addition to the legal and financial fallout from the crash, the company also had to deal with the actual cleanup of the 114,000-ton cruise ship that remained stranded and half-sunk off the coast of Giglio Island.

The cleanup task was no small feat, as they had to begin by determining how to remove the approximately 2,380 tons of fuel inside the ship, per Global News. In order to avoid a further environmental disaster, they began pumping fuel out of the 23 fuel tanks. The process, which began in February 2012, took nearly a year.

From there, the organization hired nearly 400 workers to work an estimated 1 million total hours in collecting and dismantling material that had been displaced. During one of the salvage runs, a diver died, per The Guardian.

The next major step was figuring out how to actually pull the massive boat back to shore. In September 2013, the 500-person crew utilized cranes and underwater platforms to bring Costa Concordia to a vertical position.

In July 2014, the ship was finally towed toward Genoa by using steel flotation devices. Shortly after it made its way to the port, the ship was dismantled, per World Maritime News. The dismantling and scrapping process took over five years, with the project being completed in July 2017.

Costa Cruises CEO Michael Thamm later said he was anticipating for the entire process to cost the company around $2 billion — which included the settlements and the roughly €1.5 billion ($2 billion) spent on the cleanup operation.

“So far, our costs are at 1 billion euros,” he said in 2014 according to Reuters. “But that does not include 100 million for the ship to be broken up for scrap and the cost of repairing damage to Giglio island.”

10 of 10

Over 30 safety rules were implemented in the cruise industry after the crash

The wreckage of Costa Concordia in February 2014Credit: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty

After an investigation was conducted, the Cruise Lines International Association and the International Maritime Organization implemented over 30 new safety rules and policies to avoid replicating the 2012 disaster, per CNN.

One of the rules ties to one of the biggest problems the passengers faced — which was knowing what to do in the event of an emergency. Since the crash, the governing bodies have changed the policy so that passengers coming aboard a cruise must complete safety and evacuation drills before the ship departs the dock (compared to the former rule of ships having 24 hours to complete drills).

In response to Schettino inviting his mistress to the bridge with him on the night of the crash, the agencies also limited bridge access to only essential crew members.

Since the crew took a detour to give a sail-by salute to Giglio Island, the organizations ruled that ships must stay on-course and cannot deviate from their planned voyage.

Several other rules put in place include crew members prioritizing teaching passengers how to wear lifejackets, the cruise keeping documentation and descriptions of all the guests and the crew practicing securing heavy objects in the event of a collision.

on People

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”