By Tom Kington, In Grosseto
Francesco Schettino, the captain of the doomed cruise ship Costa Concordia, has fiercely defended his navigational skills as he faced cross-examination for the first time in his trial for manslaughter and abandoning ship.
In a spirited performance punctuated by jokes and constant hand gestures in which he frequently interrupted the prosecutor, Schettino tried to argue he followed procedure during the Costa Concordia's fatal collision, rather than steering recklessly.
Schettino smashed the Costa Concordia into rocks off the Italian island of Giglio in January 2012 during an attempted "sail past".
The holed vessel grounded and partially capsized in shallow water, forcing 4,200 passengers and crew to flee, with the loss of 32 lives.
Speaking at his trial in Grosseto in Tuscany, Schettino denied that he had organised the sail past to impress Domnica Cermontan, a Moldavian dancer who was working on the ship and has told the court she was having an affair with the married captain.
"I didn't do it as a favour to Cermontan," Schettino said under questioning in Grosseto's theatre, which has been converted into a court room for the trial.
When she entered the bridge, Ms Cermontan stood at the side the room, far from Schettino, he said.
In a combative performance, during which he often challenged the questioning of prosecutor Alessandro Leopizzi, Schettino said he had sought to "kill three birds with one stone" by undertaking the sail past.
He was doing a favour to a ship's official and paying tribute to a former cruise captain who lived on the island of Giglio, while making the cruise more attractive to passengers, he said.
Asked about the number of people on the bridge as he took the command before the crash, Schettino argued he had always fought to keep numbers on the bridge down.
The court played a recording of the voices on the deck in the minutes leading up to the collision, during which Schettino is heard on the phone asking the former captain living on Giglio if there was enough water to sail as close as one fifth of a nautical mile from the coast.
When asked by the prosecutor why he asked that, since the ship was due to sail no closer than half a mile from the rocks, Schettino said he was not being serious.
Schettino has previously blamed the crash on the maps he was given to navigate with, and claimed the Indonesian helmsman on the bridge did not understand his instructions.
After attending the early hearings at his trial last year, Schettino has avoided the trial for five months, reportedly preparing for his performance, which is expected to run into Wednesday.
"If he wasn't so sure of himself he would not have agreed to be questioned at the trial," said Schettino's lawyer Domenico Pepe before the hearing.
"He has been studying the court papers and is here to highlight all the points in his favour which have not emerged yet in court."
Schettino, who was dubbed Captain Coward after he was accused of abandoning the stricken ship before passengers had fled, has remained a notorious celebrity in Italy, and has spent this week denying rumours he was due to appear on Italy's version of I Am A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
No longer under house arrest, Schettino has addressed a group of students at a Rome university about stress control, despite allegations he panicked after the collision and failed to manage the evacuation.
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