In what is believed to be the largest operation of its kind, project engineers and crews with U.S.-based Titan Salvage Co. and its Italian partner Micoperi successfully righted the Costa Concordia cruise liner, dislodging it from a reef located just off the Italian island of Giglio, where it capsized in 2012.
The world kept a close eye on the spectacular effort, which introduced many to the term "parbuckling," which means to apply leverage in an effort to right a sunken ship. The salvage team's Parbuckling Project web site explains the process, which also involved a painstaking stabilization of the Costa Concordia, as well as the installation of a "false bottom" for the ship to rest upon after rotation.
Following are a few videos of the operation, starting first with this 60-second time-lapse of the 19-hour operation from the BBC.
Crowley, the parent company of Titan Salvage, posted the following quick video to its Youtube channel illustrating the parbuckling effort.
Additionally, the BBC posted the following 75-second video to Youtube featuring an interview with a represenative of Titan Salvage after the successful completion of the effort. In it, he explains that the massive and costly engineering effort was undertaken to minimize environmental damage to the idyllic location. "In a lot of places in the world, this ship would've been cut up," he says in the video below.
