Yesterday, a salvage crew began the slow process of righting the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that has lain off the coast of Italy for over a year after a deadly crash. The operation, initially set to take 10 to 12 hours, stretched to 19, but early this morning the ship was finally pulled off the seabed and tipped upright. Now, it will spend several more months on the coast, resting on buoyant underwater platforms until it’s towed to port and broken up. The process was slow and methodical, as operators threaded cables and pulley systems around the Concordia and slowly inched it off the rocks. But a dramatic time-lapse video condenses the process into one minute, giving a better idea of how the team tilted the ship 65 degrees to expose its previously submerged side.
See the Costa Concordia rise from the water in one minute as salvage mission ends
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
The Concordia has been cited as the largest capsized cruise ship to ever be rotated with the “parbuckling” system used above. In a press conference, Italian civil protection chief Franco Gabrielli said that the ship was not as damaged as expected, but stunning photographs from Reuters published on Business Insider show the effects of the disaster, capturing shattered windows and balconies on the ship’s side. Now that the Concordia has been righted, there may also be a chance of finding the bodies of two missing victims of the wreck, which claimed a total of 32 lives.
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