The burden of responsibility borne by the master of a freighter, a tanker or a transport does not weigh as heavily as it does upon the captain of a passenger liner, and the single man who was probably most troubled by receiving the SOS was the Baron Raoul de Beaudéan, vacation replacement master of the venerable French liner Ile de France, carrying 940 passengers and a crew of 826 to Le Havre, France. He might well have told himself, upon receiving the news, “There but for the Grace of God …”
The Ile, a dowager in the society of luxury liners, had left New York at the same time as the Stockholm. As did the Stockholm behind her, the Ile enjoyed the advantages of a calm sea, a gentle wind from the southwest, and good visibility. Lunch and dinner that night introduced the passengers on the Ile to its sumptuous and unexcelled cuisine. The 44,500-ton ship, heavier than the more modern Doria and Stockholm together, had led a full and charmed life since she was launched in June, 1926. She was one of the largest and fastest ships in the world, and year after year the Ile maintained her renown as one of the most pleasant, comfortable and fun-loving ships afloat. She served six years through the second World War and carried 626,000 troops safely to all parts of a world torn by war. Returning for repairs after World War II to her original shipyard in St. Nazaire, France, she was completely overhauled and outfitted in 1949 and once again sailed as a testament to the French concept of gracious living.
Captain de Beaudéan, nobleman of fifty-three who surprised and charmed his passengers with his use of a monocle and Gallic wit, went to his bridge after dinner as usual on the night of July 25. He noticed the moon and stars overhead, the uneven soft swells of the ocean ahead of his ship and all the small details of the eight-to-midnight watch on the bridge. Then he went to his spacious cabin behind the wheelhouse for a perusal of the ship’s papers and passenger list. He took no part the first night out in the ship’s entertainment, high-lighted by a “cutting in” dance guaranteed to crack the social frost of any landlubber. At five minutes after ten that night about eleven miles away from the Nantucket Lightship, the Ile de France suddenly encountered the fog and Captain Beaudéan was hastily summoned to the bridge.
The fog, as he later noted in his logbook, was of “exceptional intensity,” and Captain de Beaudéan set the extra fog watch, put on the fog whistle, closed the watertight door, checked the radar and telephoned his Engine Room to take the “usual precautions.” The usual precautions were not unlike those of the Andrea Doria, for the Ile de France also had a schedule to keep. Her speed through the fog was not much less than twenty-two knots. Captain de Beaudéan chain-smoked cigarettes down to quarter-inch stubs as he himself kept watch on the radar. Visibility was almost nil as the fog enveloped the bow of the French ship. He recalled the letter he had posted to his wife from New York describing the mental strain of navigating the giant Ile through fog on the voyage to New York.
The Ile de France steamed by the Nantucket Lightship at 10:34 P.M., passing six miles south of the lightship as viewed by radar, and then picked up Track Charlie, its regular route for the transatlantic crossing.
Captain de Beaudéan was at the radar when his radio officer, Pierre Allanet, burst into the quiet wheelhouse with news of the disaster. He had picked up an SOS from the Andrea Doria as relayed by an unidentified ship at 11:30 P.M., but he could hear nothing on 500 kcs from the Doria herself. Captain de Beaudéan looked at the message. SOS—HERE AT 0320 GMT LAT. 40-30 N, 69-53 W. NEED IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE. Knowing he was not too far from the scene, he sent the radio officer back for more information and went into the chartroom to fix the position of his ship. Returning with more intercepted messages, the radioman told him that the Doria had collided with the Stockholm, that several ships were rushing to the scene, including the Cape Ann and the Thomas.
Captain de Beaudéan pondered the worst dilemma of his thirty-five-year career: to go on to France or to turn back to the rescue. He could hardly believe that a modern liner like the Andrea Doria actually was sinking. Nothing in any of the radio messages mentioned sinking. Yet there was the SOS and the call for immediate assistance. He could not lightly dismiss the SOS as a mistake in judgment of a hysterical captain. He knew the sea too well for that. But the question was: Was the Ile de France herself needed for the rescue? He was under no rigid obligation to go to the rescue. The 1929 International Conference for Safety of Life at Sea, following the rescue fiasco involved in the Titanic disaster, made it mandatory for every ship hearing an SOS to proceed directly to the scene, unless specifically released from that obligation by the ship in distress. But that strict requirement was toned down in the 1948 Conference. Now, as long as other ships were known to be going to the aid of the distressed ship, it was left to the discretion of a ship’s master whether or not to respond to an SOS.
