Cruise disaster: Perfect storm of events caused Costa Concordia crash Like all passenger cruise liners, the ship will have needed safety management certification to show it had detailed and up to date safety systems. Modern vessels are designed with bulkheads in the hull so that any water coming in through a breach will be evenly distributed across the hull, helping to prevent it from keeling over. The Concordia, whose officers were all Italian, will also have operated a system known as Bridge Team Management - a system adopted from the aviation industry where each operation is double and triple checked by several members of the crew. Modern ships are required to carry voyage data recorders which record detailed information about the ships speed, position, heading, radar and communications. The Costa Concordia also carried two live web cameras that updated every few seconds and may have recorded the events as they unfolded. Another live webcam overlooking the port at Giglio is also thought to have captured the accident. One expert said he believed a "perfect storm" of problems had hit the ship - even though it was cruising in calm water and clear conditions. Malcolm Latarche, editor of global shipping magazine IHS Fairplay Solutions said he believed the most likely explanation began with a catastrophic loss of power on board the 114,500 tonne ship, which led to a series of consequences. In common with every modern passenger vessel, the ship is powered by a bank of diesel engines. They act as a mini-power station, generating electricity which turns the propellers, and also powers every aspect of life on board what is effectively a floating small town. Mr Latarche said it appears that a power surge - something which regularly happens in generators - could have caused the explosion heard by passengers. A similar problem hit the Queen Mary 2 in September 2010 as she approached Barcelona. "Once you have a problem with the electric supply to the ship's main propulsion motors that could lead to a problem with steering," Mr Latarche said. There are various back-up systems in place on all ships but they may have failed also. Once you are in a position where you can not control a ship's speed and direction you have a problem until you can get those systems back on line. It seems that this may have happened quite close to land, in shallow water when you can't steer you are going to run aground and hit rocks at some point. Dr Phil Anderson, a former president of The Nautical Institute and marine safety consultant, said: "If there was a loss of power it is possible that the steering gear failed and the engine shut down. It has happened to me at sea. You lose the steering and the engine at the same time. If you don't get the steering back when the engine comes back on, the telegraph system that signals the engine room may have still been on full ahead and so the vessel will have continued forward under power but with no steering. A key question for the coastguard inquiry - which will closely question the captain and his officers - will be whether he intended to steer his ship towards the island to make an evacuation easier and safer, the version of events outlined initially yesterday by Italian coastguard. The safety rules for huge cruise liners tell captains that evacuation is the last resort, and recommends heading for port. Mr Latarche said: "The International Maritime Organisation have formulated new rules for passenger ship safety and the very latest ships are supposedly meant to have the capability for a return to port in the event of a major fire or loss of power, so evacuation should not be necessary. If you have a ship with several thousand people on board they need to be fed, watered, able to go to the toilet and be kept warm, so modern vessels actually become the lifeboat. If the captain had no steering or reduced steering it may have been that he had no choice where he was heading and that is why he ended up in shallow water but he also may have decided that he needed to head to safer waters so that he could use the life boats closer to land. This, after all, was a passenger ship and there would have been lots of elderly and young people on board so evacuation in life boats is not ideal. A failure of electronic navigation systems will also be considered. Douglas Ward, a cruise ship expert and author of Berlitz Ocean Cruising and Cruise Ships, said: "Crew don't have as much training as in the past. Ships today are built with completely in-closed navigation bridges and the navigators don't even have to learn how to use a sextant, whereas marine officers in the past always had to. The advance in hi-tech navigation systems is so good that we have come to rely on them. But even these can fail - look at car sat navs. The next question which will have to be answered is how the ship capsized in shallow water. The Concordia needs a "draught" of 26 feet - in other words, it will keel over if the water is not 26 feet deep. Mr Latarche said: "An ocean cruise ship is not designed to float in 20 ft of water. That situation doesn't exist just off the coast, where the water is shallow. So unless the Costa Concordia was fortunate enough to be sitting on relatively flat ground, with very soft mud which would allow it to sink it and support the ship in some wfay, the vessel will have no alternative but to turn over on its side. He added: "In any of those ships, even the most sophisticated in the world went into shallow water, the likelihood of it turning on its side is very high. The fact that at some stage the ship ripped a 50 metre gash in its side is not going to help events but that in itself is not the reason why the ship keeled over. It might sit deeper in the water and it might take on a small list. The final - and possibly most significant for the cruise industry- area which will be considered by inquiries will be the evacuation. Passengers told of scenes of panic as the listing ship was evacuated, with frantic attempts to lower the lifeboats and people jumping into the water as they failed. Because of the list, only those on one side could be used and yesterday some were still stranded on the side of the vessel after attempts to deploy them were abandoned. How prepared the Italian officers and Indian, South American and Filipino crew were for an emergency will be examined - and especially why the evacuation drill had not been practised shortly after the cruise began. It was scheduled to take place yesterday afternoon. Experts said that the panic which ensued was ineviatble as soon as the order to abandon ship was given, but one union said there were questions over the ability of crews to get vast numbers of passengers safely off increasingly large cruise ships. Mark Dickinson, of the maritime professionals' union Nautilus International, said: "Many ships are now effectively small towns at sea, and the sheer number of people onboard raises serious questions about evacuation. Insurers and salvors have also spoken about the way in which the sheer size and scale of such ships presents massive challenges for emergency services, evacuation, rescue, and salvage. One change being suggested last night was compulsory lifeboat drills before the start of cruises. However, industry experts said the overall record of cruise liners was excellent. Mr Ward said: "Cruising is without doubt the safest form of travel there is. That has been proven over so many years. In the 1970 we had about 500,000 passengers worldwide, last year we had 21.8 million and that doesn't include river cruising. The growth rate is tremendous and the safety factor is incredibly good.