Within an hour of the rescue operation, Greek authorities declared it had proceeded without "even a nosebleed". But two weeks on, the sinking of a cruise ship off the Aegean island of Santorini is threatening an environmental disaster, a French father and his daughter are still missing, and the government in Athens has been left with a public relations disaster on its hands.
Even diehard supporters of the ruling New Democracy party concede that the handling of the sea tragedy has been a disaster all round.
The main opposition party has said that if Greece's merchant marine minister, Manolis Kefaloyiannis, had any sense of duty he would resign. After all, it was he who had rushed to pronounce the rescue operation a resounding success.
The authoritative Kathimerini, normally a staunch supporter of the governing conservatives said "the accident at sea must invite sanctions".
"It is clear that the chain formed by the owners of the ill-fated ship, the port authorities and the tugboat that was meant to pull the vessel off the reef, contains one or more weak links which resulted in the Sea Diamond ending up on the sea floor - with all the environmental consequences that this entails."
Echoing the mood, Athens's centre-left daily, Eleftherotypia, playing on a pun, pronounced in a front-page banner headline: "They've really made a mess of things".
In Greece's annals of passenger shipping, no event has been quite as bizarre as the Sea Diamond affair. Few have forgotten the terrible tragedy of the sinking of the Samina Express, which hit a set of famously dangerous rocks outside the island of Paros, leaving more than 70 dead on the night of September 26 2000. But, at least then, observers say there were obvious answers.
In the case of the Sea Diamond it is mystery - and an ever growing set of questions - that abound.
How, experts ask, could a vessel the size of several apartment blocks strike a well-charted reef on a fine spring day and, then, instead of being tugged to shallower waters, be allowed to go down?
How could the evacuation of some 1,600 people from the stricken ship be trumpeted as a textbook operation by the Greek government when two of its passengers, now presumed dead, were still unaccounted for?
And, with the liner's breached hull leaking fuel and diesel into the otherwise pristine Aegean, how could authorities not have foreseen the environmental disaster they would surely have on their hands?
It took the 22,412-tonne vessel, which was taking American, Canadian, Australian and European tourists on an island-hopping tour, less than 15 hours to sink.
Its owner, the Cyprus-based Louis Tours group, has pleaded ignorance as to who gave the final orders to tug the heavily listing liner to the deep-watered cove where, with mathematical precision, it was bound to go down.
The ship's captain, Yiannis Marinos, has also been criticized for not alerting port authorities for nearly an hour after the Sea Diamond's collision with the reef. He has since been charged with five other crew members of negligence leading to a shipwreck.
Despite mounting incredulity, the 38-year-old seaman continues to maintain that an unusually strong current suddenly pushed the ship off course, with the result that it rammed into the reef.
Mystery over the events leading up to the incident has only been matched by the ongoing thriller surrounding the disappearance of Jean-Christophe Allain, 46, and his sixteen year-old daughter, Maud.
The two French tourists, who were reported missing by Allain's wife, Anne, were last seen when water began gushing into their lower-deck cabin late April 5.
Inexplicably, the cabin was among a select few that failed to be checked by crew members.
In the coming days, it is hoped that this will also be explained by the Sea Diamond's data recorder that is being examined in the US and whose secrets Greeks now eagerly await.
Helena Smith reports for the Guardian from Athens
