Because there were no cellphones aboard the Titanic, we will never really know what went on in the final hours after the massive ship struck that iceberg.
But almost all of the passengers aboard the Costa Concordia, the doomed Italian cruise ship that went down in the Mediterranean on Jan. 13, had a cellphone or camera.
And even as they were about to die, they recorded the tragedy, which had been caused by the massive incompetence and disastrous cowardice of the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino.
Two separate documentaries, one on Nat Geo and one on Discovery, show actual footage as it was happening to passengers and crew — with interviews with the people who shot the footage.
You will see how lifeboats weren’t deployed until the boat was already listing so dangerously that half of the lifeboats were already underwater on one side — and many of the others couldn’t be deployed on the other because they would have crashed into the side of the sinking ship as they were going down.
The Costa Concordia tragedy (the ship was 70 feet bigger than The Titanic) is presented in unbelievable detail in both excellent, heartbreaking, harrowing documentaries.
Both use the actual recordings of the cowardly captain refusing the Coast Guard’s furious orders that he get back on board — after he deserted 300 passengers who were trapped.
Discovery, with the help of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, also traces the movement of the ship using GPS technology.
Most importantly, each documentary proves that for one hour and 15 minutes, the pusillanimous captain kept announcing to passengers and crew and the Coast Guard — which was called by passengers not the captain — that it was only a blackout and not to worry.
Meantime, there was a 160-foot-wide rip in the hull with tons of water flooding into the ship as it listed dangerously, drowning people inside and trapping hundreds of others who’d crawled to the top — 100 feet in the air — where they were told to jump into the 55 degree cold sea below.