Almost two years to the day since Captain Francesco Schettino invited a Moldovan dancer on to the bridge of the Costa Concordia moments before it hit the rocks, a captain from the same cruise line has been reprimanded for allowing a Romanian woman to pose with a machinegun on the bridge of his ship.
The Costa Atlantica was sailing through the Gulf of Aden with an armed escort to ward off potential attack by Somali pirates when the skipper invited Sasha Alexandra on to the bridge.
Smiling and wearing a cocktail dress, she posed for photographs while holding a machinegun that apparently had been handed to her by one of two Italian marines who accompanied the cruise ship as it sailed through pirate-infested waters.
She was flanked on one side by the marine and on the other by the captain in his white uniform. The affair is an embarrassment for Costa Cruises, the company that owns both cruise liners.
It comes just two days after the second anniversary of the Concordia capsizing off the Italian island of Giglio, a disaster that cost 32 lives.