After The Andrea Doria
Life & Leisure
The Albany Times-Union
Saturday, July 8, 2001
After the Andrea Doria
The terrifying accident at sea over 45 years ago still haunts survivors Angelo and Mike Moscatiello
By Maureen Holohan
All Mike Moscatiello has to do is close his eyes and see himself dangling from a rope, looking up at the massive ship that almost killed him. All he has to do is drive a half-mile from his home in North Greenbush and see the body of water that broke his heart.
Even on the hottest of days, Mike won’t go swimming. He panics in the dark and can’t stand heights.
“Even my wife has a hard time understanding it,” he says. “But it all started with the Andrea Doria.”
Forty-five years ago this month—July 25, 1956—the Swedish liner Stockholm, blinded by fog in the Nantucket Shoals, rammed into the elegant Andrea Doria, tearing a 40-foot gash into the Italian liner’s starboard side.
The impact killed 46 people aboard the Andrea Doria. Five people died on the Stockholm. The next day, the “queen of the Italian fleet” sank to a grave 225 feet below the ocean’s surface.
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Mike is one of the 1,660 passengers and crew members aboard the Andrea Doria who survived. On Saturday, July 28, he will be on Long Island for a reunion to mark the anniversary of the greatest sea rescue in history.
Approximately 10 p.m., July 25, 1956
Passengers—many Italian immigrants—dance, play cards and celebrate the end of their nine-day cruise from Genoa. Tomorrow they dock in New York Harbor.
Angela Moscatiello travels with Mike and his brother, Luigi, the youngest two of her five children, on their way to live with cousins in South Troy. The older children are still in Italy and will follow later.
Angela presses the best clothes the family has for their arrival in New York City and stays in the cabin with 16-year-old Mike, who is seasick. Luigi, 21, is somewhere up on deck.
The Nantucket lightship, approximately 225 miles directly east of New York City, continues to broadcast a warning of dangerous fog. Andrea Doria Capt. Piero Calamai expected this. Hours go, he slowed his shop slightly, from 23 to 21.8 knots. His crew picks up the signal, but does not decrease the ship’s speed further. Instead the Doria blows her foghorn regularly.
The Stockholm has sailed about 200 miles from New York Harbor. Third mate Johan-Ernst Carstens, on watch, plots points showing his ship to be 2.5 miles north of its intended course.
10:40 p.m.
Severe fog envelops the Andrea Doria as the ship reaches a point 10 miles west of the Nantucket lightship. The Andrea Doria and the Stockholm pick up each other radar systems and record that they are on the same latitude. Stockholm drifts right 2 degrees for a safe starboard-to-starboard crossing, which should place the front right side of the ships parallel to one another. The Andrea Doria anticipates a one-mine customary starboard-to-starboard pass.
11:06 p.m.
A radar miscalculation by the Stockholm crew puts the Doria at 12 miles away, but in reality the distance is four miles. Calamai spots the Stockholm heading directly at the Andrea Doria. Within minutes, he sounds the emergency horn for a left turn. Carstens orders the Stockholm’s course to change 118 degrees. Doria slides forward for a half mile before the emergency turn takes effect. Carstens reverses the Stockholm’s engines to reduce the force of impact. Andrea Doria’s whistle shrieks one final protest. The fatal course is set.
Angela and Mike are asleep. Luigi is still on the upper deck.
11:11 p.m.
The
Stockholm
’s icebreaker bow cuts a 40-foot gash into the Andrea Doria’s starboard side, sending up a shower of sparks and smoke. Angela is throw from her bed. Mike falls from his bunk, gets up and races down the hallway with his mother. Flooding causes the ship to list 18 degrees. Luigi meets Angela and Mike and they run to the upper deck.
“I though we were going to die,” Angela says.
“There was nowhere to go,” Mike adds.
The Stockholm reverses engines and again bumps the Italian liner violently. Andrea Doria’s passengers panic, cry, huddle and pray. The fog is so thick most can’t see the Stockholm.
Calamai knows ships can capsize with a 15-degree list. The Andrea Doria is listing 20-degrees and growing worse. The Stockholm retreats with its bow torn off.
Calamai sends a distress call. Within seconds, a dozen ships respond. Most passengers still have no idea what has happened.
Approximately midnight, July 26, 1956
Half of the Andrea Doria’s gravity lifeboats cannot be launched because of the severe list. Calamai makes no announcements, to avoid panic. Through distress calls, he begs the Stockholm to send lifeboats as he waits for other ships to arrive. The Stockholm, however, will not risk its lifeboats until the crew can determine how badly the ship is damaged (it was minimal) and can ensure the safety of the 747 people on board. Rescue ships know that if the Andrea Doria rolls over, it will create a whirlpool to the bottom of the ocean.
On deck, Luigi talks two boys out of jumping overboard. Mike, who hasn’t eaten in six days, is so seasick and scared he can hardly stand. After a series of desperate SOS pleas from the Andrea Doria, the Stockholm sends its lifeboats.
Passengers line up. Women and children go first.
Approximately 2:30 a.m.
The Mosciatellos witness an 80-year-old woman fall into the water while lowering herself into a lifeboat. They never learn what happens to her. A 2-year-old slips from the grip of her seven-months pregnant mother and plunges into the ocean. The mother jumps into the water to save her daughter. Both survive.
The Cape Ann arrives and dispatches its lifeboats. It’s the Mosciatello’s turn in line. The boat has room for only two more. Angela forces her sons to go.
Later, while climbing up the ropes to board the Cape Ann, Mike dangles above the sea.
“I was so weak and so sick that I didn’t care if I fell into the water,” Mike says. “I told my brother to let me die.”
