In mid July 1956, the Andrea Doria set sail from her homeport in Genoa, Italy on what should have been a nine-day crossing between Italy and the United States. The ship was just 100 passengers shy of capacity at 1,134 on board, which doesn’t include the 572-crew members that staffed the Andrea Doria. After a few stops in various ports in Europe, the Andrea Doria left Gibraltar on July 20 and headed out to the open seas to cross the Atlantic Ocean towards its final destination of New York City.
Five days later, on July 25, the MS Stockholm, a smaller passenger liner, departed New York and headed east back towards Gothenburg, Sweden. The MS Stockholm was following its usual course east with clears skies and good visibility.
The Andrea Doria and the MS Stockholm were approaching each other through the heavily used shipping corridor. Each ship was travelling in different conditions. At the time, the Andrea Doria was traveling towards New York in an area that was heavily laden with fog, but the MS Stockholm was steaming through clear visibility. Reports say each ship was aware of the other through radar, but even at that, they could not avoid one of history’s most famous maritime disasters.
At 11:10 p.m. on July 25, 1956, the MS Stockholm struck the side of the Andrea Doria, causing a fatal blow that would leave one ship at the bottom of the ocean and the other severely damaged. Within the 30 minutes the decision was made to abandoned ship. Only those on board will ever know the horror that followed. Because of the extreme impact, the Andrea Doria quickly listed on her side and made most of the lifeboats useless. Through the chaos and shear panic, reports state that passengers scrambled for lifeboats to no avail. Some could only sit and wait for their unknown fate. But one thing we do know is there was at least one soul on board who went to the Great Captain in prayer in the hour of desperation:
Now, this morning, or last night, when I left here, after I had been gone a few minutes, I thought I'd go get something to eat. See, I only do that after one of those meetings. Now, if I'm preaching, I always go eat. I went and got something to eat. And I come back. I went to my room. I set and talked to Billy awhile. We went to bed, prayed.
Just a few moments, Something come in, and a vision, that there's a great crash coming, and for me, real quickly, to be on my knees a praying, right at once, 'cause there's somebody in there that was praying, for me, to pray for them. And this morning in the paper, two big liners crashed together, one of them from Italy and one from Sweden. There it was. And some was killed. See? The Holy Spirit, going ahead, through prayer.
Most reports say “luck” and the quick response of nearby ships were the main contributing factors to the that only 51 people lost their lives of the nearly 2,000 souls aboard the Andrea Doria and MS Stockholm.
One report stated, “In the end, the remarkable rescue of all of the Andrea Doria's passengers not killed as a result of the initial collision owed more to good luck than to the leadership of her captain or the comportment of her crew.”
The Andrea Doria finally capsized and sank the next day at 10:09am, 11 hours after the collision took place. The Stockholm had a more fortunate ending. With its bow suffering the most damage the hull of the ship stayed intact, and made it back to New York under its own power.
Only 46 of the 1,706 passengers and crew perished in the sinking or the aftermath. Almost of all these casualties were in result of the initial impact from the MS Stockholm. Five crewmen aboard the Stockholm also lost their lives in the collision.
One follow up report stated that the event could have been grossly worse, saying,
“But it could so easily have been much worse. If the Andrea Doria had sunk as fast as Captain and his officers at first had feared there would have been a catastrophe on a Titanic scale.”
Instead the events following to save the surviving passengers, is known as the greatest sea rescue in history.
Saints, prayer changes things!