Italy's once-luxurious Costa Concordia cruise ship embarked on its last voyage today, as tug boats began towing it from island wreck site to scrapyard grave in one of the biggest salvage operations in maritime history.
Hundreds of onlookers on the Mediterranean island of Giglio, including survivors from the nighttime disaster two and a half years ago that left 32 people dead, watched from shore as the crippled giant began its crawl up the coast.
The body of an Indian waiter Russel Rebello is still missing and there will be a search for his remains when the ship is dismantled.
"This is a big day for Giglio but we'll only be able to relax once it reaches Genoa", Nick Sloane, the South African salvage master in charge of the operation, was quoted by Italian news agency Ansa as saying.
The rusting liner, roughly twice the size of the Titanic and now hoisted afloat by massive air chambers, will be tugged to the port of Genoa in northwest Italy, where it will be dismantled and scrapped.
The massive operation - including a 17-man crew aboard the Concordia, a dozen vessels in a convoy, and two tug boats pulling the wreckage at a speed of just 3.7 kilometres per hour - is expected to reach Genoa in four days, weather permitting.
Surviving passengers who returned to Tuscany's Giglio island for the final farewell, said they were ready to put the nightmarish experience behind them.
"We hope that what we've kept inside us will depart when the boat departs. And that as it goes on its way, we can finally go on ours," Anne Decre of the French Survivors' Collective told AFP, clutching the hand of friend Nicole Servel whose husband died in the disaster.
On the evening of January 13, 2012, the 4,229 passengers from 70 countries were settling into the first night of their cruise when their luxury liner struck a rocky outcrop off the Tuscan island of Giglio.
The biggest Italian passenger ship ever built - the length of three football fields - the Concordia boasted four swimming pools, tennis courts, 13 bars, a cinema and a casino.
The crash tore a massive gash in its hull and it veered sharply as the water poured in, eventually keeling over and sparking a panicky evacuation and, ultimately, dozens of deaths.
The ship's captain Francesco Schettino is on trial for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all the passengers had been evacuated - even though he has claimed that he fell into a lifeboat.
