World News for Students of English

23-07-2014 07:00

This time-lapse video filmed on Monday shows the first day of a historic salvage operation to remove the wreck of the Costa Concordia.

The video shows just how much the vessel has been moved. The shipwrecked Costa Concordia is now floating on its own for the first time in 2.5 years. It’s one of the biggest salvage operations ever, and is its most crucial phase.

Filmed from the start of the operation at 6 am on Monday morning until nightfall at 9 pm, the video clearly picks up the small zigzag movements showing that the 114,500-tonne Concordia was moving away from the coastline.

The cruise liner is being slowly re-floated in preparation for it being towed away to Genoa port to be scrapped, more than two years after it off Italy, killing 32 people.

The ship, twice as large as the Titanic, will be raised another metre before being shifted towards the open sea, as part of the operation costing 2 billion dollars.

Difficult words: time-lapse (made by taking pictures over a longer period of time and then making a video from them), salvage (recover), vessel (ship), crucial (important) , cruise liner (large ship for cruising or sailing for pleasure), tow (pull), capsize (turn over in the water), scrap (to break something into pieces and use the material for something else), shift (move).

Source: www.itn.co.uk