Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino to come face to face with victims Schettino, who was released from house arrest in July but confined to his home town of Meta di Sorrento, near Naples, has received special permission to attend the Grosseto proceedings. The 51-year-old captain is expected to be sent for trial and could face charges of abandoning ship, contravening the laws of the sea and multiple counts of manslaughter. At the hearing investigating judge Valeria Montesarchio will gather evidence collected from the ship's data recorder and recorded conversations between the captain and the Italian Coast Guard on the night of the disaster. In one exchange later broadcast around the world, Gregorio De Falco, a Coast Guard officer, told the captain "Get back on board, for f---- sake," after it emerged that Schettino had left the vessel in a life boat before all the crew and passengers had been evacuated. He reportedly claimed that he had accidentally "tripped" into the lifeboat, but then supervised the evacuation from the shore. Eight other people are being investigated over the shipwreck - five officers and three employees of the Genoa-based cruise company, including Roberto Ferrarini, the fleet crisis coordinator. Italian, British, French, German and American passengers were among the 3,200 passengers on board. Some have accepted an €11,000 payout from the company while others have joined class actions in the US and France.