Collision Course

by Moscow, Alvin;

  Upon reaching the Promenade Deck, an officer directed them to the port side of the ship, explaining that they must help counterbalance the list. At the moment, it seemed perfectly logical, and the three joined a crowd of passengers milling about on the port side of the Promenade Deck. After a while they climbed one deck up to the open Boat Deck, where again they stood about with the crowd until Hendler appeared, carrying a ship’s life preserver with him. The Purser’s Office had been locked and deserted, he told them, and he saw no sense in waiting there for his $16,000.

  They remained on the port side of the misty, damp deck, speculating with others and complaining about the lack of information. At about midnight there was a brief announcement over the loudspeaker in Italian. But the words were indistinguishable, even to Marguerite Lilley, who had been previously married to an Italian count and spoke the language fluently. Virtually everyone on deck was gathered toward the stern, holding on to a railing or a stanchion or seated on the deck.

  Sylvan Hendler suggested they move forward toward the lifeboats in the center of the ship, where the deck was almost deserted. They made their way forward slowly, grasping the railing along the superstructure wall, and crawling across areas where there was no railing for support. Krendell suggested they try the starboard side, but Hendler thought it best to be prepared to leap overboard from the port side in case the ship rolled over. Anyone on the low side of the ship would be sucked under and lost if the ship went down, he argued. But Krendell, after a glance over the port side, said it would be suicide to try to jump that distance. “I want to know what’s going on on the other side,” he insisted.

  Krendell deposited the overnight case he had been carrying with Hendler and the two women, who had accumulated besides their lifejackets two round life preservers. Leaving them at an agreed-upon spot where they would wait for him, Krendell found a through corridor to the starboard side which seemed like a steep slushy ski slope. He made his way down one-quarter of the corridor when his feet skidded from under him and he slid on his back, feet first, swiftly toward the door at the low end of the corridor. “I’ve got to twist over,” he told himself. “If I hit that wall and break a leg, I’ll never be rescued.” Grasping at the wet, slippery deck, he managed to turn his body about and he struck the wall with his shoulders and back.

  He picked himself up unhurt and went out to the starboard side of the Boat Deck. His heart sank then and it occurred to him for the first time that he might not be saved after all. The starboard side appeared weirdly deserted. The davits were empty, the lifeboats gone. He looked over the side and saw the ocean strewn with debris and oil and surprisingly close to the deck. From a distance beyond the thick padding of fog he heard the foghorn of another ship echoing the continuous throaty blasts of the Doria’s horn. After a few moments Krendell noticed a series of ladders over the side. Down along the deck he saw several groups of crewmen, and he realized that it was from the starboard side that the Andrea Doria was being abandoned.

  He set out to get his friends on the high side of the ship but he reached only the halfway mark of the corridor, pulling himself on a railing along the wet, inclining deck, when he again slipped to the floor. This time he could not lift himself to the waist-high hand railing. He felt rather foolish and doltish, struggling on the slippery floor but try as he might he could not get to his feet. He estimated his chances of sliding back down to the starboard side and beginning over again when Marguerite Lilley appeared of a sudden at the door of the high side, and, seeing his predicament, eased herself down the corridor to his side. While she grasped the hand railing, Krendell pulled himself up like a cripple, clutching at her legs and body for support.

  Back on the port side they convinced Hendler and Christine Grassier that their best hope for getting off the ship was from the other side. But this time they avoided the slippery corridor. They slowly dragged themselves along the handrails around the forward end of the superstructure to the low side of the ship and aft along the deck until they reached the first rope ladder. Four crewmen were there, one of them hanging over the railing and shouting to someone in the water below.

