THE theme song from the movie Titanic was playing on board the Costa Concordia cruise ship when disaster struck, survivors have claimed.

Celine Dion’s hit My Heart Will Go On, used in the famous 1997 James Cameron film, was reportedly playing in one of the ship’s restaurants at the time.

Yannic Sgaga, from Switzerland, told newspaper La Tribune de Geneve he was listening to the song while dining with his brother when the ship crashed into rocks and started to keel over.

"Images from the film Titanic are more realistic than one might imagine," Mr Sgaga said. "They kept coming into my head."

In another extraordinary claim,the ship's captain Francesco Schettino argued he was responsible for "saving hundreds, if not thousands, of lives" by steering the crippled ship closer to shore after it struck rocks, The Daily Telegraph reported.



In pictures: Costa Concordia ship underwater

Jailed since the incident on Friday, Schettino appeared before the judge in Grosseto and was later ordered to be held under house arrest.

His lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, said Schettino, 52, had returned to live with his wife and daughter at his home near Naples after being released by the court on strict conditions.

Criminal charges including manslaughter and abandoning ship were expected to be filed by prosecutors in coming days.

Schettino faces 12 years in prison for the abandoning-ship charge alone.

He is accused of causing the disaster by making an unauthorised manoeuvre from the ship's programmed course - apparently so he could perform a salute of respect for a retired officer as well as to impress his head waiter's family on shore.

At yesterday's hearing Mr Leporatti said the captain gave his version of events, insisting that after the initial crash into the reefs he had manoeuvred the ship close to shore in a way that "saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives".

The lawyer said urine and hair samples had been taken from Schettino to determine if he had consumed alcohol or used drugs before the accident.

Schettino's conditional release came a day after a transcript of conversations between him and a senior coast guard officer after the accident were made public.

The transcript showed Schettino resisted orders to return to his ship to direct the evacuation, saying it was too dark and the ship was tipping perilously. The audio of the conversation was broadcast throughout the day on Italian television to a stunned nation.

The first of a series of increasingly desperate telephone exchanges between the coast guard and Schettino happened only nine minutes after the luxury liner carrying 4200 passengers hit an underwater reef.

Even though it had suffered a fatal gash in its port-side hull, Schettino - a Concordia ship's captain for six years - tells a worried harbourmaster that everything is fine other than just a small technical problem.

When officials again managed to contact the captain, who by now was safely on shore despite hundreds of passengers still being on board, he said he was unable to return because the cruise liner had started to list badly.

Instead of obeying the orders, Schettino was reportedly seen getting into a taxi and leaving the scene as passengers were left to fend for themselves. The death toll from the accident rose to 11 yesterday, with the bodies of five adults - four men and a woman aged in their 50s or 60s - recovered by rescuers from the bowels of the ship.

They were each wearing orange vests that passengers use, indicating they were not crew members, said a coast guard spokesman, Commander Filippo Marini.

They were discovered after Italian naval divers exploded holes in the hull of the grounded cruise ship, trying to speed up the search for the missing.

Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero said the holes would help divers enter the wreck more easily.

"We are rushing against time," he said.

Before the grim finding, authorities had said 25 passengers and four crew members were missing.

They include two Americans, 14 Germans, six Italians, four French, a Hungarian, an Indian and a Peruvian. A total of 22 people are still unaccounted for.

A German listed as missing was traced yesterday.