ITALY’S once-luxurious Costa Concordia cruise liner has embarked on its last voyage on, as tug boats began towing it from island wreck site to scrapyard grave in one of the biggest salvage operations in maritime history.
Sunshine streamed down on the Mediterranean bay where hundreds of onlookers watched as the final cable attaching ship to shore was cut, finally severing ties between the Tuscan island of Giglio and the ship two and a half years after its capsize claimed 32 lives.
“We’ve done it! She’s off!” shouted salvage specialists in hard hats who popped champagne bottles and sprayed the crowd, while tourists cheered and church bells rang out as the ship was pulled away.
“It’s hard not to get emotional,” said Franco Porcellacchia, an engineer with ship owner Costa Crociere.
“Today, Giglio is once again ours,” a local man, visibly relieved to see the back of the Concordia, told AFP.
The rusting liner, roughly twice the size of the Titanic and now hoisted afloat by massive air chambers, will be tugged to the port of Genoa in northwest Italy, where it will be dismantled and scrapped.
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