The Andrea Doria, the other Titanic

‘A piece of Italy has been lost, with the terrifying speed of maritime disasters, and now lies buried deep in the ocean.’ Thus, seventy years ago, on 27 July 1956, Dino Buzzati commented in the "Corriere della Sera" on the news that the "Andrea Doria" had sunk after being rammed by the Swedish ship "MN Stockholm". The author of "Il Deserto dei Tartari" possessed a unique genius for finding the right words to comment on tragedies. “A stone has fallen into a glass full of water, and the water has spilled onto the tablecloth. Except that the glass was hundreds of metres high and the stone as big as a mountain; and below, on the tablecloth, lay thousands of human beings who could not defend themselves”, would be the image he used six years later to describe the Vajont tragedy. “Those 31 bodies of the Grande Torino lying on the grass at Superga, in the rain, after the accident”, he had written seven years earlier.

If we wish, however, the high-speed vessel that the Ansaldo shipyards in Genoa Sestri Ponente had built for Italia – Società di Navigazione, launched on 16 June 1951 and sailing from Genoa to New York on its maiden voyage between 14 and 23 January 1953, was, even more than a piece of Italy, a symbol of the country’s recovery following the disaster of the Second World War, in which we had lost almost half of our merchant fleet. This included, in particular, the Rex: a jewel also built at the Ansaldo shipyards, which from 10 August 1933 to 3 June 1935 had held the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing, and which had been sunk on 8 September 1944 by the RAF, after being captured by the Germans. Its ideal successor, the Andrea Doria, was intended to be the flagship of a reconstruction effort that had led to an economic boom, which in that very year, 1956, had seen GDP growth reach 4.5 per cent.

The thing that struck passengers most as they came on board were the works of art adorning the ship. The most important of these was Salvatore Fiume’s monumental mural “Le leggende d’Italia”: 48 metres by 3 in the first-class saloon, depicting a Renaissance city featuring Italian masterpieces. Many said that the ocean liner had been built around that painting, and for that painting. But there was also Felicita Frai’s “L’allegoria d’autunno” for the cabin class ballroom – which was, in fact, the name given to second class. Because on the Andrea Doria, first class remained first class, with its bars even featuring Edina Altara’s painted mirrors. The other two classes, however, were ‘upgraded’, and even third class became ‘tourist class’. All three had a swimming pool at their disposal: the first ship to offer that amenity, just as it was the first to have air conditioning in all its rooms, for the use of both passengers and crew.

There were also mosaics by Lucio Fontana, ceramics by Fausto Melotti, tapestries by Michael Rachlis, and decorations by Federico Morgante and Emanuele Luzzati for the children’s areas. And, created by Giovanni Paganin, the life-size statue of Admiral Andrea Doria, after whom the ship was named. The finest architects of the time had been commissioned to design the interiors, including Gio Ponti, Nino Zoncada, Gustavo Pulitzer-Finali and Giulio Minoletti. Over a million dollars of the time was spent on the décor alone. But it was also a masterpiece of naval engineering, featuring state-of-the-art radar, a streamlined hull, and the novelty of having a single funnel instead of the usual three. Low and wide, it was painted in green, white and red, like the national flag. Propulsion was provided by two separate steam turbine systems connected to twin three-bladed propellers, despite its cruising speed of 23 knots, which reached 26.44 during trials. It was not the fastest ship in the world; that record was held by the SS United States, operated by United States Lines. Nor was it the largest, despite its 213.59 metres in length, 27.40 metres maximum beam at the waterline, 29,950 tonnes gross tonnage and 15,788 tonnes net tonnage, with a crew of 580 and a capacity of 1,241 passengers: 218 in first class, 320 in cabin class and 703 in third class. It was, however, surpassed in this respect by the British RMS Queen Elizabeth, operated by the Cunard Line.

