SS Andrea Doria The sinking of the July 26, 1956

At 10:09 a.m. on Thursday, July 26, 1956, the waters

roiled 50 miles south of

Nantucket, as the Andrea Doria, a ship once thought unsinkable, took its last, labored breath before sinking to the bottom of the North Atlantic. At 10:15 a.m., Carlo Fava, the New England representative of the Italian line, arrived to survey the scene by plane. Little more than 23 hours after the Doria collided with the Stockholm, only debris from the wreckage and an oil slick could be seen from the skies.

One thousand seven hundred and six people were aboard the Doria when, at 11:10 p.m. on July 25, its starboard side was pierced by the Stockholm. Of the 1,668 passengers and 785 crew aboard the two ships combined, only 52 people died as a result of the wreck: 46 on the Doria and six on the Stockholm, including five crew and one person rescued from the Doria. The brevity of the casualty list qualifies the wreck is one of the most successful sea rescues in history. Unlike other prominent wrecks, the Doria was, on the whole, a maritime the Doria for later evacuation.

50 Fifty years ago today, the world awoke to the earliest reports that a collision had occurred between the SS Andrea Doria and the SS Stockholm in the waters 50 miles south of Nantucket. Islanders joined listeners from across the globe as the Doria passed through the final stages of her celebrated, if brief, lifespan. Information came in quick hits and it took years before a clearer picture of what happened on July 25 emerged. Beginning on July 5, 2006, The Independent has offered a closer examination of the story of the Andrea Doria. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the wreck, The Independent has compiled its three-past series for today's publication. Although Santana ended up on the Stockholm and Mleczko on the Ile de France, it was a film star that united the two: Mleczko sat beside Ruth Roman in her lifeboat, while Roman's son Richard was looked after by Santana's mother until the mother and son could be reunited later in New York.

The evacuation continued into the morning, aided by the fog lifting during the abandon ship. Evacuees arrived on the Cape Ann, the Ile de France, the Stockholm and others as the Doria continued its descent to the ocean floor more than 200 feet below. By 4:25 a.m., the Stockholm had taken on 425 survivors. By 4:30 a.m., the 10 lifeboats from the Ile de France had made four trips to the Doria, collecting 753 survivors. By 5:10 a.m., the Cape Ann left the scene bound for New York with 175 survivors.

Renowned and resplendent, the Andrea Doria was the symbol not only of the new Italia line, but in many respects a symbol of the new Italy emerging from the tatters of World War II. The Doria was smaller than vessels ordered built by Mussolini before the war, but she was the largest of the post-war Italian ships at 697 feet and 29,100 gross tons. She could travel at 23 knots while crossing the Atlantic. Top: The vessel lists to her starboard side following her collision with the Stockholm at 11:10 p.m. on July 25, 1956. Middle: The Andrea Doria as she rests at the bottom of the Atlantic. The vessel is decaying at a rapid rate, prompting many researchers and souvenir-hunters to continue in their efforts to recover as much of the Doria's treasures as possible before the ship deteriorates completely. Bottom: The collision occured 50 miles south of Nantucket and due east of New Jersey. Salustri remembers the arrival in New York as chaotic. When he and other survivors rescued by the Stockholm reached Manhattan, they were escorted off the boat by policemen. Now 74 years old, Salustri still recalls the walk off the boat and searching for his family in the crowd that had gathered to meet the Doria survivors.

Top: Critically injured surviviors of the Andrea Doria shipwreck being transferred to a Coast Guard plane for transport to Boston, after being treated at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital. Nantucket police chief Wendell Howes is on the right; Right: Injured passengers are removed for additional medical attention. "I had walked almost to the end of the line when I heard someone screaming," said Salustri. "It was so loud that I didn't recognize the voice of my own mother and my own sister. When they finally came up in front of me, that's when I recognized them. I was all shook up by the experience."

No longer shaken by the travails at sea, Salustri and other survivors maintain a connection with the sunken ship. Salustri still has a book of matches from the Stockholm; Santana has her cabin key from the Doria. As lasting as those tangible keepsakes may be, memories of the event persist in the hearts and minds of those who survived the wreck.

"I always think about [the Doria], but it doesn't affect me like it did in the beginning," said Salustri. "It's hard to believe that it's been 50 years. The time has gone by so fast."