He loses his grip and plunges into the ocean. A crew member jumps in after him. Mike wakes up on deck and sees his brother crying for the first time in his life.
Approximately 3:30 a.m.
The Ile de France picks up Angela and 753 Andrea Doria survivors. The boys do not know their mother is safe.
5:30 a.m.
Capt. Calamai is the last to leave the Andrea Doria, whose list is now 40 degrees. The ships light up the sea and blow foghorns.
“She was going down very slow,” Mike says, “It was like a city of lights. The lifeboats were going back and forth. The horns were blowing. It was like they were saying, ‘Don’t be scared. We are here to help you.’”
Luigi asks everyone on ship if they’ve seen his mother.
10:09 a.m.
After wallowing in the Atlantic, the Andrea Doria finally slips beneath the surface. Passengers and crew cry as they watch. Rescue ships depart for New York City.
7:30 p.m.
The Mosciatellos are reunited at Pier 84 in New York City.
At 16 years old, Mike arrives in South Troy speaking no English and wearing his ripped pajamas under an oversized pair of slacks a man gave him.
Sickly, skinny and homesick, Mike cries every day for a month. He and Luigi, who lost their father in World War II when Mike was 1, pick up jobs as dishwashers and stock boys. Then fate strikes a second blow.
Less than one year after their arrival, Mike and a few friends take Luigi to Snyder’s Lake for his birthday on a hot summer day. Luigi doesn’t want to go. They talk him into wading out waist-deep.
A sinkhole opens and sucks Mike to the bottom.
“The minute I walked in, I fell 25 feet down,” Mike says.
Luigi and his pals think Mike is fooling around. When he doesn’t surface, Luigi, who doesn’t know how to swim, jumps in anyway. Luigi manages to get underneath his brother and push him to the surface. Mike wakes on the beach and raced toward the water, but it is too late. Luigi dies on his 22nd birthday.
“Around this time of year, when I feel the heat, I feel my brother,” Mike says, fighting the tears. “That was the worst time of my life. I lost my brother and my best friend.”
Six years ago, without realizing it, Mike and his wife, Maria, built a house a half-mile from Snyder’s Lake. “All the trouble I have in my life is right before my eyes,” says Angela, now 92, who still lives in
South Troy
. “I’ll never forget any of it from the day my husband died. It’s right in my body, always here with me.”
Mike, now 61, watches out for his four children and nine grandchildren much like his father, mother and brother did for him.
When his son, Mike Jr., wanted to open an Italian restaurant, Mike gave him 33 years’ worth of pension savings from Norton Co., in Watervliet. Even in his retirement, Mike works at Mosciatello’s restaurant in Troy almost every day.
When his wife, Maria, is willing to cut some time out of her 10-hour workdays at her seamstress shop in Troy, the Mosciatello’s take a vacation of her choice. But now Mike has more say after what happened three years ago.
Mike didn’t want to go, but his sister-in-law had already paid for the cruise and it was time to put his fears to rest. But when the lights went off in the ship’s casino, he froze. His buddy looked at him and asked if he was all right. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The lights went back on and then shut off again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a little problem. It’s nothing to worry about.” Mike stood for three hours in the smoke and racket as the crew fixed the generator. He overheard an Italian couple talking next to him: in the 46 years we’ve been going on cruises, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Mike shakes his head, knowing he has seen far too much.
SIDEBAR: ‘Andrea Doria’s final voyage a deadly one
“Her name is Andrea Doria, and she is as beautiful a new piece of marine construction as I ever saw…A ship is a wonderfully solid think, making sense in a shaky world.”
—from a column by Robert C. Ruark, after seeing the Andrea Doria in
New York
Harbor
in April 1953
THE ANDREA DORIA
Built: 1953
Size: 697 Feet feet long; 29,083 tons
Namesake: Famed Italian Admiral Andrea Doria
Nicknames: “Grand Dame of the Sea” “Italian Floating Gallery”
Features: Fastest, largest most luxurious ship in Italian fleet. Built with state-of-the-art radar system and all the newest safety equipment.
Passengers and crew on board the night of July 25, 1956: 1,706
THE STOCKHOLM
Built: 1948
Size: 524 feet long; 12,396 tons
Features: Practical and serviceable passenger ship with a prized steel reinforced ice-breaker bow
Passengers and crew on board: 747
THE COLLISION
Date: July 25, 1956
Time: 11:10 p.m. EDT
Location: 45 miles east of Nantucket Island
Weather: Heavy fog
Impact: The Stockholm’s bow sliced a 40-foot gash into the starboard side of the Andrea Doria
Andrea Doria fatalities: 46
Stockholm fatalities: 5
Miracle survivors: A girl sleeping on the Andrea Doria at impact woke up in her pajamas on the deck of the Stockholm
THE RESCUE
Lifeboats: Half of the ship’s gravity life boats were out of commission due to the 20-degree list.
Public address: Few announcements were made on the ship’s fatal condition or critical lifeboat situation.
Rescue ships: Ile de France; Stockholm; Cape Ann; Wm. H. Thomas; Robert E. Hopkins; Edward H. Allen
Number of passengers and crew rescued: 1,660. About 200 are still alive today.
Time the Andrea Doria sank: 10:09 a.m. EDT, July 26, 1956
Damage to Stockholm’s bow: $1 million
Insurance for Andrea Doria: $16 million
Total individual lawsuits: $5.7 million
Verdict: Fog, miscalculation, misjudgment, bad luck
Last words of Andrea Doria’s Captain Piero Calamai: “When I was a boy, and all my life, I loved the sea.” He never sailed again after the sinking.
Sources: “Saved! The Story of Andrea Doria” by William Hoffer and http://www.andreadoria.org
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