Collision Course

by Moscow, Alvin;

  Even so, the graph can be read according to the correct time and sequence of events by correlating it with the time of 10:20 P.M., when the Doria was abeam of the Nantucket Lightship.

  The graph shows that at 9 P.M., the Doria was on a steady course of 278° (corresponding with the 267° testified by Captain Calamai); at 9:40 P.M., ship turned 6° to the left to 272° (corresponding to the 261° course for the fifteen-mile approach to the Nantucket Lightship); at 10:20 P.M., the ship turned right to 279° (corresponding to 268° upon coming abeam of the lightship).

  At 11:05 P.M., the graph clearly shows the 4° turn to the left and the gradual bearing off to the left in response to Captain Calamai’s order “Nothing to the right.”

  Some five minutes later, at 11:10½ P.M., the Doria began a hard left turn in which the ship turned 110° in three minutes, going from 275° to 165°. It was a “fairly uniform” rate of turn, according to the Sperry Company analysis, with the Doria turning 55° in the first ninety seconds and 55° in the last ninety seconds of the three-minute turn, The left turn ended at 11:13½ P.M., at which time the Doria then swung sharply to the right, going 173°, or almost halfway around the compass, in the next thirteen minutes.

  In that left turn lies the controversy. The Doria officers say their ship was struck by the Stockholm at about 11:10 when the Doria had swung only ten or fifteen degrees at the beginning of the hard left turn. They dispute the Sperry Company’s analysis that the left turn was a uniform rate of turn and shows no indication of collision.

  The Swedish Line says the collision occurred at the end of the Doria’s three-minute left turn. It was the Stockholm plunging into the side of the speeding Italian ship that broke the left turn and pivoted the ship to the right, says the Swedish Line. It would follow necessarily that if the Doria turned left for three minutes before the collision, she must have crossed the Stockholm’s bow, starting the turn from a port-to-port position. For if the ships had been starboard to starboard and the Doria turned to her left at almost twenty-two knots for three minutes, the slower Stockholm never would have caught up to her. According to this theory, both ships began their turns three minutes before the collision when they were about two miles apart. Since it takes a turning vessel two, three or more ship lengths for rudder action to take effect, it would explain why Carstens did not see the Doria begin her turn before answering the telephone call from his lookout. It would also account for Captain Calamai seeing the Stockholm to his right if the Doria had been swinging across the Stockholm bow.

  Charles Haight contended for the Swedish Line at the hearing that the collision must have occurred at the end of the Doria’s left turn at 11:13 P.M. (course recorder time) because it would take the Doria going at 21.8 knots some 53 minutes to go the 19.5 miles which separated the point of collision from the Nantucket Lightship. The Doria was abeam of the lightship at 10:20 P.M., according to Captain Calamai’s testimony. Fifty-three minutes sailing time at 21.8 knots would put the Doria at the end of the three-minute turn at the time of collision.

  Of vital importance in this connection was the point at which Captain Calamai had made his 4° turn prior to the collision. The recorder graph clearly shows the turn was made at 11:05 P.M. but the question was whether the ships were three and one-half or five miles apart at the time. Captain Calamai wrote in his report on the collision, which was prepared on the destroyer escort Allen on the way into New York, that the turn was made when the Stockholm was five miles away. In his testimony, the captain said that although he remembered the distance as five miles, both Franchini and Giannini remembered it as three and one-half and the captain then thought the two younger officers were correct. The importance of this rests in the arithmetic fact that it would take the Doria 5¼ minutes to go three and one-half miles and 7½ minutes to go five miles. In the first instance, 5¼ minutes from the 11:05 P.M. turn would place the collision at about 11:10 P.M. at the start of the hard left turn, as the Italians contend. If the distance had been five miles, 7½ minutes would put the time between 11:12 and 11:13 P.M., at the end of the big left turn, as the Stockholm people contend.

