What happened to the Andrea Doria?

I'm sure you've heard the familiar story at the Titanic but you may not have heard of another ocean liner sinking that occurred over 40 years later today we're going to look at the story of that vessel the Andrea Doria she was 212 metres long with a gross tonnage just under 30,000 tonnes she was designed mainly for luxury accommodating a maximum of one thousand two hundred and forty one passengers across three classes her twin propellers and steam turbines gave her a speed around 23 knots so she was by no means the fastest ship at the time at 11:00 a.m. on the 17th of July 1956 she departed Genoa Italy with 277 passengers on board she went to Kin to board another 48 passengers and continued on to Naples where she took on the majority another 744 before starting her passage across the Mediterranean Sea she made her final stop in Gibraltar boarding another 65 passengers before setting off across the Atlantic on a westbound passage towards New York a few days later on the 25th of July the Swedish American Line ship Stockholm departed New York on a eastbound passage towards gottenberg in Sweden she was smaller than the Andrea Doria 160 metres in length with a gross tonnage of just over 12,000 tonnes originally she was only built to accommodate 395 passengers across two classes I say originally because she was actually extended to increase her capacity to 584 anyway on that voyage she left New York with 534 passengers and 208 crew aboard after leaving the harbour she set off eastbound towards the Nantucket lightship which were used at the time to mark their hazardous shows south of Nantucket Island you can clearly see the shoals here on this modern chart of course at the time these separation schemes did not exist so ships would simply keep south of the shoals instead of within the set corridors we use today that same evening Andrea Doria was approaching from the east inbound towards New York she'd reduced her speed slightly she had been traveling in heavy fog than many hours already following normal practice she was sounding a fog whistle and had all her watertight doors already closed back on the stock home they hadn't reached the fog bank yet so for them it was still a nice clear evening because of the fog the only information the ship's had about each other was from their respective radars of course commercial radars in the 1950s were nothing compared to what we have today there was no electronic acquisition of targets so all the plotting had to be done manually both vessels had detected each other but the actions they took indicate that neither was fully aware of the situation the Andrea Doria each wrapped her port so she was obviously attempting a green to greet in passing stockholm on the other hand each round to starboard intending a red to red passing given the fog each ship didn't see the other until they were right on top of each other at that point Andrea Doria turned hard to port and stock down hard to starboard but it was too late at around 11:00 p.m. Stockholm hit the Andrea Doria forward of mid ships had almost right angles she smashed pretty much halfway through the Andrea Doria damaging herself right the way down to the keel immediately all the damaged tanks on the starboard side flooded and Andrea Doria developed a severe list to starboard as she was near the end of her passage her fuel tanks were almost all empty she had been designed to survive that sort of damage but the fact that the port fuel tanks were empty meant the list was too severe and water could find its way past watertight separations her engineers attempted both to pump water out of the starboard tanks and to pump water into the port tanks unfortunately inflow of water was just too great on the starboard side and the intakes for the port tanks were already high above sea level within 30 minutes the captain decided to abandon ship they got everyone prepared but he didn't want to give that final to abandon ship until more help arrived he wanted to avoid panic now unlike the Titanic Andrea Doria had enough lifeboats for everyone but due to the list half of the boats were unusable the other half couldn't be used normally they would need to be launched empty before evacuating everyone down the side of the ship on Jacobs ladders again unlike the Titanic there were other ships that could immediately help the stockholm herself was able to assist as her damage was relatively limited emptying her forward fresh water tanks bore her close to a normal water line so she was in no immediate danger distress calls were picked up by a number of other vessels a 120 meter freighter the Cape Ann was the first and she proceeded straight to the collision site pretty quickly though more ships joined among others the US Navy transport ship private William H Thomas proceeded preparing their eight lifeboats while enroute the destroyer USS Edward H Allen and the Coast Guard Cutter uscgc Legare also made for the scene 44 miles to the east the French lines SSL de France also picked up the distress she was one of the largest vessels on the route at 225 metres in length with a gross tonnage of almost 45,000 tons she was on an eastbound passage from New York to Lahab at the tunnel she tried to contact the Andrea Doria because she knew that turning around would mean she'd have to return to New York to refuel before she could continue on to France saying that the master knew that if his help was needed his decision obviously wouldn't be questioned he couldn't actually contact the Andrea Doria but other ships were laid the Andrea Doria needed to evacuate 1500 passengers and crew so with that he immediately turned around ordering full-speed and summoning the crew to prepare his lifeboats back at the collision site once our master realized she was in no immediate danger Stockholm sent her lifeboats across who helped Andrea dorias own boats to start ferrying passengers from the Andrea Doria to the relative safety of the damaged stockholm over the next few hours responding ships arrived and they started helping however they could fairing survivors away from the sinking Andrea Doria less than three hours later the Ile de France arrived on the scene a captain positioned her close by in such a way that her sheer size could provide some shelter to the evacuation effort on Andrea Doria Ile de France turned on all her exterior lights providing illumination through the night the sight of the huge liner close alongside gave a great emotional relief to the Android or his remaining passengers and crew 10 lifeboats from the eau de France joined the evacuation ferrying survivors back and forth sure such a boat loads of people from the other ships that have been helping other ships could give immediate safety but by no means could they cope with the numbers in the way that the older France could by 9:00 a.m. the next morning even Android Orias captain was forced to abandon ship the Andrea Doria herself was finally recorded as sinking at 10:09 a.m. on the 26th of July 1956 in total 1660 people were rescued that night but tragically 46 still lost their lives it could so easily have been much worse unfortunately from an educational perspective the companies ended up reaching a financial agreement so the investigation was never concluded nowadays flag state or port state must investigate all accidents and publish their findings so that we can learn from events like this instead of repeating them for this we're left guessing as to the real cause I think it's safe to say that inadequate operation of the radars led to a Mis appreciation of the situation as for the actions to avoid collision I don't know what the colleagues said back then but under modern regulations the actions that both vessels took would be in cotton tradition to rule 19 which dictates what you must do in or near areas of restricted visibility the listing suffered as a result of the collision was because of the air in Andrea Doria sport fuel tanks had they been ballasted she may have remained upright long enough to launch her lifeboats and may even have remained afloat long enough to reach port I only speculate to try and work out why if we understand why things happen in the past hopefully we can prevent them happening again anyway hopefully you've enjoyed learning about today's topic for more videos like this every other Friday be sure to subscribe right here on the channel until next time thank you for watching and good bye you

Channel: Casual Navigation

Views: 558,012

Rating: 4.9225268 out of 5

Keywords: casual navigator, marine, uscg, shipping, casual navigation, maritime explaination, merchant navy, sailing, marine animation, andrea doria, andrea doria sinking, ship sinking, ss stockholm ship, ss stockholm collision, andrea doria stockholm collision, andrea doria story

Id: rTpGjeqKtSw

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/peeeman]

The Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm in a dense fog 12 miles off the coast of Nantucket.

[u/stumblingaxis]

Nothing happened really lol. Never thought such a well handled disaster could be so interesting to watch.

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Thanks