MEANWHILE, ON NANTUCKET As survivors passed through the waters south of the island on their way to New York to rejoin loved ones and fellow passengers, Nantucket remained a keenly interested observer and, later, an active participant in the activities 50 miles away.

Bob Mooney remembered July 25, 1956 as a hot and muggy summer day. After having graduated from Holy Cross in 1952, he was driving a tour bus to help finance his law degree at Harvard. Although its rendezvous with history and international attention would come later in the evening, Mooney said the island was its usual quiet self in the hours before the Doria sank.

"Nantucket was just a sleepy summer resort," said Mooney. "There was no Boat Basin. There was no traffic on the streets. There were only a couple of boats a day. It wasn't a crowded place at all."

A muggy day turned into a foggy night on island just as it did in the open waters to the south. Eileen McGrath recalled driving home from the 'Sconset Casino on the evening of the 25th with her mother. The fog had enveloped the island and forced McGrath and her mother to steer their car along the center stripes of the road. When they returned to their house, they heard of the Doria on the radio that evening as news spread of the collision.

Don Harris learned of the collision on the morning of the 26th when he was in Roger's, now the Hub. He overheard two customers discussing the "liners" that had struck one another and rushed home to tell his parents that two airplanes had been involved in a wreck.

Top: John Moyer recovers one of the six Guido Gambone ceramic panels from the first class Winter Garden Lounge in 1993. Moyer recovered a second panel during the same expedition. The panels depict abstract scenes from Etruscan mythology and have been placed on display at diving conferences and Andrea Doria exhibitions. Middle: Artifacts recovered from the Doria wreck site. Divers have been stricken by the so-called "china fever," an overzealous desire to recover some of the thousands of china pieces within the wreck. Bottom: Researcher David Bright shows off two pieces of china after a dive. Radio reports, like the one McGrath and her mother heard on the evening of the 25th, were the first news outlets to relay the story of the Doria, but by the evening of the 26th, television and newspapers were carrying the event. People on island and elsewhere followed the sinking of the Doria in ways comparable to contemporary consumption of news. Live reports flowed from the site, photographers flew in planes above the wreckage, reporters boarded boats to carry them southward. The Doria was, in Slavitz's estimation, the first media event of its kind. That also accounts for part of the reason for the continued interest in the subject.

"The technology had caught up so that you could experience it," said Slavitz. "It was being reported hours after it happened. This had to have seemed amazing. There are reports coming in as she's sinking to the bottom midday. The evening papers have photographs. News stations have moving pictures on television. You could experience it and in that experience, that gives rise to lasting memory. It makes it more immediate."

That immediacy was compounded by Nantucket's proximity to the crash site. As rescue missions were being launched and as the injured were removed from the wreck, Nantucket played a critical role in averting a greater disaster.

"The town was sort of thrust into the international spotlight," said Mooney. "Nantucket was in the middle of it all and the island was very happy to do its part as far as the rescue went."

The Town Crier, which published an extensive account of the collision on Friday, July 27, 1956, described the transformation of Nantucket into a "base for operations" for the press. The definite location of the two ships could not be determined until the fog lifted, but the weather conditions did not prevent more than 80 journalists and photographers from assembling on Nantucket to wait until the skies cleared. The first plane of photographers arrived on Nantucket at 4:15 a.m.

A gathering point for the press, Nantucket also offered refuge, however temporary, to victims of the collision. At 8:50 a.m., five injured persons from the wreck were flown to the island by helicopter. The victims were met on the runway by nurses and doctors and taken to Nantucket Cottage Hospital, then on West Chester Street.

Among the injured brought to Nantucket was Norma DiSandro, the youngest victim of the collision. In an attempt to save his daughter's life, DiSandro's father had dropped the fouryear old from the Doria into a lifeboat below. DiSandro suffered head trauma as a result of the fall and died on the evening of the 27th at Boston's Brighton Marine Hospital, where she had been met by her parents earlier that afternoon.

The four other victims to arrive with DiSandro were crew from the Stockholm. Alf Johansson, 30, died shortly after his arrival at the Cottage Hospital. Lars Falk, Arne Smedberg and Vilhelm Gustavsson were brought to the island as well, but all three survived their injuries. The five were described as being in critical condition, all having suffered shock and bone fractures. Two hours after their arrival on Nantucket, the injured crew were flown to Brighton Marine Hospital for further treatment.

