This and That – The Andrea Doria. Terror in the Night.
At 10:09 a.m. on the misty, foggy morning of July 26, 1956, the sleek and beautiful Andrea Doria, the pride of the Italian Steamship Line, sank off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, into the cold, black waters of the North Atlantic. The loss of such an elegant and majestic vessel was a tragedy that reverberated across the world.
The previous evening, just after eleven o’clock, the Swedish American liner Stockholm slammed into the Andrea Doria with a blinding crash of wrenching steel and cascading sparks. Plunging almost 40 feet into the Doria’s starboard side, the Stockholm was dragged along by the Doria’s powerful forward thrust. With another grinding grate of steel and sparks, the Stockholm extricated itself from the Doria’s side, leaving a gaping hole six decks high–the Doria was doomed.
Out of 1,706 passengers and crew aboard the Doria, only 46 people died in the crash. Six of Stockholm’s crew also perished in the accident. To this day, it’s a mystery why two great liners, equipped with radar and the latest navigational instruments of the day, collided in the dead of a fogbound night. The circumstances surrounding the collision continue to intrigue and baffle us.
One of the Doria’s passengers was the lovely, raven-haired beauty Ruth Roman, one of the great 1950s movie stars. She was traveling with her young son and his nanny. On the night of the crash, Mrs. Roman, resplendent in an evening gown of rustling satin and crisp lace, was in the Doria’s elegant Belvedere Lounge. In an interview not long after the sinking, Mrs. Roman stated that she was dancing to the strains of “Arrivederci Roma” played by the ship’s orchestra just before the crash.
When the Stockholm slammed into the Doria, much of the ship’s lighting flickered and failed. Once the emergency lighting flashed back on, Mrs. Roman rushed to cabin 82 to get her son and his nanny to their prescribed lifeboat. In the subdued panic, she and her son were separated–he in one lifeboat, she in another.
As Mrs. Roman watched her son’s lifeboat being rescued by the Stockholm, a wave of relief washed over her. Because a flotilla of other ocean liners came to the Doria’s rescue that night, Mrs. Roman was taken aboard the French Line’s Ile de France. It was a happy reunion on New York’s Pier 97–her son crying for his mother, who took him in her arms, holding him close in the tattered remains of her once-elegant ball gown.
Rest in Peace, Andrea Doria. Rest in Peace.
