My colleague from the English original had the opportunity to speak to Vincent A. Shen.

The sail-by-salute is a very silly tradition among cruise ships.

There is something glamorous about a cruise ship.

It is quite a big ship and it is very well decorated, very impressive to look at.

It can be a bit pretentious at some point.

And so that's where the sail-by-salute comes from, because to the ports where they don't stop, they still want people to be aware of their presence.

So that's when they use the foghorn to say, hey, look at us, we're here.

When the audio tape was released of the Port Authority of Livorno telling Captain Schettino to get the blank back on the ship, Schettino became, for Italians, a national embarrassment.