The lookout kept a sharp watch on the barren rolling seas of the North Atlantic. He and the rest of the crew of the Life magazine expedition were scanning the horizon for a yellow oil drum that had been placed as a marker. On deck, the divers, now on their third attempt to locate the site, were anxious and excited for an opportunity to descend upon the wreck. Bob Dill, Earl Murray, Ramsey Parks, Peter Gimbel and Kenneth MacLeish had already prepared their diving gear and photographic equipment, but as darkness began to eclipse the day, their small vessel headed back to port. One diver remarked, “If the sea were a woman, she’d be a bitch.” Somewhere beneath the boat on the cold bottom of the ocean was the object of their quest. The divers, on assignment for Life magazine would have to wait to attempt to gather color photographs of the sunken ship. The grand dame of the sea was not willing to accept wetsuit clad visitors that day.
Twenty-four hours later, the intrepid men took to the air to try and locate the dive site. The oil drum, they reasoned, had disappeared, but a trail of oil bubbles finally appeared. Following the spots, the airborne searchers finally located the source of the oil and the wreck. After returning to land, the men again gathered on their boat and headed out to the spot. Armed with the most up to date “surface and subsurface gear,” the men would spend another two days on the rough seas waiting for the seas to calm. Finally, the weather cleared to permit diving on the site. The divers rigged their gear and mentally prepared for their descent into the deep. For all but one of the divers, this would be their first time descending to the sunken ship. Peter Gimbel held a distinct advantage. He and fellow diver Joseph Fox had dove on the vessel the day after she had plunged to the bottom. Even though he had visited the wreck prior, the dangers of the site still loomed. The divers donned their thick black rubber wetsuits and diving equipment. Then, one by one, the divers jumped into the cool waters to begin the over two-hundred-foot descent to see, explore and photograph the pride of the Italian line, the Andrea Doria.
The Andrea Doria had begun her life in February of 1950 with the laying of her keel. In less than one year, she was launched at a length of seven hundred feet (656.5 feet at the waterline), ninety feet, two-inch beam and a forty-five-foot, four-inch depth. She was built by the Ansaldo Shipyards at Sestri, Italy and was owned by Italia. The Andrea Doria was powered with six steam turbines which were “fitted for oil fuel.” She could operate at twenty-three knots and was manned by a complement of five hundred and seventy-five crewmen. Her accommodations provided 1,241 passengers. The Andrea Doria set sail on her maiden voyage in January of 1953.
The vessel was a floating palace. No aspect of the vessel was overlooked during her construction and fitting out. The Andrea Doria was the Italia Lines’ attempt to reestablish her transatlantic service between Genoa, Italy and New York. The cost of the construction of the hull and machinery amounted to “$30 million dollars” and her “sumptuous furnishings and prize works of art were worth, according to several estimates, an additional $10 million to $28 million.” The artwork included some of “Italy’s finest works of art,” including a “sixteen hundred square foot mural by Salvatore Fiume, covering eight walls, paintings by Luzzati, Predonzani, Zuffi, Ratti, Bragalini, and Felicita Frai,” as well as ceramic pieces, “mosaics, frescoes, fabrics, crystals, and panels of rare woods.” One of the showpieces of the ship was a “full sized bronze statue of the sixteenth century Admiral Andrea Doria who had been sculpted by Paganin.
The Andrea Doria had ten passenger decks. Starting from the top mast downward the decks included: Belvedere, Sun, Lido, Boat, Promenade, Upper, Foyer, A, B, and C decks. The B and C decks were fore and aft, separated by the “engine room where the power of fifty thousand horses spun two thick axles, each turning a three-blade propeller that was nineteen feet in diameter.” The B-deck, in addition to the Tourist Class cabins, also “housed the garage.” Beneath C, the last passenger deck, were cargo, fuel and water holds. Throughout the ship, amidst art and elegant attentions to details, various compartments, cabins, a gift shop, purser’s office, three pools (one for each type of passenger – First Class, Cabin Class and Tourist Class), lounges, bars, ballrooms, a ten-room hospital, recreational areas, provided comfort, relaxation and entertainment for the transatlantic trips. The vessel, though not the fastest, nor the biggest, was a floating palace that provided for her passengers, albeit only for a few days crossing, with an elegant voyage across the Atlantic. By 1956 however, “the golden age the transatlantic passenger liner was in its dotage.” The advent and growing popularity of air travel was taking a toll on the sea-going method of travel. The Andrea Doria would not need to worry about ending her days due to the increased use of aircraft travel. On her last day, her only worry was another passenger liner.
The Andrea Doria had completed “one hundred incident-free crossings” during her three years of service. Her record, however, would forever be remembered by one tragic event. On July 25, 1956, the Andrea Doria was off of Nantucket and was under full power as she sped through the waters toward her destination – New York. A thick fog enveloped the ship and, on the bridge, the radar, fully powered and in operation, sent out its waves searching for any unknown contacts. A vessel appeared on the screen. The contact was reported at sixteen miles in the distance. The Andrea Doria, Captain Piero Calamai in command on the bridge, pressed forward at near full speed through the fog. There were 1134 passengers and her complement of crewmen on board the vessel as her bow cut through the water and the fog on her voyage with destiny.
