Costa Concordia, the capsized 114,500 gross ton cruise liner of Costa Crociere, has slipped towards deep water on the rocks where it is resting, media reports say. It is by far the largest passenger vessel that has sunk by this date.

"There was a slippage of nine centimetres vertically and 1.5 centimetres horizontally. We evacuated immediately. This is something we have been worried about," Luca Cari, spokesman for the fire brigade at the island of Gigli was quoted by the Daily Telegraph website as saying.

"The vessel has reservoirs (bunkers) full of fuel, it is a heavy diesel which could sink down to the seabed, that would be a disaster,” another rescue official on the scene told Telegraph.

Earlier today, Carnival Corp & plc that owns Costa Crociere said it estimated the loss of revenue from the accident to rise in the region of $85 million to $95 million. However, it added that cost to the business e.g. in the form of fall in bookings and cancellations of already booked cruises, was impossible to estimate at this point.

Costa Concordia is by far the largest passenger vessel that has sunk.  The previous record holder was the 83,673 gross ton Seawise University, which had been built in 1940 as Cunard Line’s first Queen Elizabeth, which caught fire and sank in shallow water in Hong Kong harbour in January 1972.

Almost three decades earlier, in February 1942, fire destroyed the 82,799 gross ton USS Lafayette that had started life in 1935 as Normandie of the French Line and which has been regarded as the finest ship built in the liner era.

The largest passenger vessel lost at open sea rather than in port or proximity to land was the 48,158 gross ton Britannic of the White Star Line. The ship hit a mine in the Aegean Sea while serving as a hospital ship and sank after just one year since entering service. It was the final unit of the three ships of the Olympic class.