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As the stricken Costa Concordia limped its way towards Genoa last week, all Italy was remembering the 32 people who lost their lives in the cruise ship disaster.

All, that is, except for the captain. Francesco Schettino, the slick-haired skipper of the doomed vessel, was photographed on Friday jetting around the holiday island of Ischia, accompanied by a gaggle of glamorous women. Local media suggested he was celebrating signing a book deal.

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The huge liner has arrived in Genoa, where it will finally be broken up – two and a half years after the catastrophic accident. Yet to onlookers it appeared as if the much-criticized captain had not a care in the world.

On Monday, he had posed for photographers at the Italian publisher Pietro Graus’s third annual “White Party” – an exclusive event that the mogul hosts on the island in the Bay of Naples and at which all the guests wear white.

Appearing tanned and relaxed, the captain – at present on trial for manslaughter, abandoning a ship and causing a maritime disaster – posed with two women in a photograph which was splashed across the front pages of a local newspaper the next day. “Clamoroso: Schettino” [Blatant: Schettino] read the headline in Il Golfo.