Captain Francesco Schettino (C) of cruise ship Costa Concordia is escorted into a prison by police officers at Grosseto, after being questioned by magistrates.Reuters
The absence of Captain Francesco Schettino from his damaged ship, the Costa Concordia, while some of the passengers were still on board – as documented by his recorded dialogue with Gregorio Maria de Falco, the coast-guard commander at the city of Livorno – invites an inference of cowardice. Capt. Schettino offered as an excuse that the ship was at an angle; Commander de Falco replied with an obscenity, "Get on board, cazzo!"
Capt. Schettino seemed untroubled by being on one of the rescue boats, rather than on his ship. It was reminiscent of a Gilbert and Sullivan character, the Duke of Plaza Toro, who "led his regiment from behind –/ He found it less exciting./ But when away his regiment ran,/ His place was at the fore, O ..."
Retreat is not in itself a proof of cowardice; great generals from Xenophon to Wellington have led skillful withdrawals. But it was not Napoleon Bonaparte's finest hour, when in December, 1812, he disguised himself as a Pole and set out for Paris, leaving his army behind, to trudge through the Russian snows.
The captain of the Costa Concordia could well look for an engaging, likeable defender in Sir John Falstaff, who once said, "Thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. .... Instinct is a great matter. I was [just]now a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself...." Later, more definitively, Falstaff said, "Discretion is the better part of valour." In other words, cowardice is prudence.
Of course, cowardice is as old as humanity. In Homer's Iliad, when a single combat between Paris and Menelaus might have ended the Trojan War, Paris puts up no resistance as the sex goddess Aphrodite picks him up and carries him off the battlefield in a mist. In the Odyssey, a minstrel and a herald show abject fear, the former begging for mercy at Odysseus' knees, the latter hiding under a chair.
Dante Alighieri presents fence-sitting neutrality as cowardice – viltà or vileness; his Divina Commedia reserves a dark area just outside the gates of Hell for the angels who took no side when Lucifer and his followers rebelled against God.
The passive Capt. Schettino was bothered by the darkness, too; Cdr. de Falco was incredulous: "It's dark, and you want to go home?... Get on board, b-o-a-r-d!"