  An overhanging lamp at each boat position from the Lido Deck above cast a diffused light over the Boat Deck and the side of the ship. Below, they saw a stout woman in a life-jacket floating in the water, moaning and crying. Holding her to the side of the ship was a crewman at the bottom of the ladder. He held the woman with one hand and the ladder with the other while keeping one foot on a rung of the ladder and the other on a small four-by-four-foot raft. All the while he kept up a shouting argument in Italian with the man leaning over the railing. The man on deck, apparently a petty officer in charge at the ladder, kept repeating, “You stay there and hold her!” From the bottom of the ladder, the crewman shouted back, “I can’t, I can’t hold her any more.” Suddenly the crewman scampered up the ladder and swung himself over the railing, dripping wet. The petty officer, still berating him, vehemently ordered another man over the side, and a second sailor went down to hold on to the woman, who was too heavy to lift out of the water.

  Krendell remained at the ladder about fifteen or twenty minutes and despite Marguerite Lilley’s attempts in Italian they could learn nothing from the seamen about chances for their rescue. Krendell, an individualist not to be outdone, decided to see the captain.

  He climbed a narrow flight of slippery steel steps to the Lido Deck and another flight to the Sun Deck, taking one step each time the ship wallowed in the waves. When he thrust his head and shoulders above the railing of the bridge wing, Krendell saw two men peering into the fog, one with binoculars. The smaller, younger man, apparently an officer cadet, noticed him and ran to bar his way. “You can’t come up here,” he said.

  “I want to see the captain,” Krendell demanded.

  “You can’t come up. It is not allowed.”

  “Well, I’m coming up,” said Krendell as he swung open the gate to the bridge wing, pushing the smaller man aside. As he headed for the door of the wheelhouse, the officer with the binoculars tried to stop him. They argued at the wheelhouse door and Krendell purposely raised his voice so that if the captain were inside, he would hear him. He could distinguish the shapes of several men moving about rapidly in the wheel-house, giving him the impression of confusion. “I want to see the captain,” Krendell shouted. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  From inside the wheelhouse, a man whom Krendell assumed was Captain Calamai came to the door and said to the officer who was blocking the passenger’s entrance to the wheelhouse, “You tell the gentleman what he wants to know.” So gentle was the tone of voice in contrast to Krendell’s temperament at the moment that he relented and retreated from the wheelhouse.

  “No, we will not sink,” the officer told him in answer to his question. “There is no danger, no danger. The ship must list 40 degrees before she will turn over, and she will not do that. There is no danger.… The list is now only 20 degrees.”

  This statement, Krendell did not believe. The list was closer to 30 degrees, he thought. The officer insisted that ships were on their way to the rescue and he pointed out the sound of a ship’s fog whistle in the distance, but to Krendell it sounded like the foghorn of the ship he had heard before and at the same distance from the Doria. He left the bridge exasperated, not knowing what to believe or what to do.

  Back on the Boat Deck, he lost track of time as he and his friends waited, until suddenly out of the fog there appeared a lifeboat, quite near the ship and only half filled. It seemed that the men in the boat were lost and had come upon the ship by mistake. The men, seeing the Doria, reversed the lifeboat’s direction and began pulling away from the ship. The petty officer at the ladder became positively furious. Earlier, he had called in vain for two crewmen to return to the ship but they had paddled away on individual life rafts. Now he yelled, cursed, and demanded that the lifeboat come back to the ship. As the lifeboat started away from the ship, he threw several metal flare cylinders at the lif
eboat, shouting, “I will accuse you … I promise … I will accuse you.”

  The lifeboat was turned around again and, after a wobbly start, headed directly for the ladder and the woman still floating in the water. At the very last moment, the man at the foot of the ladder kicked the now-unconscious woman away from the ship as the lifeboat banged into the side of the ship. The crewman then jumped into the boat and with the help of others the heavy-set woman was lifted into the boat.

  The petty officer then turned to the four passengers and told them to climb down to the lifeboat. Both women were afraid to climb over the side. Neither would go first. After some discussion, Hendler descended to the lifeboat, followed by Christine Grassier and then Marguerite Lilley. A rope was tied around the waist of each in case of a mishap on the narrow ladder. The crewman who pulled up the rope after Marguerite Lilley then began to knot it around his own waist, announcing, “I go now.”

  “No, you not go,” said the petty officer.

  “Yes, I go; the ship is sinking now,” he cried, clutching the rope.