Yet it wanted to be the most beautiful: a fact recognised by Elia Kazan when, in "On the Waterfront", he had her lock eyes with Marlon Brando as she entered New York harbour. It also sought to distinguish itself through aesthetics, luxury and comfort, rather than speed. Her voyages lasted eight days rather than the six offered by the competition, but those who chose her treated that time as a holiday, as well as a journey. It was an era when many passengers were beginning to opt for air travel, but the majority still travelled by ship. Partly out of habit, partly because a fear of flying was still quite widespread – and, for example, in 1950 the Italian national football team had travelled by ship to the World Cup in Brazil, partly as a reaction to the aforementioned Superga tragedy – but also partly because a ship like the Andrea Doria sought to counter the emerging competition by offering a cruise experience as an added bonus.

On its 101st voyage, the Andrea Doria set sail from Genoa at 11 am on 17 July 1956. There were 1,706 people on board, comprising 1,134 passengers and 572 crew members. At the helm was 58-year-old Piero Calamai, a Genoese from a long-established family of seafarers: recipient of the War Cross for Military Valour in the First World War; awarded the Silver Medal for Civil Valour in 1932, after jumping from the Conte Grande into the Atlantic to save the life of a passenger who had fallen overboard; a Silver Medal for Military Valour in 1940, for the further rescue of several sailors, carried out aboard the battleship Caio Duilio, which had been hit during the British air and naval attack on the naval base at Taranto. After a first stopover in Cannes on the afternoon of the 17th and a second in Naples in the late morning of 18 July, the Andrea Doria crossed from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar in the early hours of the 19th, and by the night of 26 July she was off the coast of Massachusetts, near the island of Nantucket. Arrival in New York was scheduled for early morning, so much so that passengers’ valuables had already been returned to them. For this reason, when a safe recovered from the wreck was opened live on television in 1984, only a few bundles of by then waterlogged banknotes were found inside.

By 11 pm, many passengers were in bed, but many others were trying to pass the time until arrival in the most mundane way possible: dancing, listening to music, playing cards, chatting in the bars. At the moment of the crash, according to eyewitness accounts, the orchestra was playing ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, a song composed in 1933 for the operetta ‘Roberta’, which would go on to become a major hit again in 1958 in a cover version by The Platters. Another survivor would later recount a conversation about "Titanic", a film that had been released in 1953. But that morning, the "Stockholm" had set sail from New York: a Swedish transatlantic liner carrying a mixed cargo of goods and passengers, bound for Gothenburg, under the command of Captain Gunnar Nordenson. Precisely because it was a Scandinavian ship, it had a reinforced bow, designed to act as an icebreaker. That evening, however, the third deck officer, Johan-Ernst Carstens-Johannsen, aged 26, was on watch on the bridge. And at precisely 23:11, the Stockholm, with its ice-breaking bow, rammed the Andrea Doria at an angle of almost 90 degrees, tearing open its side along its entire length like a can opener, over a height of three decks and 12 metres.

“It’s turning – it’s heading straight for us!”, Captain Calamai managed to shout, ordering “rudder hard to port!”. But the manoeuvre failed. A lengthy dispute over liability was set to ensue, complicated by the Italian shipping company’s desire to seek a settlement with the other party, whilst the Swedes claimed that it was the Italians who had cut them off, and Carstens insisted that there had been no fog. Fearing bad publicity, Calamai and his staff were forbidden from speaking out; an official Italian inquiry was in turn classified; and even after the American court found the Swedes at fault – a finding later confirmed by subsequent US studies – it was preferred to reach a Solomonic admission of liability, 50-50. In particular, documentaries and investigations carried out over the half-century since the accident concluded that both ships, in order not to be late, had sailed faster than the fog would have dictated, although, on the part of the Stockholm, there had also been a misuse of the radar, and the mandatory audible signals had not even been sounded.

Forty-six passengers on the Andrea Doria were killed in the collision whilst they were asleep, along with five crew members from the Swedish vessel. The breaching of several watertight bulkheads and the rupture of five fuel tanks caused some 500 tonnes of seawater to flood the ship, causing it to list by more than 15 degrees: and here there are many obvious similarities with the fate of the Titanic, which was also a state-of-the-art ship that had sought to combine travel with luxury, and which had also been sliced open along its side, albeit by an iceberg rather than another ship. On both ships, an orchestra was playing at the moment of impact. The Andrea Doria, however, was so well built that it still managed to stay afloat for 11 hours before sinking, compared with the Titanic’s mere 2 hours and 40 minutes. In July, the water was warmer, and in any case the area was closer to the coast and busier with other ships. Rescue procedures had begun to be refined precisely following that tragedy of 1912, and Calamai had been awarded two silver medals for rescues. He therefore immediately ordered the passengers not to rush to escape, but to wait as calmly as possible for the rescue teams he had called. The list had rendered the lifeboats on the port side unusable, but the crew managed to keep the electricity running right until the end.

