Against the Sea

On her last night out, the Italian Liner Andrea Doria sliced through a gentle ocean, and an awesome wall of North Atlantic fog closed in around her. But the ship's mood as she neared the U.S. was fog-free and gay. A movie (Foxfire) was running in one of Andrea Doria's four theaters; in the plush, boat deck Belvedere lounge, dancers swayed to the rhythms of an eight-piece orchestra. Their last song: Arrivederci, Roma. In the cardrooms, bridge foursomes pondered hands. On deck late strollers tasted the mist and sniffed for land smells. Below, passageways were lined with baggage already packed and prepared for customs. Some passengers had retired early, and were already lulled to sleep by the soothing roll and the sea sounds.

Eight days earlier the fast and fancy three-year-old Andrea Doria-- had departed her home port of Genoa and headed for Cannes, Naples and Gibraltar. Leaving the Rock, the 29,000-ton liner raced westward on her 101st Atlantic crossing. For Captain Piero Calamai and his crew it wa's; routine. For the businessmen, the priests and nuns returning from Rome, the Italian-Americans ending old-country visits, the immigrants bound for the golden shore, the crossing was an event.

On the Upper Edge. Not many miles away, passengers aboard the Swedish-American liner Stockholm were testing their first night at sea. The 12,644-ton Stockholm, more tourist than tony, had sailed shortly before noon that day from Manhattan for Copenhagen. After she slipped out into the Hudson River, she idled in the stream while the larger (44,356 tons) lie de France swung from her pier down the Hudson. Then in file the two ships moved past Manhattan's towers, out through the Narrows into the open sea. By 11 p.m. Stockholm, lie de France and Andrea Doria were all churning through the busy, often angry water south of Nantucket, known as "the Times Square of the North Atlantic."

Through the stretch of the Atlantic, from Sheepshead Bay to the Nantucket bearing and beyond, runs Track Charlie, at this time of the year one of the principal transatlantic shipping lanes. By routine but not rule, westbound vessels follow the northern side of Track Charlie, eastbound ships the southern. But that evening the eastbound Stockholm was holding to the northern edge. On a clear night the course holds no serious hazard. But for three days fog had covered the sea from Newfoundland's banks down to Nantucket. The view from a ship's bridge was scarcely farther than the bow. Radar sets searched the seas ahead, but longtime masters with tight schedules reduced speed only slightly for foul weather.

Out of the Darkness. Shortly after 11 p.m. one of Andrea Doria's card players looked idly out of a starboard window and gasped. The cause of her sudden shock: eerie lights of another ship glinting and sprinting out of the darkness towards Andrea Doria. A moment later, with a grinding, crunching roar, Stockholm's knife-sharp prow (reinforced for ice in northern ports) ground 30 ft. deep into the starboard quarter of Andrea Doria, just abaft her flying bridge. Then, with a shudder and shower of sparks, the shivering vessels jerked apart.

On Andrea Doria's upper decks the explosive collision hurled the card players to the floor and ripped their tables from the sockets. Bar patrons were showered by their nightcaps and banged by flying glassware. Moviegoers were hurled into screaming heaps. Promenaders were slammed against bulkheads.In the Belvedere lounge the dancers picked themselves up from the floor and dazedly headed toward muster stations.

Below decks the crash and the quick list of Andrea Doria lifted sleepers out of bed and hurled them around cabins, to be sprayed by flying porthole glass. Passengers on stairways were jerked off and slapped to the deck. Passageways were filled with settling dust, smoke drifted back from the long (40 ft.) gash along the ship's starboard. Oil and water sloshed along the corridors. Over the ship's loudspeaker came Italian commands to remain calm, but they were only half heard or not understood. Women screamed. The tilting passageways, jammed with piles of baggage, jammed tighter when brusquely awakened sleepers, heading for deck, met passengers hurrying down to their cabins to look for families and get lifejackets. Old women clutched holy pictures and wailed. Young women clutched babies and fought for the open deck.

