Costa Concordia Salvage Operation Completed

By Tom Kington, on Giglio

Twenty months after it capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people, the Costa Concordia has risen from the Mediterranean after a successful £500m salvage operation

Dozens of giant pulleys hauled the cruise ship back to an upright position in a 19-hour operation, exposing a section of the white ship's exterior that was stained by rust and algae after months under water.

By 4am on Tuesday, the 950-foot-long, 114,000-ton vessel had been pulled through 65 degrees to stand on a bed of over 1,000 concrete sacks and six huge underwater platforms.

Italy's civil protection chief Franco Gabrielli speaking at a late night press conference on Giglio, where he was applauded and cheered by residents, said: "The rotation has finished its course, we are at zero degrees, the ship is resting on the platforms."

The image shows how the ship was righted overnight

Franco Porcellacchia, an engineer working on the salvage for ship owner Costa Cruises, said: "It could not have gone better than this. It was a perfect operation."

The Costa Concordia grounded near the port of Giglio in January 2012 after its captain, Francesco Schettino, smashed it into coastal rock during a so-called "sail past".

He is now standing trial on charges of manslaughter and abandoning his ship.

The ship eventually stood on 1,000 concrete sacks and underwater platforms

Some 4,200 passengers and crew scrambled into lifeboats or plunged into shallow water after the ship ran aground and came to rest impaled on its side on two underwater outcrops of granite.

As it rose out of the water in the early hours of Tuesday, two large indentations could be seen on the side of the ship where it had been pinioned on the rocks.

After the operation started on Monday morning, 6,000 tons of pressure were required to pull the ship free from the rock, which had penetrated 18ft into the hull.

The ship was tilted heavily on its side before the operation

The ship was then slowly turned through the afternoon until 11 massive metal boxes welded to the exposed side of the ship, some the height of 11-storey buildings, splashed into the water.

By midnight, salvage workers were able to switch off the pulleys and open valves in the boxes to allow water in at 1,000 cubic feet a minute, adding the necessary ballast to bring the ship down onto the platforms.

When the ship is deemed stable, metal boxes will also be added to the formerly submerged side of the ship. Then, water will be pumped out of the boxes, floating the vessel so it can be  towed next spring to a port, probably on the Italian mainland, for breaking up.

More than 30 people were killed when the ship hit rocks

Mr Porcellacchia said: "We have already looked at the side of the ship to see where the boxes will go and we will quantify the work to do. The starboard side looks pretty bad, as we expected."

Fears that a polluted slick of paint, residual fuel, small quantities of heavy metal and rotting food would emerge from the ship, proved unfounded, officials said on Tuesday.

Sergio Girotto, the project manager for Italian salvage firm Micoperi, which has managed the salvage with US firm Titan Salvage, said: "Now we will see what support and adjustments the ship needs."

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