The Night the Andrea Doria Sank
It was a night to remember, but not the Titanic night.
On July 25, 1956, the unthinkable happened to another unsinkable ship bound for New York — a disaster that has become little more than a pop-culture footnote. 'Seinfeld' fans remember how that sitcom mined it for laughs — but only after Cosmo Kramer, played by Michael Richards, clued in the audience: 'The Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm in dense fog 12 miles off the coast of Nantucket.'
'That I have a problem with,' said Pierrete Domenica Simpson, who was a passenger on the Italian liner Andrea Doria and has spent years seeking to vindicate the captain and crew of the doomed vessel. It wasn't the Andrea Doria that rammed the Stockholm, she said. It was the Stockholm, a Swedish ship, that smashed into the Andrea Doria.
'Broadsided us,' said Simpson, who was 9 years old then. 'Full speed on the starboard side.'
Simpson will take part in a survivors-only gathering at the Italian American Museum in Manhattan on Saturday. There will be a screening of the documentary film 'Andrea Doria: Are the Passengers Saved?' — based on one of her books — and the director, Luca Guardabascio, will be on hand.
The group will also preview 'Andrea Doria: The Final Voyage,' an exhibition of artifacts that the museum has assembled. It includes a 140-pound brass bell from the ship and items from the vast collection of artifacts retrieved by the diver John Moyer, who first explored the wreck in the 1980s. The exhibition will open to the public next Friday.
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