“Are we getting off now?”
“What shall we do? Where are the lifeboats?”
Giannini called for everyone to follow him. But some women and some men, who had waited so long, just couldn’t believe lifeboats actually were anywhere about. “There are plenty of lifeboats … Plenty of lifeboats,” Giannini repeated in English and in Italian. Passengers struggled awkwardly to their feet, and Giannini arranged them in a sort of line, instructing them to hold hands and to help one another as they followed him to the starboard side of the stern where, he assured them, lifeboats truly were waiting. Hearing voices from the deck above, Giannini leaned out through one of the several opened glass doors and shouted for those on the Boat Deck above to come down and join the line which he was going to lead to the lifeboats.
He led the way across the slippery tilted deck to the last doorway on the Promenade Deck, down one flight of stairs, and then across to the starboard side of the fantail on Upper Deck. The third officer ordered a bos’n’s mate to find cargo nets, but the mate balked. The nets, said the bos’n, were locked away in the cargo holds and it was too dangerous to try to fetch them at this point. One net was found, however, the one used to cover the Tourist-Class Swimming Pool. That was put over the side. But middle-aged tourists proved not to be as agile as trained combat troops and many became entangled in the spidery net which dangled away from the side of the listing ship.
On the bridge, some measure of relief was felt. Utter catastrophe had been avoided. The ship, the pride of Italy, which had seemed about to capsize immediately after the collision, was remaining afloat after all, heroically struggling against death, it seemed, as each minute ticked away. The ship, as shown on the inclinometer, was now hovering at 33 degrees. It was impossible to walk without holding to the guide lines strung across the bridge. But the rescue ships—the Cape Ann, the Navy ship Thomas, and especially the Ile de France—had arrived and their boats were at work. From the port bridge wing, Captain Calamai could see the high side of the ship emptying, and from the starboard wing he watched the progress of the little dark figures, each a person, climbing over the side and down to the boats. Screams and cries still pierced the air, but now they were only occasional. He could hear the splashes of those leaping from the ship into the oily, debris-laden water off the starboard side, but these too were less frequent than before. The respite gave him time to think, but to think clearly he had to struggle against a deep sadness which was overwhelming him. Could the ship after all be saved? There was perhaps a glimmer of hope, and he hastily penned a message to the Coast Guard.
At 2:38 A.M., the Doria radioed the Stockholm the captain’s message to be transmitted to the Coast Guard: IN POSITION 40.30N 69.53W COLLISION. WE NEED IMMEDIATELY TUGBOATS FOR ASSISTANCE—MASTER. The Navy ship Thomas broke in to say: WE “ARE” CONNECTION WITH U.S.C.G. STATION IN BOSTON. WILL FORWARD YOUR MESSAGE. At 3:08 A.M. the Thomas relayed the Coast Guard’s reply to the Doria: ADVISE THAT THE CG CUTTER EVERGREEN WILL ARRIVE THIS POSITION WITHIN 4 to 5 HOURS. The Evergreen, like the other Coast Guard cutters already on the way, was equipped with a towing hook on the fantail for emergency towing. The question then became: Could the Doria survive until the arrival of the tugboats?
In the Engine Room of the Andrea Doria, the men faced the irony of having too much water on the starboard side and not enough water on the port side of the ship. The list had brought the ship’s sea intake valves on the high side out of the ocean. When that happened, the circulation pump which cooled the port turbo-dynamo sucked in air instead of cold sea water and consequently overheated and stopped. The engineers, most of them stripped to their trousers and dripping perspiration in the steam-filled Main Engine Room, tried to use fire pumps to feed cool water to the port dynamo, but the pumps were insufficient for the job. As a last resort, they tried to cool both the port and starboard dynamos from the sea water intake on the starboard side, but that too failed. The overheated port dynamo came to a final coughing stop.