Captain de Beaudéan was fully aware of the moral demands of the tradition of the sea, but he also realized the tremendous expense of turning back his fuel-hungry old ship. He would have a good deal of explaining to do to the French Line if he steamed back to the Doria and then found the Ile was not needed. Yet, if the Ile were needed, the French Line would never question his action. It was a complex decision but his alone to make. He was, after all, as the Merchant Marine Minister of France was later to say, the “Sole Master after God” of the Ile de France.
Captain de Beaudéan, knowing that other ship masters would understand his predicament, decided to ask the Doria directly if the Ile were needed. He sent his ship’s position as of 11:40 and asked the Doria: DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE? The Doria in reply repeated without hesitation its original distress message with the words: NEED IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE. But the Ile, because of some quirk in radio communication, did not receive this message. Captain de Beaudéan turned to the Stockholm for advice and the Stockholm captain radioed back that he in good conscience could not send his lifeboats to the Doria until he was assured of the safety of the Stockholm passengers. Inspection of damage on the Stockholm had not been completed. The Ile monitored radio messages of other ships and it soon became clear the Doria needed lifeboats, as many lifeboats as she could get.
Once his decision was made, Captain de Beaudéan, who had taken command of the Ile de France only a month before, acted swiftly and surely. He swung the 793-foot ship around in a wide circle and set a direct course to the scene of the disaster forty-four miles away. At 11:54 that night, eleven minutes after his first message to the Doria was sent, he radioed: CAPTAIN ANDREA DORIA—I AM GOING TO ASSIST YOU. WILL REACH YOUR POSITION 5:35 GMT (1:35 A.M.). ARE YOU SINKING? WHAT KIND OF ASSISTANCE DO YOU NEED?—CAPTAIN.
From the Doria, no answer came. But radioman Failla on the Cape Ann, correctly surmising the difficulty, relayed: SOS MESSAGE—DORIA WANTS TO DISEMBARK 1,500 PASSENGERS AND CREW. SUGGEST STRONGLY YOU HAVE ALL YOUR LIFEBOATS READY TO ASSIST.
The captain telephoned to the Engine Room for full speed ahead and set about preparing for the rescue operation ahead. He summoned the second-in-command, Staff Captain Christian Pettre, and gave orders for the preparation of lifeboats, the selecting of crews and the necessity for not alarming, if possible, the passengers on the Ile. Ship’s Doctor Michel Delafon was advised to prepare the ship’s hospital for an unknown number of injured. The stewards’ department was sent scurrying for extra blankets. Chefs for all three classes were told to start preparing food and vats of hot coffee and bouillon. Captain de Beaudéan himself remained riveted at the radar, without which he would have been a man rushing through the night with his eyes shut. Alternately he cursed the fog which obscured the bow of his own ship and he prayed that God in his mercy would lift the fog before he reached the Andrea Doria. The captain was far more worried for the safety of his own ship and passengers as the Ile converged with other ships on position 40.30 N-69.53 W than he was for his crew’s ability to carry out their orders to the credit of the ship and the French Line.
As the thirty-year-old Ile de France pounded through the sea and fog, her crew responded to the cry of distress with a spirit and enthusiasm aki
n perhaps to the first regiments who marched across France to the strains of the Marseillaise. News of the disaster spread by word of mouth throughout the crew’s quarters in myriad forms of distortion and inaccuracy. But speculation only added fuel to the flames of spirit among the deckhands, cabin boys, engineers, chefs and stewards who rolled out of their bunks after a hard day’s routine to take part in the emergency. This was the opportunity for the newest kitchen helper or office boy to prove he was above all a seaman. It was a chance once again to serve the tradition and legend of the sea and the glory of the best-loved ship of France. The veteran seamen aboard knew the Ile as an old, uneconomical ship to operate, but they knew too of her record during the second World War, of her prewar glory, and of her postwar rescue missions to the British cargo ship Chiswick in distress in the mid-Atlantic in 1950 and the rescue of twenty-four men in a sixty-mile-an-hour gale from the foundering Liberian freighter Greenville eight hundred miles west of Land’s End in 1953.
