Collision Course

by Moscow, Alvin;

  Captain Nordenson, undergoing a fierce barrage of questions on his opinion of Carstens’ acts and decisions on the night of the collision, blacked out at the end of his third day on the witness stand. While the lawyers engaged in their usual arguments about the propriety of questions, Captain Nordenson sat drumming a pencil eraser on a pad of yellow paper. With Underwood asking the questions, Matteson held his pocket watch in his hand, announcing the time it took the captain to compute the time involved for the two ships traveling at a combined speed of forty knots to converge from ten miles apart. The captain’s mind went blank, as he described it afterwards, and he forgot where he was. The lawyers, so busy arguing, failed to notice the change in the witness’ demeanor. When Captain Nordenson said in a slight voice, “I don’t feel well,” he was hastily excused.

  Captain Nordenson spent two weeks in a hospital and four more weeks recuperating from what doctors diagnosed as possibly a slight cerebral thrombosis, a clot in one of the capillaries of the brain. What none of the attorneys realized at the time was the tremendous fatigue of this sixty-three-year-old sea master who had attended the testimony of Carstens and Captain Calamai who preceded him and then spent long night hours aboard the Stockholm, which was being repaired in the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in Brooklyn, studying to prepare himself for his turn on the witness stand.

  Captain Nordenson resumed his testimony after his recovery, but testified only briefly each day in order to conserve his strength. He gave the appearance of a tired, old man who appeared more like the grandfather of six children, which he was, than a strict sea captain.

  But he was unflinching in his defense of Carstens. He insisted that Carstens had done nothing wrong on the night of the collision. The young officer had every right to wait until he saw with his own eyes the lights of the other ship two miles away before changing course on the Stockholm, said the captain. He added the weight of his experience and his own reputation in saying that Carstens should not be expected to suspect fog as the reason for not seeing another ship’s mastlights before two miles distance.

  As for the route taken by the Stockholm, Captain Nordenson said “I have been thirty-six and a half years in the Swedish-American Line and all that time we have followed that route, except during the ice period, springtime.” There was no law, no agreement to prevent him from taking the Stockholm on that route. The Swedish Line knew of the route. The reason for taking the route, he explained, was that it was the shortest way to get to Nantucket Lightship, from where he always turned the ship northward (on a course of 66°) to head for Sable Island, off Nova Scotia, and then to Cape Race, Newfoundland, and across the Great Circle Track to Scotland and the North Sea to Scandinavia. It was safer, he said, to meet westbound ships head-on than to take the westbound route twenty miles south of Nantucket Lightship and then head north, cutting the westbound traffic of ships at right angles.

  Captain Nordenson swore it was the practice on his ship to reduce speed in fog. He was as tenacious on that point as Carstens. This time, however, Underwood questioned the captain on each of the sixty watches in which fog was noted in the ship’s log.

  Point by point on each watch, Captain Nordenson was forced to admit that the log showed all fog precautions had been taken, such as posting extra lookouts, sounding the fog whistle and maintaining a radar watch, except that the speed of the ship was not slackened. At the end of this line of questions, Underwood asked:

  “Now, Captain, we have been through this log and I would like to ask you again: do you admit or deny that it was your practice to continue at substantially full speed in fog at sea?”

  “Well, it depended on the density of the fog,” answered Captain Nordenson. He insisted through hours of questioning on this point that the Stockholm had “tremendous backing power” to allow her to go at eighteen to nineteen knots at times when fog was noted in the logbook.

  One officer of the Stockholm, however, did admit what was apparent to most observers at the hearing. The Stockholm’s chief officer, Herbert Kallback, was questioned on each of the same sixty watches between June 6 and July 25 in which fog was noted. In conclusion, he was asked:

  “Is it not a fact—I want your testimony—it was not the practice—don’t look at Mr. Haight [which the chief officer was doing at the time]—Answer to your own conscience, when you answer my question, is it not a fact that it was not the practice on the Stockholm to reduce speed in fog?”

  The chief officer, in a soft, resigned voice, answered, “I must say yes.”

  Captain Nordenson testified there was no particular reason why he could not have been on the bridge at the time of the collision. He was in good health, not overly tired, and he had not been drinking, he said. He went to his room simply to work on some papers and he was there “sitting standby” so that he could be called if needed in a matter of seconds. He had not retired for the night, he said. He intended to return to the bridge for the approach to Nantucket Lightship and the subsequent change of course to Sable Island.

  Why did the Stockholm only have one officer on watch when most transatlantic liners used two? the captain was asked. Simply because that was the policy and practice of the Swedish Line. Under questioning, Captain Nordenson admitted that two officers on watch would be better than one, but that one officer could adequately handle a bridge watch by himself.

  Because of his illness, the captain was the final as well as the second witness for the Swedish-American Line. During his recuperation, the three seamen on watch, the radio officer, the engineering officer and three motormen on watch testified as well as the ship’s chief officer and chief engineer.