Eleven hours elapsed between the initial collision and the disappearance of the Doria under the ocean's surface. The injured from the Doria and the Stockholm spent only two hours on Nantucket before being sent on to Boston for medical attention. In years hence, Nantucket has continued in its role as a life-saving station for Doria victims, no longer ocean liner passengers but now divers and explorers of the wreck site.

Top: Bud and Wink Gifford, now deceased, show press clippings from the Doria wreck. The wreck has been called the first "media event" of its kind; Middle: One of the many holes in the ship that divers use to access the vessel. The most famous is Gimbel's Hole, cut by Peter Gimbel in 1981. Gimbel and Joseph Fox were the first divers to photograph the Doria for Life Magazine in 1956; Bottom: Fishing nets drape much of the vessel. They were left behind by fishing boats in the 1980s. Like the cables that hang within the Doria, the fishing nets are a hazard to divers. Within a day of the Doria's sinking, divers were

already speeding the site

of the wreck. Peter Gimbel and Joseph Fox were the first to reach the Doria and brought back blackand white photographs for Life Magazine.

In the 50 years Gimbel and Fox's expedition, it has been estimated that more than 700 divers have visited the Doria. Technically out of bounds, as far as conventional diving wisdom is concerned, the wreck lies deeper than the diving maxim of not descending more than 130 feet. At its deepest, the Doria rests at twice that figure. Its physical location and the seas that surround it conspire to make the Doria a challenging and finicky dive. Conditions change quickly, turning routine dives into treacherous ones in minutes.

In the first part of this series, it was stated that the Doria had claimed 13 lives. On July 8, 2006, that count rose to 14 when Bright died upon surfacing from the wreck. Obituaries and stories ran in major and minor news sources throughout the country, his death the most recent reminder of the dangers of the deep and the dangers specifically of the Doria wreck site.

Despite perils obvious and latent, exploration of the sunken ocean liner continues. This past weekend divers Joel Silverstein and Kevin McMurray organized a five-day expedition at the wreck. Eight divers from the United States, Brazil and Canada were selected from 200 applicants for the 50th anniversary charter. John Moyer, who holds the admiralty arrest for the Doria, plans to make his own trek to the site by the end of July.

Top: A buoy used to mark the wreck site on the Gifford family property. The Giffords are survivors from the Andrea Doria. The buoy broke free of the wreck in 1956 and eventually washed up on the south shore of Nantucket; Bottom: Moyer recovered the ankles and pedestal of the statue of Andrea Doria in the mid-1990s. Dan Turner had recovered the statue from the ankles up in 1964. FOURTEEN AND COUNTING In the half century since the Doria collided with the Stockholm, the total number of dead has increased by more than 25 percent over the 52 killed initially. John Barnett was the first diver to die on the wreck on July 1, 1981. Frank Kennedy followed three years later on July 15, 1984. Two more fatalities occurred in the remaining years of the 1980s, before giving way to a rash of deaths in the early and mid 1990s.

Two divers perished in 1992 and a third in 1993 as the decade began. A five-year lull in deaths preceded what McMurray, in his book "Deep Descent," called "the dying season, summer 1998." On June 24, Craig Sicola died on his third dive of the wreck. Fellow divers aboard the Seeker remembered Sicola stricken by china fever, which prompted him to attempt a penetration of the wreck beyond his capabilities as a diver. He recovered several pieces of china before floating to the surface with no vital signs.

Richard Roost, a 25-year diving veteran from Michigan, was the second to die that season on July 8. The mission to recover his body took 31 hours to complete, with Moyer and fellow diver Gary Gentile eventually locating Roost in the first class bar. The cause of his death was speculated to have been "deep-water blackout." Roost had lost consciousness but continued to breathe. His tanks emptied and he asphyxiated.

Vince Napoliello was the season's final death on Aug. 4, 1998. The deaths of Christopher Murley on July 21, 1999 and Charlie McGurr on July 28, 1999 made for five fatalities in 13 months, by far the deadliest span in the history of diving the Doria.

