SS Andrea Doria

1956

Italian flagship, Stockholm's bow, summer fog Location: North Atlantic, ~45 nmi south of Nantucket Lightship · Coordinates: 40.48°N 69.86°W · Casualties: 46 · Survivors: ~1,660 · Depth: 75 m · Cause: collision — Struck in fog on the starboard side by the Swedish liner MS Stockholm at 23:10 on 25 July 1956. The Stockholm's ice-reinforced bow penetrated seven decks; radar interpretations by both bridges were disputed at inquiry. The Andrea Doria took on a catastrophic list and sank the following morning after one of the largest civilian sea rescues in history. · Fate: continental shelf · diveable · Type: passenger liner · Italian Line · Tonnage: 29,083 tons · Crew: 572 · Flag: Italy · Launched: 1951 Italian Line flagship, Genoa to New York, the most elegant liner of her generation. Rammed starboard in Nantucket fog by the Swedish liner Stockholm on the night of 25 July 1956. 46 died in the collision itself; the remaining 1,660 were lifted off through the night in one of the largest civilian sea rescues ever mounted. The last great transatlantic disaster before the jet age erased them. The Vessel The SS Andrea Doria was the postwar flagship of Italy's reconstituted merchant marine, built at the Ansaldo yard in Genoa and entered into Italian Line service on 14 January 1953. She was 213 metres long, 29,083 tons gross, named for the sixteenth-century Genoese admiral and statesman whose family had financed the yard that built her. At the moment of her launch she was the most technologically ambitious liner Italy had ever put to sea. She was designed for the New York-Genoa run, eleven classes between first and tourist, capable of 23 knots on two shafts, with a length-to-beam ratio and a hull form that let her press her speed through the North Atlantic in most weather. Her safety provisions exceeded the SOLAS requirements of the 1948 convention: she carried lifeboats for 2,000 when her full capacity was 1,241 passengers and 563 crew, and her eleven watertight compartments were individually calculated to sustain single-compartment flooding at any angle. She was also the most heavily styled liner of her generation. The Italian Line commissioned murals, tapestries, mosaics, and sculpture from Salvatore Fiume, Emanuele Luzzati, and Giovanni Ponti; her first-class Winter Garden carried a bronze statue of Admiral Andrea Doria cast for the ship. She was the most photographed Italian ship of the 1950s, a visible argument that the country that had lost its battleships at the armistice had rebuilt itself by another means. The Disaster The Stockholm's bow penetrated seven decks, opening the Andrea Doria's starboard side from her waterline to her promenade and flooding her starboard fuel tanks. 46 of Andrea Doria's passengers in the immediate impact zone died in the first minutes; five of Stockholm's forward crew also died. She listed 20 degrees to starboard within ten minutes, a list that her stability calculation had never contemplated because it assumed both sides of her fuel tanks could be counter-flooded. With her starboard tanks already ruptured and her port tanks empty, the list could not be corrected. Calamai ordered the lifeboats away, but the list had already put the port boats out of reach; passengers climbed down from the starboard rail into the boats that could still be swung out. The rescue that followed was the largest civilian maritime rescue operation in history. The French liner Île de France, the American freighter Cape Ann, the U.S. destroyer Edward H. Allen, and the Stockholm herself worked the scene through the night. 1,660 people were taken off across eleven hours. The Andrea Doria sank at 10:09 on the morning of 26 July, ten hours and fifty-nine minutes after the collision, with her stern rising and her bow still on even keel against the fog. Calamai stood on her bridge to the last, refusing to leave his ship; he had to be carried off by the last lifeboat. He lived the rest of his life in Genoa, never sailing again, and he never spoke publicly about the sinking. He died in 1972.