The Costa Concordia lies flat on its starboard side off the island of Giglio, Italy. (AP)

Porto Santo Stefano (Italy), Jan. 14 (AP): Survivors who escaped a luxury cruise ship that ran aground and tipped over recounted a scene reminiscent of Titanic today, describing a delayed then panicked evacuation as plates and glasses crashed around them and they crawled along upended hallways trying to reach safety.

Three bodies were recovered from the sea and news reports said 69 people were still unaccounted for after the Costa Concordia ran aground off the tiny island of Giglio near the coast of Tuscany late yesterday, tearing a 50-metre gash in its hull.

The ANSA news agency quoting the prefect’s office in the province of Grosseto as saying that authorities have accounted for 4,165 of the 4,234 people who had boarded the liner. There were reports that three other people had died but those reports were not yet confirmed, said Coast Guard Commander Francesco Paolillo. By this morning, the ship was lying virtually flat off Gigio’s coast, its starboard side submerged in the water.

Passengers complained the crew failed to give instructions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many of them to be released.

Helicopters plucked to safety some 50 people who were trapped on the ship, some survivors were rescued by boats in the area and an official said some people jumped from the ship. Coast guard rescuers were continuing to search the ship for passengers.

“It was so unorganised, our evacuation drill was scheduled for 5pm,” said Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, who had set out on the cruise of the Mediterranean hours earlier. “We had joked: ‘What if something had happened today?’”

“Have you seen Titanic?’ That’s exactly what it was,” said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was travelling with her sister and parents on the first of two cruises around the Mediterranean. They all had dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they endured along hallways and stairwells that were nearly vertical.

“We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing,” her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61, said. “We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls.” She choked up as she recounted the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship lurched to the side and the family found themselves standing on a wall.

“He said ‘take my baby’,” Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand as she teared up. “I grabbed the baby. But then I was being pushed down. I didn’t want the baby to fall down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn’t hold her.

“I thought that was the end and I thought they should be with their baby,” she said. “I wonder where they are,” daughter Valerie whispered.

The family said they were some of the last off the ship, forced to shimmy along a rope down the exposed side of the ship to a waiting rescue vessel.

Survivor Christine Hammer, from Bonn shivered near the harbour of Porto Santo Stefano, on the mainland, after stepping off a ferry from Giglio. She was wearing elegant dinner clothes — a cashmere sweater, a silk scarf — along with a large pair of hiking boots which a kind islander gave her after she lost her shoes in the scramble to escape.

Hammer, 65, told The Associated Press that she was eating her first course, an appetiser of cuttlefish, sauteed mushrooms and salad on her first night aboard her first-ever cruise.

Suddenly, “we heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down and we went out of the dining room and we were told it wasn’t anything dangerous,” she said. Several passengers said crew members for a good 45 minutes told passengers there was a simple “technical problem” that had caused the lights to go off.

Seasoned cruisers, however, knew better and went to get their life jackets in their rooms and report to their “muster stations”, the emergency stations each passenger is assigned to, they said.

Once there, though, crew members delayed lowering the lifeboats even thought the ship was listing badly, they said.