I've read this book once a year for the past, oh, twenty years. The story of how the Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm is in my mind waaay more interesting than the story of the Titanic. How was it possible for two mammoth ships to steer directly into each other? When tested by this disaster, some people became heroes and some behaved abominably. I will never forget the stories of the last man left alive aboard the Andrea Doria, the girl who was thrown in her bed from one ship to the other, the crewmembers of the Andrea Doria who dressed as women to get into the lifeboats, the woman who threw her baby into the sea because she panicked, the doctor who worked tirelessly to save his wife, or the Captain of the Andrea Doria finally addressing the ship after hours had passed with a single trembling word. With today's sad new "Chicken of the Sea" cruise shipwreck incident, this book becomes more timely than ever. ( )

Part of the “response to disaster” reading theme. I am old enough to just barely remember – or at least to imagine I just barely remember – television coverage of the collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm due south of Nantucket Island on July 25th, 1956. Saved! is your typical, workmanlike disaster story – description of the ships involved; capsule biographies of the various participants, some of whom have vultures of impending doom circling overhead; an account of the collision, with various anecdotes of bravery or cowardice and good or bad luck; and a postmortem with a follow-up of the survivors. This is well-written enough, despite the fact that you know in advance what’s going to happen. One of the interesting points from the disaster response standpoint was the passenger’s complaints that no crew members told them what was going on. Under the Incident Command System, there’s typically a press relations officer for talking to the media; it occurs to me that in situations like this there should be a officer charged with informing people involved in the disaster. Most incident response assumes you will have victims you will triage and survivors you will evacuate, but not people trapped in the middle of whatever’s going on who just want to know whatever’s going on. This may become more important, as disaster response agencies now often recommend shelter in place rather than evacuation for many situations, and because the people involved will probably have all sorts of access to partial and possibly incorrect information through cell phones.


So far, so good; however, despite a map of putative ship positions, I still can’t figure out exactly what happened. The Stockholm was coming out of New York bound for Sweden; the Andrea Doria was inbound from Italy. Both ships had radar, and each picked up the other well in advance of the collision. As near as I can tell, the contributing factors were:


* Both ships had radar, but only the Stockholm actually plotted positions; the Andrea Doria just took repeated bearings; it was not standard procedure to plot.


* Each ship decided the other was north of it, and assumed the other was going to maintain course and pass on the north. The Andrea Doria started a gradual turn to the south to give the Stockholm a little more room to pass; however; since the Stockholm was actually south of the Andrea Doria, this turn brought it closer to a collision course. Since the turn was gradual, the Stockholm’s bridge didn’t notice it because they weren’t taking bearings and plotting frequently enough.


* The Andrea Doria was sailing through a heavy fog bank until just before the collision; while the Stockholm was in the clear. Each ship assumed the other had similar visibility conditions.


* At the last minute, both ships took exactly the wrong evasive action. This is still the most puzzling part to me. Despite the fact that the Andrea Doria was now out the fog and each ship could see the other’s running lights, each apparently assumed the other was still going to pass on the north. The Andrea Doria made a hard turn to the south to allow the Stockholm more room to pass on the north; the Stockholm also made a hard turn to the south to allow the Andrea Doria more room to pass on the north. At 23:10, the Stockholm’s ice-reinforced bow hit the Andrea Doria just under the foremast and penetrated 30 feet into the hull. Almost all the 49 fatalities were asleep in their bunks and, quite literally, never knew what hit them. One lucky lady went to sleep on the Andrea Doria and woke up, still in her bed, on the forecastle of the Stockholm; another was washed out of the Andrea Doria and picked up floating by a rescue vessel. The most harrowing story is probably Robert Hudson’s; Hudson. Hudson was a merchant seamen who had been injured on the freighter Ocean Victory and was being sent back to the US; he had spent almost the whole trip in the Andrea Doria’s infirmary. However, on the day of the collision he felt a little better and the doctors decided he would get a more comfortable night’s rest in a vacant tourist-class cabin and gave him sleeping drugs to help – and then more or less forgot about him. As a result, Hudson woke up groggily at 05:10 to find all the lights out and his bunk at a rather unusual angle. He was able to reach a corridor with emergency lighting, but was unfamiliar with the ship because he’d spent the whole trip up till now in the infirmary. As a result, he had to grope his way to a deck and then to the stern, where he was picked up by a lifeboat from a rescue vessel just before the Andrea Doria went down. The rescue efforts appear to have been well organized; these were busy sealanes and a number of ships, including the liner Ile de France, were on hand quickly.


The Andrea Doria is still claiming lives; 15 scuba divers have died at the site. It’s deep (50 m), dark, and heavily tangled with fishing nets. The Stockholm was repaired and is still in service under a Portuguese flag. ( )

Readers who listened to the news on radio in the 1970s will remember Edward P. Morgan. Those of us who were listening will hear his voice in our memory's ear when we read pp. 194-6 and 203-4 of William Hoffer's wonderfully gripping "Saved!" This account of the tragedy is worth seeking out now as an example of excellent reportage, and a true tale of harrowing events at sea. The impossible happened when two modern ships collided, and one, the Andrea Doria, sank to a distance of 225 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. ( )