  With these facts and theories, the layman, the man of the sea, and the maritime expert can reach an informed judgment as to whether the ships were port-to-port or starboard-to-starboard prior to the collision. But it will only be an opinion, for in the final analysis only a court of law can make a conclusive and binding determination on so controversial a matter. And this case, one of the most complex and most expertly handled in admiralty law, never did and never will reach such a final judgment, for in January, 1957, shortly before the engineering officers of the Andrea Doria were scheduled to take the witness stand, the case was settled out of court.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I LOVED THE SEA—NOW I HATE IT”

  Representatives of the Italian Line and the Swedish Line and their insurance underwriters were sitting in London as a jury on the case. Their deliberations had begun soon after the start of the hearings in New York. The negotiators followed the case through the voluminous record of testimony which was sent regularly from New York to London. The hearing transcript also was sent to the Italian Line in Genoa, the Italian Government in Rome and the Swedish Line in Gothenburg. The hearing record thus served as the basis for argument and negotiation in Europe on the primary financial question of how much the Swedish-American Line should pay toward the loss of the Andrea Doria. The deadlock in London in the settlement negotiations was broken when the cause of the Doria’s severe list immediately after the collision and hence the primary cause of her sinking came to light.

  The break came on January 8, 1957, three and one-half months after the start of the hearings. On that day Underwood, on behalf of the Italian Line, submitted as court exhibits twenty-six different books and charts pertaining to the ballasting, piping, cross-flooding and other stability data on the Andrea Doria. The information had been demanded earlier by the Swedish Line as necessary for the cross-examination of the Andrea Doria’s engineers, who were scheduled to take the witness stand shortly. The Doria’s principal deck officers, who had knowledge of the collision—Captain Calamai, Franchini, Giannini and Badano—had completed their testimony. The helmsman was scheduled as the next witness and the engineers were to follow. But three days after the Swedish Line attorneys gained possession of the stability calculations, the hearings were abruptly ended. It was only a few days before the engineering officers of the Andrea Doria would have taken the witness stand to explain how and why the Italian luxury liner sank.

  The explanation no doubt was contained in a report on stability instructions for the Andrea Doria prepared for the Italian Line by the builders, the Ansaldo Shipyard of Genoa. Whatever the Swedish Line lawyers found in that stability report and sent to the London negotiators, however, never was made public.

  But the House of Representatives Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, which had conducted an independent investigation of the collision, made public its report that same month. The committee, whose expert consultants had analyzed the Ansaldo stability report declared:

  “Briefly, the analysis shows that the Andrea Doria met the subdivision [compartmentation] requirements of the 1948 Safety of Life at Sea Convention by a very narrow margin. It is stated in the ‘stability report’ that the ship also could meet the stability requirements of the 1948 convention provided she was kept ballasted with substantial and specified quantities of liquids in her various tanks. It does not appear possible to account for the behavior of the ship immediately following the collision on July 25, 1956, except on the assumption that she was not in fact ballasted in accordance with this information.”

  In fact, Captain Calamai had testified he knew nothing of any shipyard requirements pertaining to ballasting of tanks. Franchini had testified that while certain fresh-water tanks were ballasted during the voyage from Genoa to New York, no fuel tanks of the Andrea Doria ever were refilled with sea water. The deep fuel tanks in the compartment ripped open by the co
llision, were empty, he had testified.

  The reason for not ballasting fuel oil tanks with salt water is fairly obvious. It is a matter of money. Putting salt water into fuel oil tanks pollutes the tanks and requires that they be scrubbed clean at the end of each voyage lest a diet of oil and salt water ruin the ship’s engines. Furthermore, if fuel tanks are ballasted with salt water, a ship is prohibited from dumping dirty ballast into harbors such as New York lest the residue oil in the tanks pollute harbor waters. Hence, unwanted ballast must be emptied into a barge and carted away to a safe dumping area, which is a costly and time-consuming operation, avoided whenever possible by all steamship companies.