At the same time, as the ship’s list increased, the bilge water beneath the Engine Room began to overflow on the starboard side. Before long, and before the engineers became aware of it, water touched the electrical parts of the turbo-dynamo near the starboard wall of the Main Engine Room. A violent short circuit crackled ominously and that dynamo stopped. The engineers got to work on this new problem. The electrical circuit and the starboard dynamo were started again, while pumps were put to work on the rising water. The starboard sea intake was closed because it wasn’t needed and cooling water was pumped from the flooded bilges instead of from the sea. But with the increasing list, the flooding of the starboard side of the Main Engine Room continued. It soon covered the circulation pump of the starboard dynamo and in fear of another short circuit, the starboard dynamo was stopped. All the electrical power of the ship, except for the 250 kilowatts supplied by the emergency generator on A-Deck, was lost. With the steady loss of electrical power, the boilers one by one had to be shut down as it became impossible to pump water to cool them. The main electrical and mechanical plant of the huge ship, as intricately interwoven and interdependent as the organs of the human body, broke down and ceased to function.
The engineering officers conferred and agreed: there was nothing more to be done. The list was 33 degrees, the room was filling with steam, sea water hissed in contact with hot-pipes, the men were exhausted, it was impossible to walk and difficult even to crawl, there was nothing they could do if they remained. So, battening down the hatches behind them, the men abandoned the three rooms of the Engine Department. It was fifteen minutes before three in the morning.
The last of the engineers in the Engine Room, officers and men, climbed the escape ladders to A-Deck and headed aft to the ship’s one remaining electrical plant. The emergency generator, powered by batteries, produced only enough electricity to maintain the ship’s lights and one sealed emergency pump suctioning water from the flooded Generator Room. Chief Engineer Chiappori struggled wearily to the bridge to report personally the final sad news to the captain.
At about the same time, Thure Peterson was besieging the bridge again, pleading for help to free his wife. He asked again and again for a jack, but Captain Calamai, whose knowledge of English was limited, could not comprehend the word “jack.” When the captain finally did realize that Peterson was demanding a “lever,” he promised to do what he could. He ordered a nearby officer to accompany the distressed passenger back to his cabin and to see what could be done.
There were times of deathly lull in the wheelhouse when everyone was away from the nerve center of the ship, carrying out the captain’s orders. Captain Calamai never was at a loss giving orders, but there were only relatively few men qualified to perform the many tasks that demanded attention during the emergency. There was only one ship’s carpenter who could take soundings. Only a few men were trained to use the signal lamps. It became abundantly clear during the night that the Andrea Doria was designed and manned as a luxury liner. It had an overabundance of waiters and stewards, chefs and dishwashers, but it did not have a crew trained for multiple emergency actions.
During the lulls, Captain Calamai often stared out upon the rescue scene, lost in thought. Once, at about 3 A.M., he approached Second Officer Badano, took him by the arm and said softly, “If you are saved, maybe you can reach Genoa and see my family.… Tell them I did everything I could.”
Badano, an ingenuous young man, did not comprehend the meaning of the older man’s words. “Look,” he said, pointing to the nearby Ile de France, “we will be saved. We’ve lost the ship, yes, but I am sure if they can save one they can save two.” Captain Calamai said nothing. “If I can be saved, you too can be saved, isn’t that right?” Badano asked.
The captain nodded sadly and walked away.
Chapter Eleven
“MY SCHEDULE IS IMPERATIVE”
On the Stockholm, Captain Nordenson began to consider how he would get his damaged ship back to New York. The Stockholm’s role in
the rescue operation diminished considerably after 2 A.M. She had taken on board by that hour about 425 survivors, but with the arrival of the other rescue vessels, the lifeboats preferred to bring survivors to the closer ships. The white ghostlike Stockholm sat silent in the water, anchored by her tangled anchor chains, some two miles away from the Andrea Doria and cluster of rescue ships. Captain Nordenson from the wing of his bridge could see the busy activity of the lifeboats plying between the glittering Italian liner and the nearby Ile de France, Cape Ann and Thomas.
Aboard the Stockholm everything was going smoothly. The dining room, converted to a first-aid station, was adequately handling survivors with minor injuries. The ship’s hospital was a scene of feverish activity. It had been expanded to seven adjoining cabins vacated by the ship’s petty officers, and there was no shortage of medical help. Among the Stockholm’s passengers, two surgeons and five registered nurses volunteered their services. An Italian physician among the Doria survivors joined the team of three doctors—the ship’s doctor and two Stockholm passengers—who were operating, setting broken limbs and caring for the injured in the ship’s hospital. The Italian doctor moreover helped with the translating necessary for consulting with most of the patients. The ship’s kitchen was keeping up a steady supply of sandwiches and spaghetti along with soft drinks and hot coffee. All intoxicating beverages had been locked up directly after the collision.