  A swift shove by the petty officer sent the crewman stumbling some fifteen feet down the sloping deck. The petty officer told Krendell, “You go now. You don’t need the rope. Just hold the ladder and do not look down.”

  “I’ve got this case,” Krendell said, holding up the overnight bag Marguerite Lilley had given him.

  “Never mind the case,” the petty officer said. “You don’t have much time.”

  The men in the lifeboat were shouting that they intended to leave and other passengers, seeing the activity at the ladder, began drifting forward. Krendell set the case on the deck and quickly climbed down the ladder. When he reached the boat without the case, Marguerite Lilley called up to the deck, “Throw down my case. Throw down my jewels.” Krendell had not realized what was in the case. The petty officer called back it was too dangerous to drop the case into the boat; someone might be hurt, and by that time the lifeboat crew released the ladder and pulled away from the ship. A girl about fourteen years old was left hanging one-third of the way down the ladder. While the petty officer renewed his screams, the lifeboat glided away from the ship on a long, meandering route through the fog to the Stockholm. All the cajoling of Marguerite Lilley did not convince the lifeboat crew to return to the ship which they were positive was about to sink.

  Somewhat earlier than 2 A.M., after the lifeboat had seemed to be going aimlessly in circles in search of the distant foghorn, they arrived at the quiet white ship that was the Stockholm. The seaman in charge of the lifeboat called out to a man framed in the side door of the Stockholm: Was it safe to come aboard? Was the ship sinking? What ship was it?

  From the Stockholm, the man at the door shouted the answers and beckoned the lifeboat to draw near and allow the passengers to come aboard.

  Krendell and the others were thankful when they set their feet upon the solid deck of the Stockholm. Crewmen lined the corridor near the door, offering help and directions. The seriously injured were to go to the nearby hospital. Those in need of first-aid would be escorted to the Tourist-Class Dining Room, where tables had been pushed together and covered with blankets to serve as temporary beds. All others were directed to the large Tourist-Class Lounge, which had been converted to a reception room where coffee and sandwiches were served buffet style.

  When the two men and two women reached the lounge, the sight surprised them. They had thought they were among the very first to escape from the Andrea Doria. But before them, they stared at a crowded room. As they looked about in wonderment, they soon realized the room was crowded with crewmen from the ship they had just left. Looking around for other passengers, they saw only a few they could recognize as fellow travelers. Estimating by eye, it seemed there were about two hundred crewmen from the Doria who had arrived at the Stockholm before them. They were attired for the most part in the white jackets and attire of stewards, waiters and kitchen help. The room seemed noisy and filled with Italian crewmen, who had formed a long line leading to the food on the buffet table. Some, Krendell and his friends noted, were coming around for second helpings of food and cigarettes.

  Later, a request for volunteers from the Italian crew to help out in the kitchen was announced. But there were no volunteers and before long, Swedish officers made the rounds of the crewmen in the room and selected men who were ordered to help serve food and wash dishes.

  Still later, Krendell chanced to meet his own dining room waiter of the Doria who accepted the offered tip which Krendell had expected to give him the following morning on the Doria in New York. The waiter, expressing surprise that the four companions had not reached the Stockholm earlier, blandly explained that he had come aboard at about 12:30 A.M.

  Chapter Nine

  “SEND DOWN A LADDER”

  The first survivors from the Andrea Doria reached the Stockholm sometime between 12:30 and 1 A.M., most probably at about 12:45. No one on either ship, of course, held a timepiece to the events which followed the collision. The stark events of the night stood out amid a jumble of impressions, but the exact hour or minute and sometimes the sequence were lost in the chaos and excitement. To some, minutes seemed like hours, and to others the night passed like five minutes. The first survivors to reach the Stockholm came in three lifeboats close upon one another. They were sighted by a lookout on the bridge of the Stockholm, who focused a bright spotlight upon them.