  When the Stockholm bow struck the particular compartment of the Andrea Doria where the deep-fuel tanks were located, the lack of ballasting probably meant the difference between staying afloat and sinking. The congressional committee report estimated that the Andrea Doria at the time of the collision had “perhaps only one-third” the stability required by her builders. It concluded “that while the Andrea Doria was apparently built within the requirements of the 1948 international convention, there is a clear presumption that her stability at the time of the accident was substantially less than that envisaged by her designers.”

  If the Andrea Doria had been adequately ballasted, she should not have listed more than 7°, or at the very worst 15°, as set forth in the international convention on ship stability. Then, the portside lifeboats could have been launched, although they might not have been needed. The ship’s pumps probably would have been able to keep up with the water entering the Generator Room, even with the vital door between the two compartments missing. Flooding could then have been confined to the two compartments—the fuel-tank compartment and the Generator Room. The Andrea Doria would then have been able to sail into New York under her own power, or if that were not possible, surely she would have been able to reach shallow water where she could have been repaired without undue cost. In short, it appears that the Andrea Doria went to the bottom of the sea, a total loss, not because of the collision alone but because of her instability due to improper ballasting. The lack of a watertight door between the damaged compartment and the Generator Room made a bad situation worse by permitting the rapidly rising water to knock out one generator after another, progressively crippling the pumps. This information must have indicated to the Italian Line interests that if the case continued to the end of a full trial, they might well lose the right to limit their liability as well as incur the bad publicity involved.

  With the consent of the Italian government, the principal stockholder, they accepted the basic Swedish Line terms. The Swedish Line would pay nothing toward the loss of the Andrea Doria. It was a bitter pill but the Swedish Line was then in the better bargaining position. All the Stockholm witnesses had testified publicly in the pre-trial hearings. Thus, the Swedish Line could no longer be hurt by further publicity. But the Italian Line still had the Andrea Doria engineers to put on the witness stand in addition to the helmsman and lookouts and hence everything to lose and little if anything to gain by continuing the hearings.

  The settlement, as finally worked out, provided for both lines to drop their damage suits, ending all legal action against each other. Thus the Italian Line and its insurers absorbed the loss of the $30,000,000 ship. The Swedish Line interests dropped their countersuit, absorbing the cost of the $1,000,000 new Stockholm bow and the estimated $1,000,000 loss of business during repairs. The personal injury liability funds of both lines were available to cover the cost of all third-party claims, which included damage suits for deaths, personal injuries, baggage, cargo and mail losses. The Swedish Line put up its fund of $4,000,000 representing the value of the Stockholm after the collision voyage and the Italian Line put up its fund of $1,800,000, representing $60 per gross ton of the 30,000-ton Andrea Doria. The two steamship lines agreed to pool these funds and to co-operate in settling out of court the approximately 1,200 third-party claims. It was believed at the time that all these suits could be settled within the limits of the $5,800,000 combined funds. Any costs beyond the funds would be shared equally. An integral part of the settlement agreement was that its terms were to remain secret and that there would be no assessment of blame upon either the Stockholm or Andrea Doria.

  The secrecy provision of the agreement soon broke down because of the large number of persons necessarily a party to it and the vigilance of the press toward a front-page story. On January 24, the two steamship lines announced in open court before Judge Walsh that a settlement between them had been reached and that they would co-operate in negotiating a settlement of each and every third-party claim.

  Judge Walsh congratulated both the Italian and Swedish-American Lines and their counsel for ending the case in less than six months from the date of the collision. They had set a speed record for settlement of a major admiralty case.

  Lawyers for both lines worked for another two years in investigating and settling the 1,200 damage claims for deaths, personal injuries, and baggage, property and cargo losses involving both ships. The final total figure for all third-party claims came to a sum approximating the combined liability funds of $5,800,000.

  The Swedish Government announced meanwhile that it would hold no inquiry into the sea disaster. It said through its proper authorities that the testimony at the New York hearings had been reviewed in Sweden and no cause had been found warranting criminal prosecution against any of the Stockholm crew for negligence in handling the ship.