With the damage to the Stockholm brought under control, Captain Nordenson felt his ship was sufficiently seaworthy to make it back to New York at a slow speed. However, he wanted some ship to follow him back as an escort in the event that he might have to disembark his passengers for safety’s sake. At 2:30 A.M. he sent a personal request to the Ile de France: COMMANDER, ILE DE FRANCE—OUR FORESHIP DAMAGED AND NUMBER ONE HOLD FLOODED. OTHERWISE SHIP TIGHT. WILL TRY TO PROCEED TO NEW YORK WITH SLOW SPEED. IF YOU ARE GOING THERE WITH PASSENGERS FROM ANDREA DORIA COULD WE AS A PRECAUTION KEEP COMPANY?—NORDENSON, MASTER MS STOCKHOLM.
The message put Captain de Beaudéan on the spot. The French captain, worried over the high cost of operating the thirty-year-old Ile de France, correctly estimated that this rescue operation, delaying his ship thirty-six hours, would cost the French Line in the neighborhood of $50,000. His answer went back to the Stockholm: MASTER STOCKHOLM—WILL PROCEED NEW YORK FULL SPEED WHEN ALL MEN RESCUED. PLEASE ASK ANOTHER SHIP. MY SCHEDULE IS IMPERATIVE.
At three o’clock, Captain Nordenson did just that. ALL SHIPS—OUR FORESHIP DAMAGED AND NUMBER ONE HOLD FLOODED. OTHERWISE SHIP TIGHT. WILL TRY TO PROCEED TO NEW YORK WITH SLOW SPEED. AS A PRECAUTION WE WANT A SHIP TO KEEP US COMPANY TO NEW YORK. PLEASE INDICATE—MASTER.
No offer came immediately, but shortly afterwards a message came from Captain Calamai, who as master of the ship in distress was commander of the distress area. FROM CAPTAIN TO SS STOCKHOLM—IF YOU ARE IN BAD CONDITION, YOU CAN PROCEED TO NEW YORK AND MANY THANKS FOR ASSISTANCE. OTHER SHIPS STAY HERE AND ONE SHOULD KEEP WATCH FOR ME 500 KC/S. NOW SPARING BATTERIES.
The Stockholm, despite Captain Nordenson’s hopes, was not nearly ready to start back to New York. Her lifeboats were away at the Doria and she was still moored to the collision scene by her tangled anchor chains. Dr. Ake Nessling, the ship’s doctor, informed the captain that the lives of four crewmen and the unidentified little Italian girl depended upon early hospital care, and at 3:50 A.M. the captain radioed the Coast Guard in Boston for helicopters to remove the five critical casualties.
Aboard the Ile de France, the traffic of survivors continued unabated. Exhausted crewmen gave up their places in lifeboats to seamen anxious to replace them. More than 160 crewmen manned the Ile’s eleven lifeboats through the night and more than twice that number worked zealously to supply hot food and drinks and blankets to those coming aboard. Yet, with all the turmoil of this activity, the venerable Ile was so large that most of its own passengers slept undisturbed through the night. Arising for breakfast the next morning, they never saw the Andrea Doria at all.
Hans Hinrichs, a sport fisherman, author and veteran traveler, was one of those who did awaken to the sounds of the lowering of the lifeboats. He left his cabin to investigate and remained on deck to watch the rescue operation from start to finish. In fact, he persuaded his deck steward, Marius, to sneak him into the restricted area of the main gangplank where most survivors were coming aboard. As each lifeboat came alongside, Hinrichs waved a red sports shirt and for hours shouted, “Emie, Emie,” seeking his old friend, Mrs. Walter Lamp of Milwaukee, whom he knew to be aboard the Doria. He had sent her shortly after dinner that night a radiogram from the Ile: SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR! SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT. HAPPY LANDING. He never did find his friend because she landed happily on the Thomas.
As the hours slowly slipped by, the scene on the Andrea Doria gradually changed. The rush to escape from the ship flagged to a general reluctance toward leaving the ship at all. Women hung back, insisting that men go first. Crewmen had to cajole, coerce and physically force reluctant passengers, some men as well as women, to trust their lives to a ladder, a rope or a cargo net. From various lifeboats, sailors climbed up to the decks of the sinking ship to round up survivors.
