Rabbi Benjamin Blech had an interesting piece last week at Aish.com on the Costa Concordia disaster. A few years ago Rabbi Blech served as the scholar-in-residence on a kosher cruise on the magnificent ocean liner. Guests were escorted on a tour of the state-of-the-art ship and its multiple levels of safety devices. At one point on the tour the guide remarked “No one will ever have a Titanic experience here.”
The builders of the Titanic famously asserted with even greater hubris that not even G-d Himself could sink it. Yet the Titanic did not survive its maiden voyage and 1517 passengers drowned.
In both cases the ships were brought down not by failures in technical design but by the moral failings of those in charge. The owners of the Titanic were eager to claim the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing and thus settled on a northerly route at a time of year when that area of the Atlantic was known to be still filled with icebergs. Worse the telegraph operator received numerous warnings from another ship of a huge iceberg directly in its path. But the telegraph operator received large tips [YK1] for transmitting the messages of wealthy patrons and told the ship sending the warnings to stop pestering him and tying up his lines which he could put to more profitable use. As a consequence the captain of the Titanic never received any warning of the danger looming ahead.
In the case of the Costa Concordia the ship became grounded because the captain decided to show off his magnificent toy to friends on shore of the nearby island.
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