  Captain Nordenson’s testimony, which consisted largely of a defense of the seamanship of Carstens-Johannsen, might be considered to have passed his final judgment on the young officer when he was asked if he would have confidence in an officer who did not even think of fog as one possible reason for not seeing the lights of an oncoming ship five miles or less away.

  “I know now that you blame Carstens-Johannsen for being too young, and you also called him inexperienced, because compared with my experience of more than forty-five, soon forty-six years at sea, you can call him inexperienced,” declared Captain Nordenson. “But, on the other hand, there is a difference between inexperience and incompetence. And as far as I can see, he has not shown any incompetence in handling the ship.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “DO I HAVE TO ANSWER?”

  While the commanders of these two ships which collided were remarkably alike in their introspection and quiet demeanor, it would be difficult to imagine two men more dissimilar than Ernst Carstens-Johannsen and Piero Calamai. One was youthful, energetic, with the look of an adolescent; the other a man made old by tragedy, whose sallow complexion and sagging posture gave him the appearance of a sick man who had lost weight too rapidly. He had in fact spent nine days in a hospital following his return to New York.

  Unlike the twenty-six-year-old Swedish officer, who wore an immaculate dress blue uniform and starched white shirt in the courtroom, the master of the lost Andrea Doria wore mufti. Unlike the voluble answers given by the loquacious Carstens, Captain Calamai testified in low, almost inaudible, monosyllables. His characteristic pose in the witness chair was to support his head by cupping his chin in the crook of his thumb and forefinger, resting his elbow on the arm of the chair. His manner was that of one who had been through so much that nothing more could hurt him.

  Yet the captain was every bit as good a witness for the Italian Line as Carstens had been for the Swedish Line. Despite the difference in their demeanors, their backgrounds and their experience, each had been the man solely responsible for the navigation of his ship from the time the other ship had been sighted to the moment of collision and disaster. Each was the star witness for his side.

  Swiftly and expertly, Underwood led Captain Calamai in a recitation of the events leading up to the collision: how the Stockholm had been sighted on radar seventeen miles away and slightly to th
e right of the Doria and had maintained a course which would have resulted in a safe starboard-to-starboard passing if the Stockholm, without sounding any signal, had not turned suddenly to her right and into the hull of the Doria.

  Haight, after warming up with some preliminary questions, asked the captain about the use of radar on the Andrea Doria.

  “Captain Calamai, had you yourself had any special training in the use of radar?”

  “No,” came the immediate answer.

  “Had Captain Franchini had any special training in the use of radar?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Had any one of the three officers on the bridge plotted the radar observations of the oncoming Stockholm? No, was the answer, “it was a parallel course and it was not necessary.”

  The captain conceded that the only way to accurately determine the course and speed of another ship by radar was to plot two or more successive observations. The book of instructions for the radar set called for plotting, the captain admitted. But the plotting device, a Marconi Locatograph, was not used ordinarily on the Doria and had not been used that night because it was not thought to have been necessary.

  In cross-examining the master of the Andrea Doria, it appeared that Haight had adopted a sympathetic approach toward the man who had lost his ship. Captain Calamai in return seemed to answer forthrightly as if he were too weary to attempt to parry questions.

  One of the most controversial aspects of the hearing was what had happened to the logbooks of the Andrea Doria. In the exchange of pertinent documents before the hearing, the Italian Line informed the court that all the important logs went down with the ship. The only papers saved were the captain’s accounting log, two secret books of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the complete file of the crew’s sailing papers and a strip of the ship’s course recorder graph, the Italian Line reported. But the Italian Line offices in New York and in Genoa had told the newspapers shortly after the collision that all the logbooks had been saved and had been sent in a diplomatic courier’s pouch from New York to Genoa.

  When asked about this at the hearing, Captain Calamai said, “Reading the newspapers, amongst the many inexact things, I also noticed this. But I made myself the conviction that what the newspapers reported as to the saved logbooks, they intended the seamen’s passports.”

  Navigational logs are of course of primary importance in an attempt to reconstruct a marine disaster, which was the task of this “discovery” proceeding. The important work was the plotting of the courses of the two ships to determine their true position prior to the collision. Thus, one or the other ship could be found primarily at fault for making the disastrous turn.

  Questioned at length, Captain Calamai explained how the logbooks came to be left on the sinking ship. At about 2:30 in the morning, he had given the general order, “Save the books.” He had said those words, he remembered, but to no one in particular. First Officer Oneto and Third Officer Badano were nearby on the bridge and he had assumed one or the other would see to the books, the captain said.

  He himself had gone down to his cabin and had carried the two NATO books and his own logbook up to the bridge where he had given them to Mario Maracci, an officer cadet. Later, there had been a “misunderstanding,” the captain said. He told Third Officer Badano to take the course recorder graph. Badano in haste had ripped off the final twelve-hour section of the graph and given it to Maracci. And, as Badano later testified, the officer asked the cadet, “Do you have the books?” meaning the deck logbooks, and the cadet had replied, “Yes, I have them,” meaning the NATO books.

