Andrea Doria (ship, 1952)

**Andrea Doria**
Ship data
flag	Italy
Ship type	Liner passenger ship
Callsign	ICEH
home port	Genoa
Owner	Italia - Società di Navigazione SpA
Shipyard	Cantieri Navali Ansaldo di Sestri Ponente, Genoa
Launch	June 16, 1951
takeover	December 9, 1952
Commissioning	January 13, 1953
Whereabouts	sunk on July 26, 1956
Ship dimensions and crew
length	213.4 m ( Lüa )
width	27.5 m
Draft	max. 10.84 m
measurement	29,083 GRT; 9,567 NRT
crew	563
Machine system
machine	2 × steam turbine with simple reduction gear
Machine ; performance	37,300 kW (50,714 hp)
Top ; speed	26.0 kn (48 km / h )
propeller	2 × fixed propellers
Transport capacities
Load capacity	9,567 dwt
Allowed number of passengers	1241 ; 1st class: 218 ; Cabin class: 320 ; Tourist class: 703
miscellaneous
Registration ; numbers	Register number: 2949

The Andrea Doria was an Italian passenger ship on the Italia - Società di Navigazione line with its home port in Genoa .

Named after the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria named vessel arrived on 16 June 1951 by stacking and undertook its maiden voyage on January 14, 1953. The Andrea Doria was the fastest ship of the Italian fleet. On its 51st voyage on July 25, 1956, the luxury liner collided with the eastbound passenger ship Stockholm on the way to New York off the coast of Nantucket . After the collision, the developed Andrea Doria a strong list , making half of the lifeboats could not be used. The quick reaction of other ships prevented a disaster similar to that of the Titanic in 1912 , so that most of the passengers and crew survived: 1660 people were rescued, while 46 people died.

The following morning the meanwhile evacuated ship capsized and finally sank. The location and circumstances of the accident were similar to those of the sinking of the White Star liner Republic in 1909. The accident aroused great interest in the media and resulted in a large number of lawsuits. The Andrea Doria was the last large passenger ship on the transatlantic route that sank. The transatlantic traffic with ships on the North Atlantic was almost completely replaced by air traffic in the 1960s .

technology

features

The Andrea Doria was 213 meters long, 27 meters wide and had a survey of 29,083 GRT . Her sister ship was the Cristoforo Colombo (29,191 GRT) , which was commissioned in 1954 . The propulsion system consisted of two oil-fired boilers and steam turbines that drove two propellers via reduction gears . The ship reached a cruising speed of 23 and a top speed of 26 knots . The Andrea Doria was designed as a luxury ship. Outside the Italian fleet, there were larger and faster ships, e.g. B. Queen Elizabeth and the United States .

As the first ship to sail the southern North Atlantic route, the Andrea Doria was equipped with three swimming pools on deck - one for each class : first, cabin and tourist class. On ten decks, the ship could carry 218 first class passengers, 320 cabin class and 703 tourist class passengers. For Art and features decor were over one million US dollars , u. A. for a life-size statue of Admiral Andrea Doria. The ship has been widely referred to as one of the most beautiful passenger ships ever built.

Safety and seaworthiness

With her double-walled hull , divided into eleven compartments with watertight bulkheads , the Andrea Doria was considered to be one of the safest ships. Two of the eleven compartments, which can be separated by bulkheads, could have filled up without endangering the safety of the ship. There were enough lifeboats to accommodate everyone on the ship. In addition, the Andrea Doria was equipped with the most modern radar system at the time .

But there were also a number of serious shortcomings that affected safety and seaworthiness. The predictions made on the basis of tests on the model confirmed that the ship tended to heel relatively large as soon as it was exposed to the corresponding forces at sea. This was particularly evident during its maiden voyage, when the Andrea Doria heeled 28 ° off Nantucket after a large wave. This tendency was particularly noticeable when the fuel tanks were almost empty at the end of a trip.

The structural peculiarities and the problematic stability of the ship contributed significantly to the capsizing after the collision . The bulkheads only reached up to the level of the A-deck , so that if the boat was heeled by more than 20 °, water would run from already full sections into neighboring sections. With a heel of more than 15 °, half of the lifeboats could not be lowered into the water.

history

Construction phase and maiden voyage

Until after the Second World War, Italy had half of its commercial fleet by destroying or reparations lost, including those with the Blue Ribbon excellent Rex . In addition, the state struggled with an economic collapse . The Italia - Società di Navigazione ordered two new ships with a similar design in the early 1950s. The first ship was the Andrea Doria , the second the Cristoforo Colombo, named after Christopher Columbus , which was commissioned in 1953 .

