Sunday, September 24, 2006

THE "ANDREA DORIA"










I was watching the documentary today on Discovery Science about the "Andrea Doria", it was absolutely fascinating especially the fact that she was listing just like the Oceanos, and took over 10 hours to sink. The Andrea Doria sank on the July 25th, 1956 after colliding with the MV Stockholm near Nantucket, Massachusetts.

There are of course huge differences between the Oceanos and the Andrea Doria but the story of the rescue and sinking was very similar, except for the fact that in this incidence the Captain was the last man to leave the ship, he co-ordinated the whole rescue, and there were 51 lives lost.

One miracle they mentioned was a radio announcer whose ex-wife and daughter were on the ship were missing, they were passengers on the Andrea Doria and were sleeping when she collided with the MV Stockholm. Although the MV Stockholm did not sink, she had extensive damage to the bow of her ship, but she managed to sail to New York. The found the girl Linda Morgan in the bow of the ship still alive. When the collision happened she was bounced out of her bed into the bow of the Stockholm.
It's worth reading the story on: http://www.andreadoria.org/ The author of this web page Anthony Grillo passed away in 2004, he was 3 years old when he was rescued from the Andrea Doria. You can see that a lot of work has gone into this web page, he has a list of all passengers and crew members.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Andrea_Doria

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