The rise in charter boat excursions to the site has been suggested by some as a contributing factor to the number of deaths, especially in the late 1990s. The equation is a simple one: more boats means more opportunity for inexperienced divers to take their chances on the wreck.

Top: The Italian aircraft carrier Cavour was originally named the Andrea Doria. She launched in July 2004 and is expected to enter service in 2008; Bottom: the Stockholm has been rebuilt several times in the 50 years since her wreck with the Doria. Her latest incarnation, the MS Athena, is a cruise ship operated by the Italia line in the Mediterranean. "When charter boat captains found that it could be a lucrative trade bringing divers out there, inexperienced divers could use the Doria as the apex of their careers," said Bright. "They probably extended themselves beyond what they should have been doing. In many cases, the deaths were attributed to that."

In reports following Bright's death, the cause of death was listed as cardiac arrest preceded by decompression sickness. Crowell said that such a cause of death is by far the most common among wreck divers.

"Ninety percent of the time, whether evidence is immediately available or comes out later in an autopsy, diving fatalities are linked to cardio-vascular issues," said Dan Crowell, former captain of the Seeker, a popular charter for divers, and a veteran of nearly 15 years of Doria explorations. "Water, at that depth, is 800 times thicker than air. There's a lot of stress on the body."

Decompression sickness, or "the bends," is wrought by the explosion of nitrogen gas bubbles into the blood stream during a rapid ascent to the surface. In his book, McMurray describes the phenomenon as akin to opening a well-shaken bottle of soda. The bubbles can cause blockages in the heart, brain and central nervous system, preventing oxygen's movement throughout the body, which can lead to death.

Divers combat the danger by making a series of stops during their ascent back to the surface to allow their bodies to adjust to changes in pressure and to allow normally harmless nitrogen to move from the blood and soft tissue back to their lungs. The number of stops and their duration depend on a number of factors, including a diver's physical fitness, but according to U.S. Navy diving tables, a diver who descends to 220 feet for 20 minutes must make the following stops: one minute at 40 feet, three minutes at 30 feet, 11 minutes at 20 feet and 24 minutes at 10 feet.

Divers face other dangers as well. Nitrogen narcosis - what Jacques Cousteau called the "rapture of the deep" - is a result of the pressurization of nitrogen, which turns the gas into an anesthetic. Divers use "Martini's Law" to describe "getting narc": every 50 feet of depth is equivalent to drinking one martini on an empty stomach. Divers to the Doria, then, feel the effects of five martinis, and as with liquor, different people handle different levels of nitrogen differently, making the hazard difficult to predict.

Breathing pressurized oxygen also presents problems for divers. Oxygen toxicity can cause convulsions, which in turn can cause drowning. At 33 feet below the surface, 100 percent oxygen is toxic to divers and the gas must be diluted to a safe level. As the diver descends, other mixtures are necessary, as the gas behaves differently at different pressures. Doria divers carry multiple mixes on their backs when they descend to the wreck site, which can complicate an already complex situation.

Additionally, there are risks within the wreck itself. Cables from the vessel itself and fishing nets left behind by trawlers in the 1980s hang on and throughout the wreck. Entanglement was the cause of death for John Ormsby in July 1985. The ship's deterioration has lately witnessed the top decks sliding off the superstructure, making internal navigation problematic.

The Doria is rife with challenges and dangers for those who attempt to visit her on the ocean floor, but the divers still come, still don their gear, still welcome the chance to reach the apogee of their careers.

"When you visit the Doria, it's a privilege not a right," said Silverstein. "You're in an alien environment. You get to see things that most of the rest of the world never gets a chance to see. It's this majestic image of the Doria - big and massive and sleek - a piece of art that happens to be sunk in the middle of the ocean. You have to respect it, one because it's beautiful, and two because it's challenging enough to test your abilities and capabilities as a diver."

RISK AND RESPONSIBILITY The question, given the conditions that exist at the wreck, is why so many divers have attempted so many dives to the Doria. In a recent interview, Silverstein offered his thoughts on the psychology of a wreck diver. A veteran of more than 14 expeditions to the site, including 12 years crewing on the Wahoo, a charter boat popular among Doria divers, Silverstein has a wealth of experience to draw upon when forming his opinions.