The Andrea Doria was built as hull number 918 by the Ansaldo shipyard in the Sestri Ponente district of Genoa. On February 9, 1950, the keel was laid on Helgen No. 1 . The launch took place on June 16, 1951. During the christening of the ship , the hull was blessed by the Archbishop of Genoa, Giuseppe Siri , and christened by Giuseppina Saragat, wife of the former Minister of the Merchant Navy. After engine problems during the first test drives , the maiden voyage was postponed from December 14, 1952 to January 13, 1953.

On its maiden voyage, the ship was exposed to severe storms when approaching New York. The Andrea Doria completed her first voyage on January 23rd and was received by a delegation including New York Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri . Later, the Andrea Doria became one of the most popular and successful Italian liners and was mostly fully booked. In mid-1956, she completed her hundredth crossing of the Atlantic .

The last ride

Collision course

Approximate position at the time of the collision
(French nautical chart New York - Nantucket , 1947)

On the evening of July 25, 1956, the Andrea Doria was with 1134 passengers and 572 crew members under the command of Captain Piero Calamai on a west course towards New York, the destination of the crossing started on July 17 in Genoa. The schedule called for a call to New York Harbor the next morning. The passengers included:

the actresses Ruth Roman and Betsy Drake ,
the composer Mike Stoller with his wife Meryl,
the Mayor of Philadelphia , Richardson Dilworth , with wife Ann;
Ferdinand M. Thieriot, the sales director of the San Francisco Chronicle with wife Frances (both perished);
Thure C. Peterson, President of the Chiropractic Institute of New York with wife Martha (she died);
Camille M. Cianfarra, Madrid correspondent for the New York Times with wife Jane (he died);
George P. Kerr, European Manager at Procter & Gamble with wife and daughter;
Marion W. Boyer, former director general of the United States Atomic Energy Commission ;
the Hungarian ballet dancers Nora Kovach and Istvan Rabovsky;
Robert T. Young, Marine Damage Surveyor for the American Bureau of Shipping with wife and children as well
the Canadian opera singer Nicholas Massue with his mother Alexandrine, a daughter of Marc-Amable Girard ,
likewise the Austrian architect Wilhelm Holzbauer .

The Stockholm after the collision in New York

At the same time, the Stockholm , a smaller passenger ship that had left New York at noon, was heading east towards Gothenburg in Sweden . The captain of the Stockholm was Harry Gunnar Nordenson. That evening, the third officer Johan-Ernst Carstens-Johannsen was in command of the bridge . The Stockholm pursued under a clear sky with its usual course with 18 knots (33 kilometers per hour) on the lightship of Nantucket . Carstens estimated the view to be about eleven kilometers. The Stockholm and the Andrea Doria were moving towards each other on a busy shipping route after the Andrea Doria had already been sailing through thick fog for a few hours. The master had taken the usual precautionary measures when driving through fog and reduced the speed slightly from 23 to 21.8 knots, activated the ship's fog horn and closed the bulkheads. The Stockholm had not yet entered the fog bank and its crew were apparently unaware of its existence.

The waters of the North Atlantic south of Nantucket are often affected by fog banks , as this is where the cold Labrador Current meets the warmer Gulf Stream . When the ships approached with a total speed of 40 knots, guided only by radar, both sides apparently misinterpreted the other ship's course. There were no communications between the ships.

In the minutes before the collision, the Andrea Doria slowly changed her course towards port in order to pass Stockholm on the starboard side, while the Stockholm changed her course by 20 degrees to starboard in order to allow the Andrea Doria to pass over a long distance on port . As a result, both ships evaded to the south and headed directly towards each other instead of increasing the distance. Due to the thick fog surrounding the Andrea Doria , the ships were so close at the first visual contact that the ship's command could no longer prevent a collision despite evasive maneuvers .

Moments before the collision, the Stockholm was performing a last-minute maneuver . She turned to starboard and tried to reduce her speed with a backward maneuver. In her attempt to avoid the collision at high speed, the Andrea Doria maintained her cruising speed of approximately 22 knots and steered hard to port. As a result, both ships changed course again to the south and thus remained on a collision course.

At around 11:10 p.m. the ships collided.

collision

The Andrea Doria with flip side the morning after the collision

During the collision, the Stockholm's bow, which was reinforced for ice travel, broke through the starboard side of the Andrea Doria roughly in the middle and cut open three cabin decks to a depth of around twelve meters. The collision destroyed many occupied passenger cabins and several watertight compartments in the lower levels. In addition, five fuel tanks on the starboard side of the Andrea Doria were torn open and filled with 500 tons of seawater as a result of the break-in. In connection with the almost empty fuel tanks on the opposite side to be crossed, this led to the ship's heeling , which could not be corrected .