As the Ile de France, the Cape Ann, and the Thomas raced toward the stricken Andrea Doria, the Italian liner drifted sideways toward the nearby Stockholm. Captain Nordenson first noticed the change in position of the two ships in his radar, and then from the wing of his bridge he saw the lights of the Italian liner drawing closer and larger in the night. The Doria was drifting directly for the crushed bow of the Stockholm, as if seeking vengeance.
Captain Nordenson, wasting no time in trying to get out of the way, plunged the levers of the engine telegraph to FULL SPEED ASTERN and shouted to the helmsman for a hard starboard turn. Peder Larsen swung the helm and the ship began to vibrate as the engines started, but the ship did not turn and, as the men soon discovered, neither did she move. As the Andrea Doria came on, the bridge of the Stockholm was thrown into turmoil. The Engine Room was called, the helm was checked, the floodlights were beamed on the bow to determine if the anchors were down because of the collision. But the engines were operating normally, the wheel seemed undamaged, and the five-and-one-half-ton anchors were in place. Not only were they in place but they had been smashed into the wrecked side of the ship’s bow.
Helpless, Captain Nordenson stared at the drifting Doria. His pink face changed to a deep red as his blood pressure rose. Then the Doria floated by. It passed the Stockholm bow by less than one-third of a mile, drifting away out of control. When the danger of a second collision was past, Captain Nordenson sent word forward to the bow that he wanted an explanation why the Stockholm could not be moved. The explanation reported back to the bridge was simple enough. The chain locker, situated in front of the collision bulkhead, had been smashed open. The two anchor chains had unwound their full 700-foot length and apparently had tangled and caught on something on the ocean bed some 250 feet below the ship. The Stockholm was moored to the bottom of the ocean.
As the heavy anchor chains had unswirled, they carried with them the bodies of three teen-aged crewmen who disappeared without a trace from the two most forward cabins on A-Deck. It was only after Chief Purser Dawe completed his check of the crew roster that no doubt was left as to the fate of seventeen-year-old Kennth Jonasson and Sune Steen, one year older, in Cabin 1-A. John Hagstrom bore witness that his roommate, Evert Svensson, had been in Cabin 2-A, across the hall, at the time of the collision, repacking a suitcase of gifts he had purchased in New York for his mother and the girl in Sweden he hoped to marry. Hagstrom, to whom he displayed the gifts, had left the cabin for a breath of air on deck at 10:45.
Chief Officer Kallback directed the intensive work of a rescue team of five engineers, thirty various crewmen, the ship’s doctor and senior nurse. The forward cabins had been smashed and compressed upon one another, their steel walls folded in and out like the bellows of an accordion. Entry was possible through narrow door openings to some cabins while others, sealed closed, had to be burned open. But before dawn every cabin had been entered and carefully searched for survivors. Acetylene torches were used to cut through the steel walls while men stood by with emergency fire hoses to quell any outbreak of fire. The sprinkler system, which had burst and flooded the decks, had been shut down in the Engine Room. As injured crewmen were found by rescuers, either Dr. Ake Nessling or Nurse Karin Claesson was summoned to administer first-aid and to supervise the stretcher-bearing of the injured to the hospital.
In her cabin adjacent to the hospital, Nurse Claesson had been standing near a porthole, sipping from a cup of coffee, when the ship vibrated suddenly and she had looked out of the porthole in time to see the twinkling lights of another ship. Then came the crash. Her coffee cup flew from her hand as she stumbled backwards onto a settee. The slim, shy Miss Claesson, who had been a nurse on the Stockholm for three years, reacted instinctively. She tied a lifebelt over her nightgown and headed for the door. But with one hand on the doorknob, she stopped for a swift mental debate. Would it be better to present herself for service immediately, undressed as she was, or to spend several minutes dressing appropriately? Modesty triumphed and the young nurse changed into a fresh blue denim uniform and a white starched apron.
Rounding a corner to the A-Deck foyer, Nurse Claesson tripped and fell headlong into the river of water flowing down the corridor from the ruptured sprinkler system forward. She fell at the feet of the chief purser as he emerged from his office. “It’s terrible,” she exclaimed as Dawe helped her up. “We must have run into a big ship!”
“Oh, it might not be so bad,” he replied in an even voice. The chief purser advised her to return to the hospital where she could change her dripping clothes and be available for further orders.
