Costa Concordia captain blames helmsman for crash

[Posteritatis]

9. Centuries of legal tradition mean yes, the captain is at fault.

He's one hundred percent responsible for the navigation, safety and other behaviours of his ship when it's at sea, and the vast majority of legal traditions do not provide any wiggle room for that. If he was asleep in his bunk, off watch, when another crewmember deliberately rammed the ship into the coastline, he would still be legally responsible. The situation as it turned out was vastly less ambiguous than that.

The vast majority of sea captains know that they don't get to pass the buck, much less leave the ship during an ongoing disaster. It's been absolutely straightforward since the thing first ran aground that the captain screwed up and then decided it was a good idea to continue screwing up.