Crunching Echoes. The string of first-class cabins, raked by the sharp prow of Stockholm, was in shambles. In one, New York Timesman Camille Cianfarra had been killed; his wife lay pinned in her bed. In an adjoining room his daughter and stepdaughter were shot through the shredded hull.-- In another cabin Thure

S. Peterson, New Jersey chiropractor, tried to free his wife Martha, caught in the wreckage. She died within minutes, spine and legs broken. Colonel Walter J. Carlin of Brooklyn staggered out of a bathroom after the crash to find that his wife and his cabin had vanished. Cinemactress Ruth Roman rushed into her stateroom, woke her sleeping three-year-old son Dickie, told him calmly, "We are going on a picnic." The crunching echoes of the crash were still dying as wireless operators aboard the two ships sparked through the fog a twelve-dash automatic alarm signal to trip alert bells in radio rooms at sea and monitor stations along the U.S. coastline.

As receiving operators logged the time--11:22 p.m. E.D.T.--a crisply urgent message from Andrea Doria followed on the 500 Kc. international distress band: SOS . . . COLLISION . . . 40DEG30' N, 60DEG53' W . . . SEND IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE.

The Wait for Salvation. On Andrea Doria electric lights flickered but burned bright again. Under their calming glow, the momentary panic ebbed. Passengers in nightgowns and pajamas joined others in evening dress on a deck slanting first at 25DEG, then at a steep 35DEG. Most had found their lifejackets; those who had not, clutched rubber cushions from the deck chairs. As the liner settled, some passengers and crewmen climbed to the high-tilted portside lifeboats, found them hopelessly far from the water and hanging too awkwardly to be swung out. Some slid to the low starboard side, where ropes and ladders were being let down. Andrea Doria got away eight boats and radioed a plea for more.

Then began the long wait for salvation. For some, the waiting hours became a time of prayer. Nuns missing pieces of their habits, including one who replaced her coif with a towel, quietly fingered beads. A group gathered around a young boy they remembered later only as Peter. Unable to find his father and mother, he went to his knees and said the rosary aloud. Six young girls sat together on the canted deck and sang to keep up spirits. Another circle told jokes. Mrs. Sam Frlekin of San Pedro, Calif, grabbed a rail she was to clutch for almost three hours and offered a short plea: "Dear God, help me hang on." The ship's list increased to 45DEG. Captive water from Andrea Doria'?, three swimming pools splashed back across the decks and into the sea.

Friends In the Dark. Out of the fog came the purr of motors and the slap of oars. Lifeboats arrived from Stockholm, where Captain Gunnar Nordenson had sealed his crumpled bow, found his vessel seaworthy, and turned to rescue. Andrea Dona's radio crackled as other ships reported positions. Fifteen miles away Captain Joseph Boyd had pushed his little (7,000 tons) freighter, Cape Ann, for a 55-minute run to Andrea Dona's side. The military transport, Private William H. Thomas, was 20 miles away. The destroyer escort Edward H. Allen, cruising off the coast in gunnery practice, was closing a 52-mile gap. And the old but agile lie de France, which had been running at 17 knots 45 miles to the east, had come hard about, kicked up to 22. and promised to reach Andrea Doria within two hours.

With Ile de France, clear weather arrived. From Andrea Doria survivors saw a calm ocean "that would make their rescue easier, a wan moon overhead, and across the water the French liner closing in, with all lights turned on to cheer them. Searchlights fingered across the black water as monocled Captain Raoul de Beaudean maneuvered He de France to the leeward side of Andrea Doria to shelter the ten boats she was lowering from the wind.

Hands were burned raw as Andrea Doria's passengers slid awkwardly down ropes into the bobbing boats under the tilted starboard rail. With a shriek, an elderly woman lost her unfamiliar grip and fell heavily into a boat, where she landed grotesquely and lay still. Children were tossed from the deck to the outstretched arms of seamen. An impatient woman climbed the rail, dropped into the sea and swam for the nearest boat. As the boats filled and pulled away, some evacuees helped pull the oars, some sat stunned and silent, some leaned miserably over the side to be seasick.