Later the orders came and she went forward to the wrecked section of the bow to join Dr. Nessling. She gasped and trembled with shock at the sight of the first crewman she found lying crumpled on the deck of a cabin on Main Deck. The body in the light of a bare emergency bulb was a deathly bluish green. Nurse Claesson had never seen a traumatic death in her twenty-six round-trip voyages on the Stockholm but, steadying her own nerves, she knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse. The pulse was strong and even. Puzzled, the nurse dropped the crewman’s wrist and then she noticed her own fingers. They were bluish green and sticky. It was paint! The unconscious form of pantry boy Sven Ahlm had been covered with paint splashed from the paint locker forward of his cabin, but his injuries were minor. Amid the wreckage, Nurse Claesson found Ahlm’s roommate, Karl Elis Osterberg. He died of a fractured skull in the ship’s hospital two hours later.
The engineers spent almost an hour burning a hole two feet wide through the wall of Cabin 5-A where rescuers found thirty-six-year-old Wilhelm Gustavsson unconscious, one leg broken and crumpled beneath him, his face covered with blood with one eye hanging from its socket by a shred of muscle tissue. Dr. Nessling replaced the eye in its socket and assigned one crewman to hold the eye in place with a gauze compress while Gustavsson was carried from his cabin to the ship’s hospital. Lars Falk, a twenty-year-old pantry boy, presented an even more difficult transportation problem. He was found in another cabin with a crushed skull, a broken neck, blood running from his mouth. With his life hanging by a shred, his fellow crewmen somehow managed to carry him successfully through the wreckage without jarring the vertebrae of his neck.
One of the most popular crew members of the Stockholm was found in his pajamas close to death. Fate had singled out Alf Johansson. He had postponed his vacation for this last voyage before marrying his childhood sweetheart. Only because his regular partner at a nightly bridge game which lasted to midnight was off the ship on vacation had the thirty-year-old Johansson gone to bed before eleven that night. In his cabin—4-M—the body of the husky blond seaman had been smashed like the splintered steel and wood around him. The nurse and doctor cut away his bloodied pajama pants to find compound fractures of both legs, the splintered bones jutting through the flesh. Worse, although not immediately suspected, his skull had been fractured. As Nurse Claesson administered morphine, Johansson whispered, “I think it is finished for me.” She thought he smiled
in comprehension of the irony of events.
Another seaman quartered in the bow undoubtedly owes his life to seasickness. Bernabe Polanco Garcia, a thirty-six-year-old Spaniard who had signed on the Stockholm in Gothenburg as a cleaning man in the crew’s quarters, was a lonely man among the tightly knit crew of Scandinavians. A few minutes before eleven, just before the collision, he had been beset by a wave of nausea and had made his way about halfway up to the open deck for a breath of air when the collision sent him reeling. He dashed to the open deck in time to see the Andrea Doria veering away, and then through a babble of voices and noise, the seasick Spanish sailor heard the thin cry of a girl calling for her mother. It came from the wreckage on the open deck of the bow. He followed the sound, crawling on hands and knees, until he came upon a young girl in torn yellow pajamas. She stared into the face of the thin seaman and amazed him by speaking her first words in Spanish: “Dondé está Mamá?”
“Was she here?” he asked, bewildered. Not since he had boarded this white, Nordic ship had anyone spoken to him in his native tongue.
“She was here with me,” the girl answered, continuing the conversation in Spanish. “But who are you?”
“I am a man from Cádiz.”
The conversation bordered on fantasy because what the girl in torn pajamas and the Spanish sailor on a Swedish ship were trying to comprehend was fantastic.
The girl was Linda Morgan, born fourteen years ago in Mexico and raised in Italy and Spain where the vicissitudes of journalism had taken her mother, father and stepfather. She was alive because the Stockholm bow miraculously had swooped beneath her bed and had catapulted her from Cabin 52 on the Andrea Doria to the bow of the Stockholm. She landed behind a curved sea breaker wall, two and one-half feet high, some eighty feet behind the peak of the bow. The wall, designed to deflect sea waves breaking over the bow from the ship’s electrical equipment, had shielded Linda Morgan from flying fragments of wreckage. Linda’s sister, eight-year-old Joan Cianfarra, sleeping on the inside bed of Cabin 52, perished beneath the crushing bow of the Stockholm.
Collision Course Page 12