  The Italian Government had appointed a special commission of maritime experts who over the course of a full year interviewed each and every one of the 572-man crew of the Andrea Doria. The conclusions of that commission have not yet been made public.

  Since the end of the New York hearings the Stockholm, outfitted with a new bow in the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in Brooklyn, is still sailing the same route between Gothenburg, Copenhagen and New York. The Andrea Doria lies on her side on the bottom of the North Atlantic some fifty miles south of Nantucket Island, a tempting challenge to men who dream of bringing the luxury liner back to the surface.

  The Swedish Line, in a bold demonstration of its confidence in its men, rewarded Captain Nordenson and Third Officer Carstens-Johannsen by immediately assigning them to the new flagship of its White Viking Fleet, the 23,500-ton Gripsholm, which had been built in Italy at a cost of $14,000,000.

  Captain Nordenson commanded the new Gripsholm from her maiden voyage across the North Atlantic in May, 1957, to June, 1958, when he retired upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five. Carstens, promoted from junior to senior third mate, continued on the Gripsholm until later in 1958, when with the vestiges of the collision stigma apparently still in the air, he left the Swedish-American Line to sail as chief mate on a small freighter of the Brostrom Concern.

  While the other officers and men of the Andrea Doria were reassigned to other ships, Captain Calamai never sailed again. He was kept on the active rolls of the Italian Line in Genoa until he reached the mandatory retirement age of sixty. Then in December, 1957, without having been given command of another ship, he was quietly retired. It is extremely doubtful whether Captain Calamai, after his tragic experience, would have accepted command of another ship if it had been offered. He had expressed his views on one occasion after the collision when he said, “When I was a boy, and all my life, I loved the sea; now I hate it.”

  The Andrea Doria—Stockholm collision probably will have repercussions for many years. It has already brought about several changes toward the safer operation of ships. The Swedish-American Line not long after the collision assigned two officers instead of one to every bridge watch. Radar manufacturers pushed the development of a new type of radar, one which showed the true motion instead of relative position of other ships. One of the first true-motion radar sets sold, one which gave a real bird’s-eye view of all ships and objects around in true perspective, was installed on the Swedish Line’s new Gripsholm. Virtually all mari
time nations have increased the training of maritime officers in the proper use of radar, and Great Britain has taken the lead in making a certificate of proficiency in the use of radar a prerequisite for obtaining an officer’s license in the merchant marine.

  The Andrea Doria disaster, above all, has led to the widespread demand among maritime experts for another convention of the major seafaring nations to modernize the laws of the sea.

  Real reform can come only through another International Conference for Safety of Life at Sea at which the maritime nations of the world can hammer out by treaty agreement new laws designed to reduce the chances of another Andrea Doria—Stockholm collision. Maritime experts are agreed that the calling of a fourth Conference is overdue. Various agencies of the United States Government, such as the Coast Guard and Navy, are preparing proposals for such a meeting, as are other nations.

  While it is easy to recite needed reforms, it is indeed difficult to propose new uniform laws for shipping which would be acceptable to some thirty-odd different and sovereign nations, each of which has the prerogative of signing or not signing treaty agreements. But just as the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 led to the first International Conference which set the first standards of stability for ships, required the use of radio and prescribed the number of lifeboats to be carried, so the sinking of the Andrea Doria must necessarily lead to new laws governing the use of radar, higher stability standards and some kind of practical enforcement of the laws of the sea.

  The next Conference must come to grips with the question of whether radar should or should not relieve the master of a ship from the present requirement of reducing speed in fog so as to be able to stop his ship in half the distance of visibility. The present law certainly is violated with the impunity which characterized Prohibition in the United States, and perhaps the time has come for its repeal. An alternative would be to permit a ship equipped with radar to continue at full speed in fog so long as it maneuvers to keep at least five miles away from any other ship at all times. A five-mile safety margin (or six or seven miles, if need be), rigidly enforced, would do more to prevent collisions in the open sea than the current practice of ships passing one another with only one mile separating them, allowing no room for error.