First there was Francesco Schettino, the idiot captain who literally showboated the Costa Concordia onto some rocks, then fell into a lifeboat before the ship sank.

He was the Italian Captain Coward.

Now comes the South Korean shipcarnation.

From Friday’s Boston Globe (via the New York Times wire):

Captain was among first to escape S. Korea ferry as it sank

Passengers were instructed to stay below deck

JINDO, South Korea — The captain was among the first to flee. Only a couple of the 44 life rafts aboard were deployed. The hundreds of passengers were instructed over the intercom to “stay inside and wait” as the ship leaned to one side and began to sink, dragging scores of students on a school trip down with it.

“I repeatedly told people to calm themselves and stay where they were for an hour,” Kang Hae-seong, the communications officer on the South Korean ferry that sank Wednesday, said from his hospital bed. He added that he could not recall taking part in any evacuation drills for the ship, and that when a real emergency came, “I didn’t have time to look at the manual for evacuation.”

Great. Unbook us for that next cruise, yeah?