No fewer than three ships arrived: the steamship Île de France, with eleven lifeboats, which took on board 753 passengers; and the merchant ships Cape Ann and William Thomas, each with two lifeboats, which took on board 158 and 129 people respectively. The Stockholm, which had been torn open for about 90 cm but was not in danger of sinking, also took on board 542 survivors. Two further US Coast Guard vessels rescued 78 people. The total number of survivors was therefore 1,660 – including Calamai, who had wanted to go down with the ship but was dissuaded by his crew’s threat to stay with him – and the death toll stood at 52. Apart from those killed in the collision, the only other casualty was Norma Di Sandro: a four-year-old girl whom a terrified father had thrown onto a lifeboat, where she struck her head. She was brought ashore but died in hospital in Boston a few days later.

Calamai tried to persuade the captain of the coastguard vessel Hornbeam to tow the ship onto a sandbank. To no avail. The ship finally sank at 10.15 am on 26 July, and has been there ever since. It lies at a depth of just 75 metres, compared to the Titanic’s 3,810 metres. But strong currents and plankton make the area dark, some 180 miles from New York harbour and about thirty miles from the island of Nantucket. A sought-after destination for divers in search of treasure and adventure, the wreck of the Andrea Doria has been described as ‘the Mount Everest of diving’. But these expeditions have added another twenty or so names to the list of victims.

There was a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ the Titanic, particularly regarding the use of radio and the management of rescue operations. There was a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ the Andrea Doria. This was particularly true of radar, which, although already widespread before 1956, was still rudimentary, and which sailors used to calculate their position rather than to track the course of other ships. Furthermore, international regulations did not require ships to maintain a minimum safety distance in dense fog. Liner ships often travelled at high speeds even in poor visibility, in order to adhere to strict transatlantic timetables. And both double bottoms and watertight bulkheads were designed to withstand moderate leaks, not deep longitudinal gashes combined with lateral list. All this was revised under the 1960 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which introduced the requirement for specific training for deck officers in ‘radar plotting’: the graphical plotting of other ships’ courses to identify collision vectors. The first mandatory, separate navigation corridors were then established for opposing traffic flows, particularly in areas of extremely high density, such as the approach to New York Harbour and the English Channel. The use of distress radio frequencies was standardised, and cooperation between nearby vessels during emergencies was improved. The integrity of watertight bulkheads was also improved, even in the event of the ship listing severely.

Above all, however, the Andrea Doria marked a definitive turning point in the liner shipping industry, signalling the end of the golden age of grand transatlantic passenger voyages and the definitive rise of air travel. In 1958, just two years after the disaster, the historic turning point occurred: the number of transatlantic passengers choosing to fly officially exceeded that of those travelling by ship. The advent of commercial jets, such as the Boeing 707, dealt the final blow to scheduled maritime transport. Having lost their role as a ‘means of transport’ on scheduled routes, the remaining transatlantic liners and those built subsequently, such as the Michelangelo and the Raffaello, were gradually converted. Thus was born the modern cruise ship industry, where the journey itself is the entertainment, rather than simply travelling from one point to another. Even the Stockholm, after being repaired at a cost of one million dollars, purchased by East Germans and Panamanians, and used as a barracks ship and for political refugees in Norway, eventually became a cruise ship. It was in Italy that she was taken over by Star Lauro Lines and refurbished at the Ansaldo shipyards. Renamed Italia I in 1993–1994, Italia Prima in 1994–1998 and Valtur Prima in 1998–2002, it survived an attack by Somali pirates in 2008 but was finally scrapped in 2025. This followed the bankruptcy of its last owner, the British company Cruise & Maritime Voyages, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.