  The logbooks actually must have fallen to the floor of the chartroom in the midst of a stack of papers at the time of the collision, the captain said. He learned that the logbooks had not been taken off the ship soon after he climbed into lifeboat No. 11, Captain Calamai said. Both Oneto and Badano were in that lifeboat although he did not remember who told him about the logbooks at the time.

  “After you learned that the ship’s books had not been taken from the ship,” Haight asked, “would it have been possible for a man, an officer or a man, to have gone back aboard the ship to get the ship’s books and documents?”

  It was one of the few times Captain Calamai leaned forward in his chair. “Today I can say yes, because the ship went down at ten o’clock [four and one-half hours after he had left the ship],” the captain said intensely. “But at that moment I didn’t know if the ship would have gone down immediately, contemporaneously.” He paused and then softly added, “I was so shocked by the tragedy of which we were an object, that is why I didn’t even think.”

  Did either Badano or Oneto volunteer to go back for the books, or did he order them to? No, said the captain, “I felt badly … we didn’t discuss it any more.”

  What happened to the Engine Room logbooks? They had been completely forgotten when the engineers abandoned the Engine Room. The radio logs? “The wireless operator, when he received from me the order to abandon ship, he thought it was an immediate thing,” Captain Calamai testified. The radioman had left his logbook and file of messages behind.

  The questions went on and on and Captain Calamai conceded that Italian law required the captain of a sinking ship to save all logbooks before abandoning ship. Italian law also required a captain who lost his logs to reconstruct a temporary log for the last watch of his ship, the witness admitted, but that had not been done.

  Haight then presented the captain’s accounting log to him, in which the only entry for July 25 was the temperatures of the ship’s freezers, and asked him whether or not anything else had been noted in that log for that day, such as fog precautions? “I don’t remember,” said the captain. “There is nothing else written here.” The captain explained that he had not finished writing the events of July 25 because of the collision.

  “I see. Just one more question about it, Captain,” the Swedish Line attorney said casually. “When you wrote the log up in your cabin was it in the same physical condition that you now see it? And I direct your attention to various places in the cover and pages which show that the book, as I see it—if I am wrong, correct me—has been taken apart and restapled together.”

  “I object to this question,” thundered the Italian Line attorney, jumping to his feet, “and if Mr. Haight wishes to take the stand, I would love to cross-examine him on this assertion.”

  After argument back and forth between the two lawyers, the hearing master ruled that Captain Calamai should answer the question. But Underwood pressed his objection. Striding to the witness stand and taking the logbook from Captain Calamai’s hands, Underwood said, “I want a moment to cogitate and see whether I will submit to that.” He had the right to press his objection before Judge Walsh. Inspecting the logbook, he walked up and down the front of the room, turning the pages one by one. While the whole courtroom watched, the logbook fell from the lawyer’s hands to the floor. Several pages skidded across the floor.

  Haight protested vehemently. He wanted an answer to his question. What had just happened, he asserted, made no difference because his office had photographs of the logbook as it had appeared before. Was the book in the same condition it had been on the afternoon before the collision? he demanded.

  “No,” replied Calamai impassively. “May I explain?”

  “Yes, anything you wish,” said the lawyer.

  “As I said before, I took the book from the floor of my cabin and gave the logbook to the cadet Maracci, who put it under his jacket. And I heard later in New York that the logbook had become wet and that it was not in the condition as before.”

  “Did you hear how the logbook became wet?” asked Haight.

  “Probably while the officer [cadet] was going in the lifeboat there was water,” answered the captain.

  The question of the logbooks recurred again and again during the cross-examination of Captain Calamai and other officers of the Andrea Doria. If the logbooks and navigation charts had been available, they would have
gone far in reconstructing the positions and course of the Italian ship prior to the collision, and thereby solving the mystery of the hearing: how could the radar on the Andrea Doria show the Stockholm to her right and the radar on the Stockholm show the Doria to be to the left? The answer simply was that either one of the radar sets had been wrong or the men interpreting the radar on one of the ships had been wrong. Such a mistake, whichever navigator made it, must have been an honest error. One must assume that neither Carstens nor Captain Calamai would deliberately steer his ship into the path of another vessel. The problem of the lawyers was to determine which officer, Carstens or Calamai, had been in error.

  As the hearing progressed, the transcript of the testimony accompanied by the lawyers’ briefs was sent to the principal owners of the two ships whose representatives were engaged in secret negotiations in London attempting to settle the countersuits before the case came to actual trial. The Stockholm was owned by the Brostrom Concern, a huge private shipping company of which the Swedish-American Line was a subsidiary. The Doria was owned by the Italian Line of which the Italian Government was the principal stockholder. The negotiations were complicated beyond the issue of responsibility by the large number of insurance firms who were at cross purposes in the attempts to settle the case out of court. Insurance firms with money invested in both lines sought the speediest settlement possible since they would pay no matter which side won and legal fees were mounting up at approximately $2,000 a day. Those insuring only one ship held out for the best terms possible. The basic question in the settlement negotiations was, in short, how much would the Stockholm people pay toward the $30,000,0000 value of the lost Andrea Doria? The answer depended on the results of the testimony at the hearing in New York.