Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Captain Schettino: "The ship is the custodian of all these little secrets, the trial is still unfolding all these things" 
 
 The Italian captain of the Costa Concordia ship, Francesco Schettino, has returned to the wreck for the first time as part of his manslaughter trial. 
 
 The ship hit a reef near the island of Giglio in January 2012 and capsized, with the loss of 32 lives. 
 
 Mr Schettino was taken to the wreck on board a small boat, two days after travelling back to Giglio. 
 
 He denies the charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship, which could see him jailed for up to 20 years. 
 
 He arrived on the island off the Tuscan coast on Tuesday and is said to have wept when he saw the wreck from a ferry taking him to Giglio. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How the disaster happened 
 
 He attended a health-and-safety briefing at a hotel on Thursday morning to prepare him for the short boat trip out to the wreck, on which he was accompanied by a group of court-appointed experts. 
 
 Mr Schettino was taken out to the wreck on a small boat and was then seen standing on the ship itself. 
 
 He was being allowed on to the ship "as a defendant, not a consultant", said Judge Giovanni Puliatti. 
 
 The 290m-long vessel was righted in September 2013 in one of the largest, most complex salvage operations ever, but remains stranded after its ill-fated journey. 
 
 Memories of tragedy 
 
 The captain has been accused of leaving the luxury liner before the 4,229 people on board the ship were taken off. 
 
 "They want to show that I am weak, just like two years ago. It's not true. I want to show I'm a gentleman, not a coward," Italian media quoted him as saying. 
 
 He lambasted the media "frenzy" surrounding his return to vessel, describing those who accused him of abandoning the ship of not understanding "a bloody thing". 
 
 "There is a frenzy that is making me nervous," Mr Schettino told journalists and cameramen who surrounded him. "You have to respect civility." 
 
 Correspondents say that he grew increasingly angry on the dockside after the visit, frequently gesticulating as he nervously paced around. 
 
 He has already accepted some degree of responsibility, asking for forgiveness in a television interview last year as he talked of those who died. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Correspondents say that the technical inspection attended by the captain focussed on a lift where several of the victims died and on an emergency generator which the defence says malfunctioned 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Captain Schettino could be seen (centre without a helmet) in a blue sweater standing on the wreck of the ship 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Captain Schettino strongly criticised the "media frenzy" surrounding his return to the stricken vessel 
 
 But he denies abandoning the ship after it hit a reef near the island. 
 
 He maintains he managed to steer the stricken vessel closer to shore so it did not sink in deep water where hundreds might have drowned. 
 
 His lawyer Domenico Pepe said the captain's former employer, Costa Crociere, had shifted the blame towards him. 
 
 "It is very, very difficult because Schettino does not have the economic resources of Costa," he said. The firm is believed to be the biggest cruise operator in Europe, 
 
 "Schettino is confronting the whole world on his own." 
 
 An Italian court convicted five others of manslaughter in July 2013. 
 
 They had all successfully entered plea bargains, whereas Mr Schettino's request for a plea bargain was denied by the prosecution. 
 
 His return to the island will undoubtedly stir memories of the tragedy among locals, says the BBC's Alan Johnston. 
 
 "Schettino's here, he cried, so what?" one woman on the island told the AFP news agency. "We're tired of this story! We want him and the boat gone." 
 
 But Giuseppe Modesti, 67, told AFP: "There's no real anger here any more. Two years have passed and it's time to make peace with what happened." 
 
 The complex operation to salvage the Costa Concordia took 18 hours and followed months of stabilisation and preparation work by a team of 500 engineers and divers. 
 
 Ports in Italy, Britain, France, Turkey and China are now bidding for the lucrative contract to dismantle it. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The wreck sits in the harbour of Giglio ||||| ROME | 
 
 ROME (Reuters) - The captain of the wrecked cruise liner Costa Concordia apologized on Tuesday for the accident in which as many as 32 people died and said he had been distracted when the vast ship struck the rock which holed it. 
 
 In his first full television interview since the accident on January 13, Francesco Schettino acknowledged his responsibility as captain and said he thought constantly about the victims of the disaster. 
 
 "When there's an accident, it's not just the ship that's identified or the company," he told Italy's Canale 5 television, speaking calmly but with a pronounced tic in one eye. "The captain is identified and so it's normal that I should apologize as a representative of this system," he said. 
 
 Schettino, who is charged with multiple manslaughter, causing the accident and abandoning his ship, was speaking after being freed from house arrest last week. 
 
 The Naples-born captain admitted to failing to act decisively enough once it became clear the 144,500 tonne vessel had come too close to the island of Giglio off the Tuscan coast where it ran aground. 
 
 "This was a banal accident in which there was a breakdown in the interaction between human beings and it created misunderstandings and it's for this that there's so much rage," he said. "It was as though there was a blackout in everyone's heads and in the instruments." 
 
 "I blame myself for being distracted," he said but added the actual sailing of the ship was under the command of another officer at the time. 
 
 "At that moment, I went up to the deck and ordered the ship to be put on manual navigation and I didn't have command, that's to say being in charge of sailing the ship, that was the officer," he said. 
 
 Investigators have severely criticized Schettino's handling of the disaster, accusing him of bringing the 290 meter-long vessel too close to shore, delaying evacuation and losing control of the operation during which he abandoned ship before all the 4,200 passengers and crew had left the ship. 
 
 Schettino, who has been held up to abuse and ridicule following the accident, has always acknowledged making mistakes but has said he as not the only one who should be blamed for the tragedy. 
 
 A pre-trial hearing was held in March and investigations also target several other officers and officials of the ships owner, Costa Cruises a unit of the world's largest cruise operator Carnival Corp. 
 
 (Reporting By James Mackenzie; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
– Two years after the disaster that killed 32 people, captain Francesco Schettino today returned to the Costa Concordia wreckage in the course of his manslaughter trial. Schettino went aboard in order to help court-appointed experts inspect generators, which the captain claims were partly to blame for the incident, the AP reports. Judge Giovanni Puliatti was careful to qualify that Schettino was on board the ship "as a defendant, not a consultant," reports the BBC. "They want to show that I am weak, just like two years ago. It's not true. I want to show I'm a gentleman, not a coward," Schettino told Italian media. Standout detail from the BBC: It was quite the safe morning for Schettino, who participated in a health-and-safety briefing before donning a life vest and heading to the ship. (The tragedy actually claimed a 33rd victim this month.)