Meanwhile, the Stockholm's engines were stopped and all bulkheads closed. The ships interlocked for about 30 seconds. In the separation of the ships destroyed bug was Stockholm along the starboard side of the further moving Andrea Doria after aft pulled and damaged them keep it up. The Andrea Doria then drove around two nautical miles in the thick fog . Both ships made emergency calls and learned the identity of the other ship. The message from Andrea Doria read:

SOS DE ICEH SOS HERE AT 0320 LAT. 40.30 N 69.53 W NEED IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE

Damage incurred

Immediately after the collision, the Andrea Doria quickly absorbed water and was listed to starboard, which was 18 degrees within minutes. The reason for this instability was that no ballast water had been added to the empty fuel tanks to compensate for weight. This procedure, envisaged by the manufacturer, made bunkering the ship more complicated because the water had to be drained again, which in turn was prohibited in ports like New York because of the pollution with fuel for environmental reasons. The list was significantly reinforced by the water penetrating the tanks on the starboard side and the almost empty tanks on the port side. In the next few minutes, the ship's heel rose to over 20 degrees.

In the engine room, the ship's engineers tried in vain to pump the water out of the flooded starboard tanks. The small amount of fuel remaining and the water intake openings that appeared due to the heel made it impossible to stabilize the ship by flooding the port tanks . Due to the rising water in the engine room, the generators failed and further reduced the available power for the bilge pumps .

Personal injury

On the Andrea Doria , 46 passengers died in the collision area, two of them as a result of the rescue operation. Hundreds of passengers were injured, some as a result of the list and in the course of the evacuation. Some passengers had been thrown onto the deck of the Stockholm by the force of the impact , others were trapped in crushed cabins in the collision area.

Most of the victims died on the lower decks of the collision zone, which were flooded by seawater. A total of 51 people died.

evacuation

The ship's command decided to evacuate within 30 minutes of the collision . This procedure, which was dangerous even under the best of conditions, was made even more problematic by the steep incline of the ship.

A sufficient number of lifeboats for passengers and crew were available on the boat decks on both sides of the ship. The plan was to lower the lifeboats to the promenade deck below. The passengers should be able to enter the boats directly from the windows . Once fully occupied, the boats should be lowered.

However, the lifeboats on the port side could not be lowered due to the heavy list. The boats on the starboard side could not be boarded at the level of the promenade deck. They first had to be lowered into the water empty. The passengers had to get into the boats at water level, which was achieved with ropes, Jacob's ladders and a large fishing net . Some of the passengers panicked, jumped overboard or let their children fall down to join the helpers.

More lifeboats were urgently requested by radio . While other ships were heading for the scene of the accident, the master of the Stockholm also supported the evacuation of the Andrea Doria with a few lifeboats. In the first few hours, many of the survivors were transported to Stockholm by lifeboat .

In contrast to the Titanic accident 44 years earlier, there were some ships in the vicinity that responded to the distress call. The radio link was maintained via these ships, as the batteries of the Andrea Doria only allowed a limited range. On land, the United States Coast Guard's operations were coordinated from a center in New York. A turning point in the rescue was the decision of the captain of the Île de France , Baron Raoul de Beaudean, to turn around with his ship and take part in the rescue. The Île de France had cast east from New York the day before and had passed Andrea Doria, who was heading west, hours earlier. She had sufficient capacity to accommodate shipwrecked people. The 15 nautical miles from the collision point distant Cape Ann the United Fruit Company also rushed and helped with her two lifeboats passengers of the Andrea Doria .

When de Beaudean's ship reached the scene of the accident less than three hours after the collision, the fog cleared so that the Île de France could safely shield the starboard side of the Andrea Doria . All the exterior lighting on the Île de France was switched on. The Île de France saved a large part of the remaining passengers by commuting their ten lifeboats to the Andrea Doria and back and picking up shipwrecked people from lifeboats of other ships. Some passengers on the Île de France gave up their accommodations for the tired and soaked rescued. The Andrea Doria was completely evacuated by daybreak . The Île de France had saved 735 passengers on the Andrea Doria , the Stockholm 545, the Pvt. William H. Thomas 158, the Cape Ann 129, the Edward H. Allen 77 and the tanker Robert E. Hopkins a shipwrecked man. A short time later, a four-year-old girl who was fatally injured while manning the lifeboats and four seriously injured crew members from Stockholm were flown out by helicopters from the Coast Guard and the US Air Force . Many passengers were hospitalized on arrival in New York. The Austrian architect Wilhelm Holzbauer was among those rescued .

