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Article: Fateful meeting of two liners

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    Fateful meeting of two liners

    1 Comments by Doc Vernon Published on 27th July 2016 07:30 PM


    The Andrea Doria left Genoa on July 17th 1956, on a normal, but well booked, summer season crossing to New York. En route, the seas were calm and the ship made good speed. Clear skies with warm sunshine gave way to a foggy night, however, on July 25th, the day before the liner was due in New York. Among the 1,708 passengers and crew aboard, the first class passenger list included Hollywood actress Ruth Roman, several American politicians, a pair of European ballet dancers and the mayor of Philadelphia. With the evening fog, her captain began to worry that he might have to reduce speed and therefore delay her scheduled arrival at Pier 84, closely scheduled by the home office for eight the next morning.



    Meanwhile, at eleven o'clock that morning, the Swedish American liner Stockholm had left Pier 97 – thirteen New York City blocks north of the Italian Line terminal – on an eastbound crossing to Copenhagen and Gothenburg. Thirty minutes later, French Line's Ile de France cast off, also on an eastward passage, to Plymouth and Le Havre. Together with the Andrea Doria, all three ships would, quite unexpectedly, have a fateful meeting later that night.



    At 11 o'clock that night, in thick fog off Nantucket, the officers onboard the Doria noticed the lights of another ship. Radar had not yet been perfected, and the first pip of that other ship was miscalculated and quickly came much closer. She was believed to be a small freighter. In fact, it was the Stockholm. The two liners were traveling at a combined speed of 40 knots (or 46 miles per hour) and therefore moving at the rate of approximately one mile per minute. At 11:21 pm, the Stockholm materialized out of the fog and rammed into the Doria. The stricken ship abruptly and dramatically lurched over to port and then righted. Passengers and crew heard the sounds of a grinding crash, and some saw the bright lights of the Stockholm through the Doria's windows and portholes. The Swedish ship's reinforced bow was like a dagger piercing the larger Italian. She cut 40 feet into the Doria's hull, just below the bridge, created a jagged hole like an inverted pyramid that extended from below the waterline up to B Deck. It was a mortal wound. The two liners were entangled together for a short time until movement tore them apart. Fifty-five feet of the Stockholm's foredeck and bow were folded and mangled into a tangled mass of steel. The Doria sent out an immediate SOS and began the starboard list from which she would never recover. With her fuel tanks all but empty (and some added that "stability issue" noted from her maiden voyage), she had very little ballast and was very fragile. The two ships were some 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, in a sealane known as the "Crossroads of the Atlantic" because of its very busy shipping patterns. No less than eleven US Coast Guard cutters were immediately dispatched to sea following the first calls for help from the stricken Italian liner. "The Andrea Doria could also have caught fire with the great impact of the collision with the Stockholm," observed Captain Ed Squire, "but fortunately this was not an added problem in the tragedy."
    Last edited by Doc Vernon; 27th July 2016 at 07:33 PM.
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    Default Re: Fateful meeting of two liners

    The anniversary has come and gone once more. I had just left the Nourse tramp mv Hughli and was about to join a tyne collier, mv Corburn. I was just 18 and mother was worried (about me at sea) when she read the newspaper reports.
    There's this piece on Andrea Doria, with some images: The Tragedy of “ANDREA DORIA” – Radio Officers
    Harry Nicholson

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