Pink dawn found the 697-ft. liner heeled well over, her wound completely hidden under water. Above the ring of rescue vessels helicopters from shore appeared at the call of Stockholm. One snatched up three injured seamen, who were hurried to shore. Another gently hoisted the youngest casualty, four-year-old Norma di Sandro, whose skull was fractured, possibly when she was dropped from Andrea Doria into a lifeboat. (She died next day at Boston's U.S. Public Service Hospital.) By 5 a.m. only Captain Calamai and a score of his crew were still aboard Andrea Doria, still trying to level her with auxiliary pumps. At 7 a.m. they admitted defeat, were taken off. Three hours later, while silent seafarers watched transfixed, Andrea Doria poised a polished fantail and motionless screws in the air, then slid down to the ocean's dark bottom. Behind her the sea bubbled and quivered a hundred hues of green. The surface shuddered, the bobbing rubble tossed on the swell until the liner was well down.

Then, to a world that had wondered about her chances, the Coast Guard cutter Evergreen flashed a death notice:

S.S. ANDREA DORIA SANK IN 225 FEET OF WATER AT 10:09 A.M.

Tears in Italy. Down with Andrea Doria went some of Italy's finest contemporary art, created especially to decorate the nation's first postwar speedship.

Down went nine automobiles, one a $100,000 sports-car prototype hand-built in Turin for the Chrysler Corp. Down went 1,764 bags of mail, together with crates of antiques and cases of vintage wines. When the writhing sea was still, the Coast Guard cutter Evergreen dropped a temporary tombstone: a yellow marker buoy.

In Italy, men who helped build Andrea Doria wept for her. At her New York pier, men and women wept for the kin they feared she had carried down. But to Manhattan at evening came Ile de France, first rescue ship to reach port. Slipping upriver to a hero's well-deserved cheers and whistles, the French liner docked, unloaded 750-odd survivors, and prepared to hurry off again that same night towards France. Some 30 of the survivors were gently carried on stretchers from the ship's infirmary down a gangway to waiting ambulances. On the fantail a weeping Andrea Doria officer called 100 men to a last muster. Commented lie de France's Captain de Beaudean: "Altogether, it was like being back in the war years." Ninety minutes later Cape Ann, no less a hero, docked at Andrea Doria's pier with 129 survivors. In Brooklyn Thomas arrived with 150-odd, Allen with 77.

Among them: Captain Calamai, his uniform grimy, his braided cap gone, his face solemn and sad. Next day Stockholm limped in at seven knots and docked with more than 500 survivors. On the pier, some families who had gone from ship to incoming ship searching for kin turned and sadly walked away.

Balancing Saga. At week's end insurance syndicates reckoned their shares of the multimillion dollar loss, radar experts considered electronic failure against human failure, architects tried to explain why the compartmented Andrea Doria sank. In the U.S. an adjourning Congress, without determining its questionable right to act. authorized an investigation of the sinking. Overseas, Italians and Swedes bitterly blamed one another for the loss. Meanwhile, grimmer figures were being figured. The weekend total: 25 dead.

17 missing.

But to balance their loss was the eleven-hour high-seas saga in which some 1,670 had been snatched back from death. Tribute belonged to the men who saved them.

But it belonged also in rich measure to Andrea Doria, badly stricken but slow to go down.

* Named in honor of the 16th century prince and admiral who commanded the Republic of Genoa's navy in sea battles against Francis I of France and the Barbary pirates (and who lived to be 94). On November 17, 1776, the American brig Andrea Doria, sailing into the harbor of Saint Eustatius, Dutch West Indies, received a nine-gun salute, the first salute ever rendered a U.S. naval vessel in a foreign port. * Stepdaughter Linda Morgan (daughter of Radio Commentator Edward P. Morgan), in the most unbelievable escape of the collision, was found semiconscious on crumpled bowplates of Stockholm, obviously had been scooped up by the bow in the crash, borne off as the Swedish ship pulled away.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.