Outbound from New York was the Swedish passenger liner Stockholm. Under the command of Captain Gunnar Nordenson, the vessel was heading eastward for Scandinavia, carrying seven hundred and fifty passengers and crew. Once the Stockholm passed the Nantucket lightship, her course turned from east to northeast. Though this maneuver was not in keeping with the 1948 “International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea,” which had recommended “an eastbound course twenty miles to the south, [of the Nantucket lightship]” the Stockholm pressed forward on her course at eighteen knots. The recommendations however, were only voluntary and even though “several shipping lines had an agreement to follow the southern route,” the Stockholm and her parent company had not formally agreed to the recommendations. Later that evening, as passengers settled in to their temporary shipboard routine, a blip appeared on the radar screen on board the Stockholm. At the time, it was reported that the vessel westbound ([the Andrea Doria) was two degrees north of the Stockholm. As the miles decreased between them, a constant bearing – decreasing range or CBDR type of situation began to develop. A collision course was on the horizon if action was not taken by the vessels. Instead of steering clear of one another, both vessels, inadvertently made navigational changes and in effect, began to shorten the distance between one another. In a series of misinterpretations committed by both vessels’ officers, the vessels were on a collision course. Churning through the waves and out of the fog, Captain Nordenson saw the Andrea Doria when it was too late. On board the Andrea Doria, Captain Calamai realizing that he was too close to the mystery vessel ordered the ship’s rudder hard to port, “relying on his vessel’s high speed to take him out of the path of the Stockholm.” Ultimately, his order to turn to port exposed the Andrea Doria’s starboard side instead of her bow, which would have provided a “smaller target and minimize impact.” Captain Nordenson, on the bridge of the Stockholm, swung hard to starboard, but the collision was inevitable. Both vessels’ speed and stopping distance proved too great. The ignorance and misinterpretation of radar equipment, grossly neglected by both vessels’ crew on duty on the bridge, had turned both vessels in a direct line of one another. Both crews braced for the impact.
At 11:22 P.M., the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm collided. The Stockholm slashed into the starboard side of the liner. The reinforced icebreaking bow of the Stockholm sliced into the hull of the Andrea Doria causing instant carnage to the vessel. On board the Stockholm, the crewmen who were berthed in the bow were either instantly killed or gravely injured. “A gash below the bridge 40 feet wide and a third through her vitals,” had killed several of the Italian Liner’s passengers and had, in an instant, set into motion the slow, agonizing death knell of the Andrea Doria. As the Atlantic Ocean began to claim the seven-hundred-foot vessel, the passengers and crew of theAndrea Doria focused on their effort to survive the collision. On board the Stockholm, Captain Gunnar Nordenson took immediate action and backed his vessel away from the liner. He issued an announcement to his passengers and crew informing them that their vessel, just hours out of New York, had collided with another vessel, but that the Stockholm was okay. The bow of the Stockholm was a mixture of wreckage, metal, wood, and debris. The vessel looked like a prize-winning boxer with a smashed nose. Physical ailments, such as a broken nose can be repaired. Gaping holes in hulls in a vessel underway at sea is a different scenario altogether. Though the Stockholm had managed to survive the collision, the Andrea Doria was not as lucky. The Andrea Doria began listing almost immediately after the collision occurred.
SOS calls rang out on the airwaves. Assistance was needed because the Andrea Doria had taken a severe list, rendering her port side lifeboats useless. The Stockholm, having determined her seaworthiness, offered assistance. As the fog began to lift, those on board both vessels realized the gravity of the situation. The Andrea Doria was never going to reach port. Instead, she was heading to the bottom of the North Atlantic. Over sixteen hundred souls had to be rescued. Over the course of approximately five hours, one of the greatest maritime rescues of all time would take place. Fifty-one passengers and crew, however, would be lost as a result of the collision.
As the crew of the Stockholm began to lower its lifeboats to assist in the offloading of the Andrea Doria’s passengers and crew, vessels began responding to the SOS calls. The Pvt. William H. Thompson, a U.S. Navy transport, Ile de France, a passenger line, Cape Ann, a freighter, Robert E. Hopkins, a tanker, Laura Maersk, a freighter, all reported that they were en-route and would arrive on scene as soon as possible. The United States Coast Guard station at East Moriches heard the frantic calls for assistance and “immediately notified the supervisor of the watch, who passed it on to the Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center in New York City.” Almost simultaneously, eleven Coast Guard vessels were ordered to get underway to assist in any way possible. The Andrea Doria, the majority of her passengers reporting to the Boat deck on the high side of the ship, prepared to lower themselves onboard the lifeboats. The ship, her lights going dimmer, was taking on water with each passing moment. Her time on the surface was dwindling. Once other vessels arrived on the scene, a flood of lifeboats were launched to aid in the rescue of the Andrea Doria’s passengers and crew.
By 4:58 in the morning, “the master of the Ile de France told the Stockholm: All passengers rescued. Proceeding to New York full speed.” The Stockholm, with a large number of the rescued passengers and her own passengers and crew aboard would follow her lead and begin to limp slowly toward the same port. However, those who had survived and had been rescued would watch as the Andrea Doria spent her last moments on the surface. “Nearby, a thousand survivors gathered at the rails of the Stockholm, Cape Ann, Pvt. William H. Thomas, and other ships to watch the writhing vessel.” She had remained afloat for almost eleven hours and in her last moments, “the Andrea Doria finally acquiesced to an inevitable fate.” Newspaper men and photographers filled the sky, snapping pictures of the vessel’s last moments, Captain Calamai “watched unbelievingly from a late arriving tugboat…(trying) to disguise his grief, but Third Officer Giannini could see that the captain seemed to be dying with his proud Andrea Doria.” By 10:09 in the morning, the Andrea Doria slipped beneath the surface and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. For fifteen minutes a whirlpool spun “additional bits of wreckage to the surface,” the Andrea Doria was no more.
Part 2 of Andrea Doria – Lost Seventy Years Ago by Adam M. Grohman will be featured in his series In Our Waters in the August 2026 issue.