'We were marooned. I knew I was going to die': Survivor of the Costa Concordia recalls minute by minute how the tragedy unfolded - and how the memory of her late brother gave her the fight to stay alive

Right up until she was thrown back in her seat, when everything around her rocked and smashed – right up until that very moment – Rose Metcalf had been living her dream life. She was 23 and four months into working as a dancer on a luxury cruise ship, her first job since graduating from dance school in London. ‘You’re seeing the world, being paid to do what you love. I could have done it forever,’ she says today. ‘You’re floating at sea, but anything you need is there and it’s the best of everything, like a fantasy realm. The dancers were encouraged to be out and about, to be seen in the casino, the ballroom – like minor celebrities.’ The night of 13 January 2012, when all this was swept away, was Rose’s night off. She was sitting in a bar, drinking coffee, wearing a cocktail dress and stilettos, when everything shook. ‘It was like an earthquake,’ she says. ‘Then there was this long sound, like a whale.’ It was the noise of the ship scraping, hard, against rock. Then the lights went out. She still gets nightmares. ‘They are all about drowning’ The capsizing of the luxury cruise ship the Costa Concordia has drawn comparisons to the Titanic. The image of the ship, tilted and half-submerged in dark winter waters off the coast of Italy, made headlines across the world. There were more than 4,000 people on board that night, and 32 lost their lives. A new Netflix documentary Shipwrecked: Nightmare At Sea – which landed on Friday – has recreated the events using original footage and first-hand testimonies. Rose, who is now 37, is a key voice and her own story is one of superhuman fightback. It was the night she transformed from a young rookie dancer to a woman at the centre of a rescue mission. She was probably among the first to realise the ship was sinking. Pulling the blind from the window, she’d seen they were right up against rock. ‘The ship was four times the length of a football pitch, but because of where I’d been when it happened, I’d felt the impact and heard the sound as we were ripping along the cliff,’ she says. ‘I knew we needed to abandon ship.’ Rose urgently made her way to her cabin where she changed her clothes and got her life jacket – then quickly realised that no one else was following suit. Her friends and colleagues, who’d been watching a film at the front of the ship had no idea anything had happened. ‘Announcements were going out in every language telling us that everything was fine, it was just an electrical fault,’ she says. Passengers were instructed to return to their cabins. Rose vividly recalls being told by one of her superior officers to go back to the lounge to entertain the customers. ‘I just told her, “I quit,” and went to my muster station.’ (The muster station is your designated gathering point in an emergency.) A ship sinks slowly – Rose was onboard for another six hours. The officer at her muster station, an engineer who was meant to be responsible for their safety, was clearly in shock. ‘He had just come out of the engine room, drenched up to his neck, like a zombie, a ghost,’ she says. By now the ship was beginning to list and people were gathering. Confusion and panic was setting in as they were raised higher and higher as the ship tilted. Rose used someone’s phone to Facebook message her father in Dorset, who in turn alerted the Italian coastguard. Then, with a handful of others, she organised about 400 crew members into a human chain, helping people to slide down the corridor to reach the sea, where they could either get to lifeboats, or float free on pieces of debris. This worked for a while – until they became too high. ‘By then, there were only five of us left,’ says Rose. ‘We were marooned. That was the point where I knew I was going to die. Rose (left) with a fellow dancer aboard the ship ‘I could see how fast we were sinking and even though I would swim as hard as I could, I knew that the suction would pull me under. There was no way out. I was resigned to death.’ In that moment, after so much chaos, what she felt was a strange, unexpected serenity. ‘I was very peaceful. There was no resentment about dying,’ she says.  ‘I remember seeing this little slideshow of my life, of happy memories – my graduation, my accomplishments, all the things I’d loved.’ But then she thought of her parents. Tragically, they had already lost two children. Rose’s 18-year-old brother had been found dead at his school – the coroner had recorded an open verdict. Her younger brother had died from an MRSA infection, aged just five. ‘My dad had once told me that, if it wasn’t for me and my two living brothers, they would have killed themselves. I had to live, for my parents. That’s when my “fight or flight” really kicked in.’ Earlier that night, Rose had taken a small emergency light from a wall and put it in her pocket. Pulling it out now, the ripped wires were unable to connect. ‘My dad had taught me electrical wiring, so I took off one of my silver hoop earrings and used it to connect two wires and conduct the electricity. What was amazing was watching the Netflix documentary and seeing that flashing light that I was making.’ Using her signal as a guide, the coastguard was able to direct a rescue mission. Rose and her four colleagues were among the last to be airlifted to safety by helicopter. Recovery has taken time. In her first two weeks at home, Rose couldn’t sleep, she breathed shallow breaths, she was on high, high alert. Somehow, she found her way to her local David Lloyd gym, who welcomed her into their Olympic-sized pool free of charge. ‘There was no one else there. I started swimming and then, finally, I started crying,’ says Rose. ‘I realised I’d been psyching myself up to swim as fast as I could that night, but I never got in the water. Now, alone in the pool, I could cry for the first time. I let out the enormity of what happened.’ Italian naval scuba divers search the wreckage The captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, was widely blamed for the catastrophe. He had deviated from the planned route, hit a large rock formation – and abandoned ship, jumping into a lifeboat while many passengers remained stranded onboard. He is now serving a 16-year sentence for manslaughter. However, the documentary shows this was just part of the story.  The Carnival Corporation, which owned the vessel, is alleged to have promoted staff too fast and provided insufficient training. (Something Schettino had raised as a concern in writing before the tragedy.) When the ship hit the rock, the helmsman had not understood the captain’s instruction to move hard to port – which is clearly shown in the documentary. (Instead, the helmsman repeats back incorrectly, ‘move hard to starboard’.) ‘I felt the captain was used as a scapegoat,’ says Rose. ‘The real parties responsible have yet to be held accountable.’ The years since have taken Rose all over the world. For some of this, she has danced, but she has also worked for a law firm and managed a wellness studio. She still gets nightmares every so often. ‘They are all different versions of drowning,’ she says, ‘trying to save people, trying to save myself, going into the water.’ However, 14 years on, she has a life she truly loves. Now a women’s business coach, she lives in Malibu with her actor partner of seven years. ‘I have an ocean view, I go kayaking, I swim in the sea. It’s a fantasy beyond my wildest dreams.’ Convicted Captain Francesco Schettino For Rose, 13 January is the day she was given a second chance at life. ‘I call it my “second birthday”,’ she says. ‘Every year, I go to a restaurant and get a cake with a candle because, somehow, on that night, I survived and it’s a miracle.’ As a result of the ordeal, Rose says she feels safer in the world, instead of more scared. On that night, she discovered what she could do. ‘We all wonder how we would be in a true life-or-death crisis,’ she says. ‘I know now. I know what I can handle – and I’m grateful for every moment that I’m living.’ Shipwrecked: Nightmare At Sea is available to stream on Netflix now