  Chief Officer Kallback rushed to an open side door on Main Deck near the stern, which the lifeboats were approaching. The first boat had just come alongside when the chief officer waved all three boats farther ahead toward the lower door midships on A-Deck. The A-Deck door on the port side of the ship, not far from the Purser’s Office, was only six feet above the sea. The anxious Swedish welcoming party standing at the door was considerably surprised to see that the large white lifeboats of 146-person capacity were each less than half filled. The boats came swiftly alongside the open door of the Stockholm and there followed a ferocious scramble in each boat as the survivors rushed to board the Swedish ship. It seemed to the Swedish crewmen that the last ones who remained in the lifeboat would constitute the crew who returned the lifeboat to the Doria. As the survivors came aboard, the initial surprise of the Swedish crew changed to chagrin tinged with dismay because, with few exceptions, the survivors were all men, the vast majority of them wearing the gray kapok lifejackets of crew personnel and the white starched jackets of the steward department.

  With a grasp of the arm and a heave, they were pulled aboard one swiftly after another. The men of the Stockholm felt inwardly hurt at this turn of events. The abandoning of the Doria by her crew before the passengers cast a reflection not only upon the Andrea Doria but upon seamen everywhere who for generations had lived and died upholding the tradition of the sea that says “women and children first.” The only mitigating explanation offered was that these men who forsook their ship in mistaken fear were for the most part not sailors in the maritime sense of the word, but rather waiters, dishwashers and kitchen workers ashore who happened to ship out to sea to eke out a living.

  The launching of the Stockholm lifeboats began a few minutes after 1 A.M. Second Officer Enestrom took the first one, lifeboat No. 7, down and away from the Stockholm with one engineer and three crewmen aboard. He headed the motorboat toward the lights of the Andrea Doria and within a few minutes passed two more Italian lifeboats approaching the Stockholm. Junior Second Officer Abenius followed in the second motorboat, lifeboat No. 8. When the two officers had received their orders, Carstens, who had not left the bridge since the collision, approached Captain Nordenson sheepishly, unsure of his commanding officer’s feelings toward him. He had explained the radar bearings and his sighting of the other ship before collision and Captain Nordenson, his stern eagle face expressionless, had listened carefully and then had said nothing. He told Carstens merely to write down his observations before he forgot them.

  The young officer, rattled but anxious to take a lifeboat ou
t to the Doria, rushed into the chartroom, took up a pencil, and on a small scratch pad scribbled what is probably the briefest description of a major ship collision in history.

  At 2300 [11 P.M.] discovered the echo in radar. On 1.8′–1.9′ [miles] distance saw two top lights and weak red light. Turn then starboard to clearly show [Stockholm] red light. The lookout called down and reported light[s] on port. Ordered “starboard” “Midships” “Steady so.” The turn about 20°. Went back to the bridge wing and saw then green light [of Doria]. Ordered then hard starboard and ordered stop and full astern. At the moment of collision the “Andria Dora” blew. The signal was not identifiable because of the collision.

  At 2309 the moment of collision.

  The visibility was at the time good on starboard but fog patch developed rapidly wherefore the “Andria Dora” could not be seen until distance 1.8–1.9 [miles].

  After composing his account of the collision, with its misspellings and omissions, Carstens approached his commanding officer again. “Captain,” he said, “I would like to take out Boat No. 1.”

  Boat No. 1 was the last of the Stockholm’s three motor lifeboats. Captain Nordenson hesitated for a moment, scanning young Carsten’s face, and then said, “Yes, all right.”

  Carstens turned in an instant and dashed from the bridge, determined to reach the motor lifeboat before it was dispatched from the ship.

  Meanwhile, as the Cape Ann, the Thomas and the Ile de France drew nearer to the Andrea Doria, the radio signal of the Italian liner grew weaker and weaker. Radioman Failla on the Cape Ann, who had received messages from the Doria earlier without any trouble, feared the ship might be going down at that moment. But the trouble actually was a grounded antenna on the Andrea Doria. At 12:15 A.M., with the loss of power from the Generator Room, the Doria radiomen had switched to their auxiliary transmitter and emergency battery power. But the signal from these sources was so weak that it was distinct only to the nearby Stockholm.