"Shipwreck diving helps define some of our personality," said Silverstein. "We're explorers. Those of us out there who have been doing this a long time understand the risk and responsibility of doing these kinds of dives. Our families understand this is what we do, as well. They might not necessarily like it, but they accept it."

Silverstein's wife is a highly accomplished wreck diver in her own right. In deference to the hazards of the ocean and to their children, the couple no longer dive wrecks together.

"We've chosen not to do offshore trips anymore," Silverstein said. "The reason being is that we both understand that when we step out into the middle of the ocean 100 miles from shore, there's limited ability for rescue. We can't leave our children parentless. We understand and accept that particular risk."

Silverstein estimated that of the 700 divers fewer than 50 had attempted more than 100 dives, fewer than 50 had attempted 50 or more dives and that most divers have between three and four dives to their credit. Three to four dives usually equates to a single expedition to the wreck site.

Having the Doria on one's diving resume carries with it a cachet of accomplishment almost unrivalled in the Atlantic, or for that matter, anywhere else in the world. Given its proximity to land, south of Nantucket and due east of New Jersey, it is within striking distance for amateurs and professional divers alike.

"I'm a diver from the Northeast and [diving the Doria] is a New York-New Jersey-Massachusetts kind of thing," said Crowell. "It's iconic as the ultimate adventure for a diver. Some people view going there as the apex to their diving careers. Once they reach that apex, some of them don't dive anymore."

Crowell, who discovered the U-boat which served for the basis of the book "Shadow Divers," said that the conditions present at the wreck demand that a diver create a "mental mosaic" of the ship. The sand and clay ocean bottom is easily agitated during dives, further reducing visibility at the site.

"Conditions are not all that pristine," said Crowell. "There's maybe 10 to 15 feet of visibility. It's like making your own mental jigsaw puzzle to see it, a mental mosaic of this huge ocean liner sitting on the bottom of the ocean."

Crowell said his own mosaic is nearly complete, but he has yet to visit the foremost parts of the Doria's bow. He has been within 50 feet of the tip, but because of limited visibility and limited "bottom time," he has never explored that part of the ship.

HUNTERS AND GATHERERS "China fever" is the phrase divers use to describe the zealous pursuit of treasure from the Doria wreck. The china pieces number in the thousands, with the most desirable being the first class services identifiable by their distinct patterns and insignia of the Italia line.

The steady decay of the Doria has increased the frequency, and urgency, of artifact recovery missions.

"Because the wreck is deteriorating, decaying and falling apart, if we don't get artifacts recovered, they're going to be lost forever," said Moyer. "It's always important for me to get these artifacts, restore them and put them on display so the general public and divers can appreciate them."

Moyer acknowledges that his stance counters that of marine archeologists who are intent on a more controlled removal of artifacts from the Doria. Expediency, however, is at the heart of Moyers' contention.

"Of course there's a conflict between salvers and archeologists," said Moyer. "Archeologists make the claim for underwater shipwreck preservation, but to me that's totally bogus and the Andrea Doria is the perfect case because it's a wreck that's rapidly decaying."

Moyer made his first dive to the Doria in 1982 with the interest in recovering china. In 1985, he recovered one of the ship's bells with a team of divers. By the early 1990s, after several more recovery dives, Moyer decided to pursue the admiralty arrest on the wreck before diving for the ceramic panels made by Italian potter Guido Gambone. Each panel measures six feet by five feet and weighs 1,000 pounds. The panels were the largest pieces of artwork on the Doria and were housed in the Winter Garden Lounge.

"Of course the ship was known as a floating art gallery," said Moyer. "It was filled with artwork. There were some ceramic sculptures that I was interested in. As I was planning the trip to go out and recover these pieces, I wanted to file a claim first [so that I could keep them]."

Moyer and attorney Peter Hess of Wilmington, Del. took the case the U.S. Federal Court, which has jurisdiction over wrecks in international waters. They contended that the wreck had been abandoned by the Italia Line's insurance companies. Because there had not been any salvage attempts by the Italia Line or its representatives, private salvers were left with the recovery task. The arrest - the salvage claim rights - had also been abandoned.

The court ruled in favor of Moyer, who was awarded the title Salver in Possession. The title permits Moyer the protection from interference from other divers and dive boats while he is on the wreck, and it gives him clear ownership of artifacts recovered from the wreck.

