I’ve never been on a cruise ship before, mostly because I really, really don’t ever want to become the “guy who accidentally fell off of a cruise ship and no one ever noticed.” Maybe that’s just me. I’m sure other people are not nearly as afraid as I of accidentally falling off of the side of a cruise ship in the middle of the night and never being heard from again. But the point still stands that I’ve never been on a cruise ship. And the reason for why that is, besides for my ludicrous fear of drowning undetected in the middle of the ocean, is because sometimes cruise ships end up like this.

Now, to be fair (which I guess is a thing I should do occasionally), cruise ships don’t generally end up like that. But they do have the potential to end up like that. And that potential goes up greatly when they let them be driven by guys like this:

Wait, who let Gerard Depardieu drive a cruise ship, you ask. That was just asking for trouble. First off, stop getting ahead of me. Second, that guy doesn’t even look like Gerard Depardieu. I think. Anyway, the guy who possibly looks like Gerard Depardieu pictured above is actually Frencesco Schettino, which is a very fun name to pronounce out loud. Try it quick. Fun, right? And he was formerly the captain of the Coasta Concordia, right up until, well, this happened.

But that could happen to anybody, right? We all make mistakes from time to time. Well, yeah, that’s true. But while this was, in fact, a mistake, it turns out to have been a mistake that happened when our good friend Frencesco Schettino was carousing with his passengers, before getting the bright idea of redirecting his ship as close to the shore as he could so that he could wave at a friend as he went by. No, really. That’s what he said happened. So somehow, the ship ended up slamming into a rock and then began doing a really, really realistic recreation of the Titanic movie. If you remember that movie, you might recall the captain of that ship bravely choosing to go down with it. Which is kind of similar to what Francesco choose to do.

If you’re wondering what’s going on here, because you don’t speak a’ the Italian, that’s Francesco on the horn with the Italian Coast Guard, onboard a lifeboat, being yelled at to get back on his ship. So why was he on a lifeboat, rather than standing on the hull of the Coasta Concordia with his hat over his heart as it sunk beneath the waves? Well, he had totally intended to do that, but since the ship was, you know, sideways and everything, he accidentally fell into a lifeboat. No, really. That’s what he said happened. So that’s how he ended up in a lifeboat, huddled under a blanket, on the phone being yelled at by the Coast Guard to get back on the boat and die like a man.

So if the captain was on a lifeboat paddling furiously to safety, who was still onboard the ship saving the passengers? Turns out, no one was. After the ship crashed into the rocks, the passengers onboard the Coasta Concordia were told it was an “electrical problem.” Then they served dinner. Forty-five minutes later, when the passengers were probably starting to wonder why the electrical problem was causing their dinner plates to keep falling off the left side of the table, the crew decided to announce that maybe it’d be a good idea if y’all just went back to your cabins for a while. Yep. That happened.

Eleven people so far have been reported dead, with 21 still missing, so naturally Francesco Schettino is currently under house arrest for charges of manslaughter, facing up to 15 years in jail. Which seems fair, considering all the people he killed. The Daily Mail has dubbed Schettino “Captain Coward,” and the New York Post went with “Chicken of the Sea.” Which are both good, although I’m still fond of the one I just thought up: “Shithead the Sailor Man.” Anyway, lesson being, if you are terrible at your job, find someone else to do it before you kill a whole bunch of people. And anyone who’s interested in joining me in my cruise ship abstaining, that might not be such a bad idea either.