Dragged to shore...

[Doc Vernon]

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Sixty years ago this summer ...

Within a month, by August 1956, newspaper and magazine articles hinted of plans to salvage the Andrea Doria. One ambitious report was that huge chains would be affixed to the hull and then it would be dragged near the shoreline, pumped out and re-floated. Another was that a fleet of 15-20 tugs would drag the wreck to shallow waters. Perhaps the most fanciful was the plan to fill the hull with a huge number of ping pong balls and thereby re-float the ship. Nothing came to pass, of course, and instead the Italian Line abandoned the wreckage to underwriters soon after final investigations were complete. The Andrea Doria was barely, if ever mentioned again by the Italian Line.



"It was really a national funeral when the Doria was lost," noted Italian liner historian & author Maurizio Eliseo. "It was like seeing the dream of post-war Italy turn into a nightmare. In Genoa, people cried in the streets, others stood weeping outside Italian Line headquarters and badly depressed dockers even refused to load ships. Within two days, the Italian Line, attempting to revive spirits, announced their plans for the Leonardo da Vinci. She would be bigger, faster, more beautiful, even more gorgeous."



Extensive, but very confidential inquiries and hearings began in August and continued into the following year. In the end, the total compensation amounted to $48 million, but no precise responsibility was determined. (Years later, it was revealed that the Italians actually assumed more responsibility.) The final investigation was finally dropped at the mutual consent of the Italian and Swedish American lines. The Italians were especially anxious to restore their good image while, complicating matters further, the Swedes were building a new flagship, the 23,000-ton Gripsholm, at the Ansaldo shipyard in Genoa, at the time. "It had all become quite sensitive," remembered Captain Squire. The disaster did lead, however, to greatly increased radar navigation training for ships' officers. The Stockholm would sail for the Swedish American Line for another three years, until 1959; the Andrea Doria would be replaced by the Leonardo da Vinci, which had its debut in four years, in July 1960.