"Sport divers and wreck divers have been diving for a quite a long time, and I didn't want to throw everybody off the wreck," said Moyer. "The claim stipulates that I'll allow divers to take photographs and souvenirs like dishes and china. That's not a problem, but there are still certain items I want to recover."

During a five-day mission in 1993, Moyer and a team of 12 divers and additional surface crew recovered two of the six Gambone panels, which Moyer described as "abstract images based on Etruscan mythology." Moyer keeps the panels in storage in New Jersey. Each is insured for $500,000. They have most recently been on display at a New Jersey divers conference.

Moyer said he has continued to look for the remaining panels, but due to the ship's decay, the panels are no longer where they once were. The hunt of the panels has proven more difficult in recent years as the bow forward of the superstructure - once home to the Winter Garden Lounge - has broken off and separated from the hull. The contents of this portion of the ship are now part of the debris field that surrounds the Doria.

FOR THE SAKE OF SCIENCE Scientific exploration - not china fever - is the focus of the more committed Doria divers. The circumstances of the Doria's sinking and its on-going decline have long brought divers to the site, as with the case with Gimbel and Fox in 1956. That spirit remains pervasive throughout the diving community.

Before his death, Bright said in his interview with The Independent that he was nearing the release of significant information about the Doria. During the expedition that claimed his life, Bright and his team were the first to dive with special, high-definition cameras for his latest round of marine forensics.

"We're going down with a special crew this time," said Bright. "We're equipped with specialized HD cameras to go over different structural features of the wreck. What we'll be seeing will be things hot off the camera, on the cutting edge. This information is going to be new, rather than a regurgitation of what we already know."

Bright had planned to share that information on Nantucket when he and Capt. Robert Meurn were scheduled to speak at the NHA on July 25. That lecture was cancelled in the week following Bright's death out of respect for the diver and his family. In its place, the NHA hosted an Andrea Doria gam on July 25 with members of the Gifford family who survived the wreck and a one-hour film from the Discovery Channel featuring one of Bright's dives to the Doria.

Bright first dove the wreck in the early 1980s. His curiosity stemmed from the actual sinking of the ship and the mechanics involved with its downfall: How did it happen? Why did it happen? And most pertinent here, how can the wreck itself be used to reconstruct the events of the collision and sinking to answer those two questions?

"Since there was never a formal trial to adjudicate the reason for the sinking, myself as a scientist and diver, I work to shed light on the circumstances," said Bright. "In marine forensics, we go down and use photographs and video to understand more of what happened there. We look at the scene to help explain what went on that night in 1956."

In his investigations, Bright has determined that the Doria's keel had been breached and that regardless of other water-tight compartments, the ship was "doomed."

"No matter what the older arguments bandied about in the 1950s claimed, the fact of the matter is that she was a doomed ship," said Bright. "The remarkable achievement is that the

ocean liner was able to sustain more damage than the builders or anyone else on the planet envisioned and yet stayed afloat for 11 hours to become one of the greatest rescues on the open ocean."

Bright was far from alone in his pursuit. Crowell, who runs Deep Explorers, Inc. out of Brielle, N.J., is also a filmmaker and videographer. With more than 70 expeditions to the site and 200 individual dives, Crowell relies on video equipment to extend his explorations once he has emerged from the water.

"In shooting video, I've found two things: one, that it's possible to share dives with people who will never get to go there, and two, it's a learning tool," said Crowell. "We're able to play the video over and over again to see something new we probably didn't see when we were down there."

Moyer's summer plans include removing the human element even further from the exploration process. Given the dangers associated with diving the wreck and the physical limitations placed on divers themselves, Moyer has opted to use a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) at the site. The first to employ such a method, Moyer hopes that the ROV will be able to penetrate parts of the ship impossible for divers, as well as record footage of those difficult to find or unreachable areas. It will relay live images of the wreck to the surface for immediate analysis.

"The problem with divers is that there is such a limited time on the wreck," said Moyer. "With the ROV, time is virtually unlimited."