Peter Thieriot was persuaded finally to leave the ship with the Passantes. The Denver couple told the boy that his mother and father must have left the ship earlier. Peter doubted that his parents would leave without him, but his mind could not fathom the alternative. Only later in a lifeboat on the way to the Ile de France did Peter Thieriot look back at the Andrea Doria and see the true location of the point of collision. He realized then he would never again see his mother or father.
Steward Rovelli waited on an almost deserted deck for an American officer he had met on the deck of the Doria who had promised that he would get a jack from his ship. Peterson found Rovelli looking out to sea and there together they waited, almost without hope, until a voice from a lifeboat below was heard. “Are you the fellow who was looking for a jack?” They never did discover which rescue ship delivered the jack.
A line was thrown up to the deck and slowly Rovelli and Peterson hauled up a 150-pound jack with a six-foot-long handle. Even more arduously they lugged their massive prize along the sloping deck, down a flight of stairs to Cabin 58 where they sat for a while, exhausted. Then they hauled the jack under the wall partition and set it up in the wreckage. They encouraged Mrs. Peterson to “hang on,” while they placed the jack against the wall of the elevator shaft to lift the wreckage from her body. But the handle was too long to operate in the confined space. This was a minor difficulty after what these men had been through. Peterson soon found an ax which had been left in Cabin 58 and chopped a section of a towel-rack bar which served as a short jack handle.
While Peterson held the base of the jack in place, Rovelli started to pump the handle. He began to feel weight upon the jack and then the wreckage began to move. Suddenly, Mrs. Peterson exclaimed, “Oh, I think I’m going …” Rovelli turned to look and saw blood hemorrhaging from her mouth. “Doctor,” he said softly to Peterson after a moment, “I think your wife’s dead.”
Peterson crawled to her side and confirmed that the struggle was over. Kneeling there amid the wreckage, he made his farewell to his wife, and then he and Rovelli covered the small, frail body with cushions and left Cabin 56–58 and the Andrea Doria. It was close to 4:30 A.M.
Dr. Tortori Donati never left his self-appointed post at the first glass door of the Promenade Deck, where he helped passengers over the side to the lifeboats through the morning hours. Dr. Giannini made one trip into the cabin-class quarters when the ship doctors had received word of a woman with a broken leg in need of aid. But the slim, nervous second doctor had been unable to locate the woman. When the Promenade Deck was cleared of passengers, the two doctors followed the ten New England clergymen, who had waited until last, down into a lifeboat. At the Ile de France, Dr. Tortori Donati sent his colleague aboard with the last of the passengers. He told the lifeboat crew to take him bac
k to the Doria, where he suspected he might be needed by the crew still on board.
The abandoning of the Andrea Doria had been swift since the 2 A.M. arrival of the Ile de France. At about 3:30 A.M. there had been fewer than one hundred passengers left on the ship. Shortly after 4 A.M., Captain Magagnini passed the word to the bridge that the decks were clear—all passengers were off the ship. Captain Calamai then issued the order for the crew to abandon ship, asking for volunteers to remain on board until the arrival of the Coast Guard tugboats. It was his first authorization that night for crewmen to leave the ship, excepting the lifeboat crews. Captain Calamai also radioed the Navy transport Thomas to stand by to assist the Doria, if necessary.
With the crew gone, except for some forty volunteers who remained aboard, the Andrea Doria became as still as an empty graveyard at night. The long, graceful ship glistening under the lights which reflected on the wet surface of her decks was still beautiful. Looking down upon the ship from the bridge wing, there was no sign of damage. Yet a sense of limpness pervaded the deserted ship leaning wearily on her side in the dark ocean. The forty aboard dwindled to twenty as some of the men were authorized to join the boat crews of three Doria lifeboats which were standing by.
At the last, twelve men remained on the Andrea Doria. The senior officers, including Staff Captain Magagnini, Chief Officer Oneto, First Officer Kirn, held their final conference on the bridge. The younger men—among them Third Officers Donato and Giannini and the two officer cadets, Mario Marraci and John Conte—sat at a respectful distance from the senior officers. With the younger men were several seamen. Quiet prevailed. The bridge clock showed the time to be almost five in the morning. The list was close to 40 degrees. The final conference was conducted in low, soft voices, hardly breaking the aura of silence on the deserted, dying ship.
Collision Course Page 18
