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Witness History

Italy's 'Ghost Shipwreck'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2018

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the summer of 2001, an Italian journalist used an underwater robot to find the remains of a shipwreck off the coast of Sicily which had killed nearly 300 migrants from South Asia. At the time this was the worst disaster of its kind in the Mediterranean but the few survivors had been ignored by officials and dismissed as fantasists. The discovery of the so-called “Phantom Shipwreck” caused an outrage in Italy. Simon Watts talks to Italian journalist Giovanni Maria Bellu and the former Observer correspondent in Rome, John Hooper, who also investigated the tragedy.

(Photo: The remains of the "Ghost Shipwreck" filmed off the Sicilian coast. Credti: EPA/ANSA/La Repubblica)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

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0:29.8

Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of our history program witness with me Simon Watts.

0:36.5

Today I'm bringing you the story of how reporters from Italy and Britain uncovered the truth

0:41.9

about one of the worst disasters ever in the Mediterranean, a shipwreck

0:46.4

which killed nearly 300 migrants from South Asia. It's the summer of 2001.

0:55.0

It's the summer of 2001.

0:57.0

Italian journalist Giovanni Maria Bello is on a small boat off the southeastern tip of Sicily. He and the local fishermen are using a remote

1:06.0

underwater camera to look for what had become known as the Phantom Shipwreck. The Cebina of Command,

1:14.0

that was in the state of the algae.

1:16.0

The first thing we saw was the bridge, which was covered in algae.

1:20.0

Then we saw what we first thought was clothing, but as the camera moved closer, we could see it might be bones.

1:28.0

Then we could clearly see they were bones.

1:31.0

Bones scattered everywhere as if a bomb had gone off in a graveyard.

1:35.0

At that point it was completely clear that this was the wreck.

1:40.0

The story of the Phantom Shipwreck began nearly five years earlier across the Mediterranean in Greece.

...

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