Time for the Doria, however, is anything but unlimited. The 50-foot gash left by the Stockholm in the ship's starboard side was only the beginning of her continuous decline well below the surface of the ocean. Researchers may never settle on the reason for the sinking, may never find fault beyond any reasonable doubt, but that impossibility will not prevent, just as it has not prevented, divers from looking for the truth and for treasure 250 feet below the surface of the sea. Ahalf a century after her demise, the story of the Doria persists

as greater than the treasures that remain within her hold, the deaths of the divers who have visited the wreck and the rusting, crumbling ship herself.

The Doria exists in lore, in the pastiche of maritime wrecks like the Titanic, the Republic and the Lusitania. She also exists in person, or rather in the persons of those who survived the collision, who live on with their memories and their recollections of July 25 and 26, 1956. Media coverage lent the event immediacy; the tales of survivors, their reunions, their appearances, continue to lend the event intimacy.

It is as well an open-ended affair. No matter the arguments urging that blame be assigned to one ship or the other, the wreck remains a mystery, one without dogmatic truth, without conclusive evidence. The facts - that two ships collided, that one ship sank, that hundreds of people were rescued, that 52 people died - are unassailable. What precipitated those facts lurks beneath pilings of apocrypha official resolution that neither boat was at fault. Nordensen himself, upon arriving in New York, held a press conference in which he declared that neither vessel was culpable.

Even if fault was not found, criticism was rampant. In the direct fall-out of the wreck, it was proclaimed by some passengers, including 90 survivors who boarded the Cape Ann, that "there existed a complete state of negligence on the part of the crew and officers" of the Doria, according to survivor Arthur Fisher. The accusations were that passengers lacked indications regarding procedure at lifeboat stations, that the alarm was never sounded and that instructions were not relayed through the ship's public address system. The group did offer commendation to a select group of Doria crew members, who acted out of a "private sense of responsibility" to assist in the evacuation.

A congressional inquiry was launched in Washington following the wreck. Although the ships were foreign vessels, the Congress wanted to avoid a repetition between American ships. The House hearings were as close to a formal trial as would be held in the wreck's aftermath, with Lloyd's of London, insurer for both the Italia and the Swedish-American lines, eventually settling the case in private.

World leaders were likewise involved in the post-wreck events. President Eisenhower praised the rescue operation: "The rescue work was conducted in the finest tradition of maritime service." In Rome, Pope Pius XII offered benediction for the survivors.

The Doria changed the way maritime travel operated. Merchant officers must now prove proficiency in radar. Range scale rings are now illuminated on radar sets. Traffic lanes in and out of major ports have been more firmly established. Two watch officers are required on the bridge of passenger ships at all times. Direct, bridge-tobridge communication is mandatory.

The wreck came at a time of transition. America and the rest of the world were recovering from the disasters of World War II and entering a time of relative prosperity before the revolutions of the 1960s. The wreck represents one of the final chapters in the Age of Sail. To suggest that the Doria's sinking was the singular catalyst in the movement from sea to air travel, however, is to overstate the significance of the collision and to ignore the pre-existing factors that building to flight as the primary mode of transatlantic and longdistance travel.

"It's the end of a certain time, but it's a time that's changing as well. The 1950s and 1960s are times of radical changes in the way Americans live, the way Americans work, the way Americans enjoy their recreation," said Slavitz. "Regardless of whether the wreck occurs or not, it's the end of an era. As transportation became faster, even if this accident does not happen, you can probably see that this form of travel - not that it's dying - is changing into something new."

The vessels themselves have also changed into something new. The Stockholm is now owned the Italia line and cruises the Mediterranean under the name MS Athena. The Andrea Doria name was resurrected by the Italian Navy in the early part of the present decade. The aircraft carrier to bear her name has since been reassigned as the Cavour. She was launched in 2004 and is expected to enter service in 2008.

If the watertight compartments had held, if bridge officers had stayed within prescribed guidelines, if there had not been fog, it is possible that the Doria, like the Stockholm, could still be in service somewhere, in some altered form and the story told here would be one of an engineering marvel, not of a miraculous rescue at sea.

"Maybe the photograph we have is the crippled Andrea Doria limping into New York," said Slavitz. "Would she have gone on to cruise the Mediterranean? Would she have gone on and still be the superstar of the Italian line? Would she have been cursed? Who knows? History is replete with 'what ifs'."

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