Capsizing and sinking of the "Andrea Doria"

The Andrea Doria in lateral position

After the evacuation was completed, the master turned his attention to the possibility of towing the Andrea Doria into shallow waters. It was clear to observers of the scenery, however, that the ship would continue to lay on its side and ultimately sink.

The Île de France circled the Andrea Doria three times as a ceremonial farewell before she set off on course for New York. The Andrea Doria slowly capsized. By submerging the bow, the stern of the ship rose slowly, revealing the propeller. Some of the remaining lifeboats broke loose from the sinking port side. Officially, the Andrea Doria sank eleven hours after the collision, at 10:09 a.m. on July 26th. With pictures of the sinking ship, Harry A. Trask won the Pulitzer Prize for the daily newspaper Boston Traveler in 1957 .

Aftermath

Legal proceedings and root cause research

After the successful rescue, there were hearings about the collision in New York City for several months . The owner of the ship were here by prominent lawyers for Law of the Sea represented the victims and their families through dozens of private attorneys. Officers from both shipping lines testified, including the officers on duty at the time of the collision. The hearings ended when an out-of-court settlement was reached. The fact that both ships were insured by the same insurance company, Lloyd's of London , may have played a part in this.

Both shipping lines paid into a common victim fund. In addition, the companies had to bear their own losses: In the case of Svenska America lines of Stockholm were this to about 2 million US dollars estimated each of which half was attributable to repair the ship and business failures. The Italian line lost the total value of the Andrea Doria , an estimated $ 30 million.

In a hearing by the US Congress , the missing ballast of the Andrea Doria and the resulting inadequate damage stability were found in particular. In addition to thick fog as the main reason for the accident , other reasons were named:

Captain Piero Calamai

The officers of the Andrea Doria had not followed the procedures correctly and did not use the radar or navigation equipment of the chart room to calculate the position, course and speed of the Stockholm .

The collision prevention rules then and now require that the ships pass each other on their port side and, in the event of a possible head-on collision, move to starboard. However, Andrea Doria did not adhere to this. Instead, the Andrea Doria turned to port and thus reduced the distance to the correctly evasive Stockholm .

Andrea Doria Captain Calamai drove at high speed despite the thick fog. This practice, which is widespread among passenger lines, contradicts the guidelines according to which, if visibility is reduced, the speed must be reduced so that the ship can come to a standstill within half of the visibility. In practice, however, this would have meant a reduction to almost zero.

The Stockholm and the Andrea Doria had been exposed to different weather conditions before the collision. While the Andrea Doria had been driving through fog for hours, the Stockholm had only just entered the fog bank. The commanding officer of the Stockholm therefore believed that Andrea Doria, who was not visible to him , was a very small fishing boat or a darkened warship during a maneuver . He testified that it was completely unclear to him that it was a fast-moving passenger ship.

The drained fuel tanks of the Andrea Doria were left empty instead of being filled with seawater, as had been intended by the shipbuilding engineers . This was a widespread practice: one avoids draining oil polluted water when refueling, which is a common practice in many ports, among others. New York, was banned; In addition, empty tanks cause the ship to be positioned higher in the water, which reduces drag and thus fuel consumption at a given speed. However, the lack of ballast probably contributed significantly to the list and to the later capsizing of the ship.

A possibly missing bulkhead near the engine room could also have contributed to the problems of the Andrea Doria .

Both shipping lines wanted to keep the discussion about structural problems and the lack of stability of the Andrea Doria from the public as much as possible, because the operators of the Stockholm had also commissioned a new ship, the Gripsholm , from the Italian Ansaldo shipyards. The hearings ended before the Andrea Doria's designers and engineers testified.

As a replacement for the Andrea Doria , the shipping company commissioned a new ship from the same shipyard, the more than 33,000 GRT Leonardo da Vinci , which was launched in 1958 and put into service in 1960.

consequences

French nautical chart New York / Nantucket with sea routes, 1976

The collision of the Andrea Doria led to some changes in the shipping regulations in the following years, which were intended to prevent such collisions from occurring again. Among other things, the operators were obliged to improve training on radar equipment. Another change was the need for ships approaching each other to have radio contact with each other.

