Sinking

GIGLIO, Italy -- It would take a "miracle" to find survivors 12 days after the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia, the Italian official leading rescue operations said Wednesday.

ROME -- Experts can begin pumping fuel from a capsized cruise ship as early as Tuesday to avert a possible environmental catastrophe and the ship is stable enough to let search efforts go on for those still missing, Italian officials said.

STOCKHOLM -- Seafaring tradition holds that the captain should be last to leave a sinking ship. But is it realistic to expect skippers -- only human after all -- to suppress their survival instinct amid the horror of a maritime disaster? To ask them to stare down death from the bridge, as the lights go out and the water rises, until everyone else has made it to safety?

From mariners on ships plying the world's oceans, the answer is loud and clear: Aye.

Tales emerge of missing and dead in ship disaster

ROME -- An Italian dad and his 5-year-old daughter. A retired American couple treating themselves after putting four children through college. A Hungarian musician who helped crying children into lifejackets, then disappeared while trying to retrieve his beloved violin from his cabin.

As details emerged Wednesday about the missing and the dead in the grounding of the Costa Concordia, the captain was quoted as saying he tripped and fell into the water from the listing vessel and never intended to abandon his passengers.

ROME -- Italian rescue workers suspended operations Wednesday after a stricken cruise ship shifted slightly on the rocks near the Tuscan coast, creating deep concerns about the safety of divers and firefighters searching for the 22 people still missing.

Veterans of the cruise-line industry can't remember an accident more dramatic than the one that captivated the world's attention this past weekend.

An Italian ocean liner capsized onto its side, half the ship submerged in the shallows of the Mediterranean Sea. The Costa Concordia had rolled so far over that a steam stack looked nearly eye-level in photos taken from the shores of a rugged Tuscan island where passengers fled after the grounding. Six passengers were confirmed dead, with 29 missing. Passengers jumped from the ship as it listed toward 80 degrees.

The images from the Concordia present a major challenge to South Florida's cruise-line industry, which attracts millions of tourists to the region and employs thousands of workers. Carnival, Miami-Dade's eighth largest private employer, owns Costa, making the financial fallout a direct concern for the world's largest cruise company and its 3,500 local employees.