Speaker Report - Raising the Costa Concordia

Raising the COSTA Concordia – Talk by rTN Keith Miller

Keith Miller, a Past President of Cookham Bridge Rotary Club, a civil engineer and an accountant,gave a highly informative talk about the “Raising of the Concordia”.

Raising the Concordia has been the biggest marine salvage operation in modern history so far. The Concordia was twice as heavy as the Titanic, and laid impaled on two giant outcrops of undersea granite with a 160 foot gash in its hull. But despite having posed one of the toughest marine salvage challenges, the stricken Italian cruise Liner was raised from its watery shallow grave. 

As we were informed, everything about the operation to rescue it was on a massive scale, whether it was the lifting of the stricken ship off the seabed, very close to the shoreline, or hauling it upright and towing it way for demolition. It all came at a huge cost of about 4 Billion US Dollars. 

A few stats:

• 114,500 ton Concordia, over twice as heavy as the Titanic

• 177 companies involved – only three of them were British

• 20,000 tons of cement were used – steadying the ship

• Hundreds of divers – some of them were working underneath the ship

• 15 enormous steel tanks on either side to steady the ship and keeping it afloat

There is also a certain irony in the ship’s short life in that it was finally towed back to its home port of Genoa, where it was built, to be scrapped! 

Rtn Rainer Struck