Later investigations

Further details became known through later investigations using better underwater technology and computer simulations:

Closer examination of the collision area of the Andrea Doria showed that the bow of the Stockholm had caused far more damage than had been assumed in 1956. The question of the possible missing bulkhead is therefore - although still unexplained - idle, the Andrea Doria would have sunk even with the bulkhead.
Captain Robert J. Meurn of the United States Merchant Marine Academy claims after detailed studies and computer simulations that the third officer of the Stockholm Carstens-Johannsen misinterpreted the radar data and seriously wrongly estimated the distance between the ships. The radar settings were poorly chosen and the distance information was difficult to read.

The wreck

Just one day after the Andrea Doria sank, the divers Peter Gimbel and Joseph Fox tracked down the wreck and published pictures in Time magazine. Gimbel later led a number of rescue operations, including the first-class safe in 1981 . When it opened on live television in 1984, however, it contained little more than a few American silver forex and Italian banknotes. The ship's bell of the Andrea Doria was recovered in the late 1980s, as was the statue of the eponymous Admiral Andrea Doria - which had to be cut up for this purpose.

The cargo on board the Andrea Doria was also the Chrysler Norseman , a design study by Chrysler designer Virgil Exner from 1956. The prototype was built by Carrozzeria Ghia in Italy and was to be exhibited at various automobile shows in the USA in 1957 . In addition, there were 50 new cars of the Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider, of which only 240 were built .

In 1970, shipyard worker Jerry Bianco planned to salvage the wreck using his Quester I submarine . However, the boat capsized due to a breakdown after the christening, and the project was eventually abandoned due to insufficient funding.

The deterioration of the wreck progressed rapidly, especially in the course of 2007 and 2008. The upper deck superstructure of the ship lying on the starboard side broke off the hull and fell into the sediment, which resulted in additional risks during diving due to unrecognized fragments and a changed hull structure. Once popular diving destinations - like Gimbel's Hole - no longer exist. Divers refer to the Andrea Doria as a “loud” wreck, as the continuous decay and pieces of metal moved by the current cause numerous noises. Nevertheless, the wreck is still interesting for divers: the changes create new access to previously inaccessible areas. Due to the luxurious structures and the associated danger when diving at a depth of around 70 meters, the Andrea Doria is also known as "The Mount Everest of diving". In addition, visibility is often poor and the currents are adverse. Since 1956, 16 people have died trying to dive on the wreck. Between 2006 and 2008 alone, five people died on and in the wreck. Some got lost in the confusing interior in corridors and decks, some of which are no longer accessible, while trying to recover objects from rooms. Diving tourism has decreased in recent years.

reception

Udo Lindenberg sang about the ship in 1974 in his song Everything clear on the Andrea Doria . A stamp designed by Victor Malsy and Udo Lindenberg with the motif of Andrea Doria was published on July 1, 2010.

In the fictional plot of the novel In the Storm by Tom Clancy , a Soviet nuclear submarine of the Victor class hides near the wreck of the Andrea Doria in order to use the prevailing sound conditions and current noises for camouflage . However, it is discovered and destroyed by a Royal Navy and US Navy ship, which leads to contamination of the wreck.

In the novel The Death Wreck by Clive Cussler , the wreck of the Andrea Doria serves as the stage for a thriller in which the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) is the focus.

In the tenth episode of the eighth season (title: Andrea Doria ) of the American sitcom Seinfeld , one of the main characters, George Costanza, tries to outdo the story of a survivor of the sinking of Andrea Doria and win the hearts of a selection committee with the painful story of his difficult childhood win.

literature

William Hoffer: Andrea Doria. The sinking of the luxury liner and the dramatic rescue of its passengers. (Original title: Saved! ) Translated by Gunther Martin. Goldmann-Taschenbuch, Munich 1986. ISBN 3-442-06724-3 (license from Molden Verlag, Vienna / Munich / Zurich / New York).
Alvin Moscow, George S. Martin: The sinking of Andrea Doria. (Original title: Collision Course. ) Translated by George S. Martin. A. Müller, Rüschlikon / Stuttgart 1959.
Uwe Greve (Ed.): The sinking of the "Andrea Doria". A ship tragedy in 1956. In: Ships, People, Fates, «SMS». Number 4. Volume 2. Druckhaus Berlin-Mitte Media [DBM], Berlin 1994. (today: Stade, Kiel ).
Andrea Doria - Stockholm. In: Peter Padfield: SOS - Collision at Sea. Munich 1967, (Original title: An Agony Of Collisions , London 1966.)
Robert D. Ballard , Ken Marschall : Lost Liners - From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria - the glory and decline of the great luxury liners . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-12905-9 (English: Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria. The ocean floor reveals its greatest lost ships. Translated by Helmut Gerstberger).