The Andrea Doria Still Claiming Victims

The famous Life magazine cover of the Andrea Doria listing dangerously before sinking.

The Life photos of lifeboats pulling away from the badly listing Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria before the ship finally drops below the gray waters in July 1956, were mesmerizing.  But much as the photographs moved me, I never knew much about the circumstances of the accident, in which the Swedish liner Stockholm broadsided the Doria, considered the finest trans-Atlantic luxury ship and the pride of the Italian post-war fleet, some fifty miles southeast of Nantucket. Blame was never really assessed – go figure. The Stockholm was far north of the traditional eastern ocean highway, it was foggy, and each ship made enough mistakes after seeing each other on radar to guarantee the final outcome.

While the Swedish-American ship, its prow a shattered pile of rubble, made its way back to New York, the Doria, eleven hours after the collision, turned over onto its right and sank in more than two hundred feet of water. Forty-seven people were killed, all in the collision, but more than a thousand people made it to New York safely onboard several ships, including the Stockholm, in a great rescue effort before the Doria went down.

Among those rescued was Mike Stoller, whose name immediately caught this rock critter’s eye while reading Richard Goldstein’s Desperate Hours: The Epic Rescue of the Andrea Doria (Wiley & Son 2001), a knuckle-gripping, journalistic account of the accident and rescue effort.

Stoller and his partner, Jerry Leiber, had gotten an unexpected royalty check of $5,000 when Edith Piaf recorded their “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” for French release, and Stoller, 22, and his new wife, Meryl, were returning from a three-month vacation in France. They were both rescued, drenched but unharmed, from the Doria.  Goldstein relates that Leiber was there to greet them when they finally came ashore with some big news.

“We have a hit record: ‘Hound Dog.’ ”

Big Mama Thornton had recorded the song in 1953.  “You mean the Big Mama record,” asked Stoller. “No. Some kid named Elvis Presley.”

“Hound Dog,” paired with “Don’t be Cruel” on a single 45, would become the most popular two-sided single of all time, and Leiber and Stoller would go on to write a myriad of famous rock ‘n’roll hits, including “Love Potion #9,” “On Broadway” and “Stand by Me.”

I always wondered how Life got all those incredible photos of the Doria disaster. As it turns out, Life publisher Andrew Heiskell and Life photographer Loomis Dean, were both onboard the Ile de France, another cruise ship heading to Europe that became a rescue vehicle. Dean took the dramatic photos that stirred my imagination, while Heiskell turned reporter, interviewing people as they were brought onboard the Ile de France.

But the Doria story didn’t end with its sinking, and the ship, even as a wreck, continues to take lives. I knew nothing about this until this week when I read Deep Descent: Adventure and Death Diving the Andrea Doria (Pocket Books, 2001).

Author Kevin McMurry is a journalist and diver, and he tells the story of how the Doria, which sits deep enough and is unstable enough to make it among the most dangerous of dives, has become a kind of Mt. Everest for underwater divers. At 225 feet, the limits of human endurance are tested every second, and only the most technical of divers are even supposed to be allowed on the wreck. The book was written in 2001, but the story continues; the latest Doria fatality was just four months ago.

Divers continue to die trying to bring up a memento of the Andrea Doria.

In many respects, the book reminded me of Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest’s Most Controversial Year (Henry Holt, 2008), Nick Heil’s account of the disastrous 2006 Everest climbing season, when eleven people died. Like Deep Descent, it is a tale of those who do things most of the rest of us wouldn’t. Some die because of a medical condition exaggerated by being too deep in the water or too high on the mountain. But most perish because they didn’t pay attention to their equipment, took unnecessary chances in a treacherous place or simply thought they couldn’t die.

The most dramatic stories, though, involve divers eager to grab items from the wreck, especially dinnerware, which leads to a curious, often fatal “disease” known to aficionados as “china fever.” It was hard not to compare those who have died trying to bring up booty, despite the warnings and death around them, with Wall Street financiers in the last couple of years, diving again and again for that one final treasure  — until they realize the air is running out and they’re still on the bottom.

(Read the gripping first chapter of Deep Descent.)