With his thick black hair and deep tan, captain Francesco Schettino might have stepped straight out of a scene from the 1970s cruise-liner sitcom The Love Boat. The handsome Italian skipper must have prompted more than a few sighs from lonely divorcees on voyages like the one that ended so violently and abruptly on the rocks of Giglio last Friday night.

But Schettino is no matinee-idol matelot. Although widely admired for his professional abilities, new evidence suggests that, in the hours after the Costa Concordia ran aground, he first went into denial and then fell to pieces.

Recordings of radio and telephone calls made by Italian coastguards indicate that they were twice assured the vessel was suffering from only a "small technical failure", that Schettino claimed the evacuation was almost complete when it had scarcely begun, and that he abandoned ship long before the last of his passengers.

"No. I'm not on board because the bows of the ship are coming up. We've abandoned her," he tells an incredulous coastguard, who replies: "What do you mean? You've abandoned ship?" Schettino then appears to do a volte face: "No. No way have I abandoned ship. I'm here."

In one recording, carried by the website of La Repubblica newspaper and made at 1:46 a.m., Schettino speaks indistinctly, as if he was either in tears or had come close to breaking down. He is heard protesting and imploring as the coastguard, Gregorio De Falco, orders him unsuccessfully to return to his vessel.