A TEENAGE dancer aboard the doomed Costa Corcordia made a ‘last call’ home to mum before springing into action to help save the lives of terrified passengers.

James Thomas, from Streetly, feared he would die when the passenger ship ran aground off the Italian coast.

The 19-year-old, who boarded the cruise liner in August as a stand-in performer, last night said he was ‘thankful to be alive’ – but the scenes of chaos and panic would haunt him forever.

James told the Birmingham Mail: “There were seven short blasts on the tannoy followed by one long one, which means emergency, get to your lifeboats. So I knew it was bad.

“We weren’t going to abandon ship, so we went to our muster stations where they had started signing people off. The English members of the crew were in charge of role call.

‘‘The ship was rising higher and higher, the creaking sound must have been just like the Titanic. It was haunting.

“At that point I decided to make a last call home to my mum, which was heartbreaking. I said, ‘Mum, I am so scared. We are almost on our side’.

“I was blubbering like a baby.”

Mum Jayne, 48, described the harrowing call.

“I told James to concentrate and listen to orders,’’ she said.

‘‘I asked, ‘Are you wearing warm clothes? Do you have your life jacket?’

‘‘Then I did the mummy bit... ‘Are you frightened?’ and that was the worst thing I could have said. When he replied ‘yes’ he started crying – then I did.

‘‘James is not a blubberer. I realised at that point he was genuinely frightened and something awful was happening.

“Then I said, ‘Come on now. You have to get off the phone and follow instructions’.”

But there were no instructions to follow. James, a former Streetly School pupil, and his fellow crew had to take control of their own destiny.

The nightmare began on Friday night when the ship ran aground near the island of Giglio.

James was alone in his cabin talking online to girlfriend Nicole Jackson, from Tamworth, when the ship began to tilt.

“The last thing I said to Nicole was that I couldn’t wait to see her in eight weeks, then the ship turned and I was thrown off my bed,’’ he said.

‘‘Everything started crashing down from the shelves. A bottle of wine slid off the side and smashed on to the floor on top of my foot. Luckily, it shattered without cutting me.

‘‘Then we had the blackout.