Andrea Doria

Type

Ocean Liner

Period

20th Century

Nation

Italy

Overview: SS Andrea Doria was a luxury transatlantic ocean liner of the Italian Line, built to reassert Italy's postwar commercial and cultural presence on the Genoa–New York route. She is most famous for her sinking on 25-26 July 1956 after colliding with the Swedish liner MS Stockholm in fog off Nantucket, Massachusetts. Specifications: Built at the Ansaldo Shipyards in Genoa, she measured 213.80 m (701 ft 5 in) long with a 27.50 m beam and 9.1 m draft, and displaced about 29,083 gross register tons. Twin steam turbines drove twin propellers for a service speed of 23 knots, and she was fitted out to carry roughly 1,241 passengers across three classes (First, Cabin, and Tourist) plus a crew of about 560. Service History: Launched 16 June 1951 and placed into service on her maiden voyage on 14 January 1953, Andrea Doria became the flagship of the postwar Italian Line, celebrated as the largest, fastest, and supposedly safest Italian ship of her day. On the night of 25 July 1956 she collided with the eastbound Stockholm in dense fog; the severe list that followed rendered many lifeboats unusable, but the ship stayed afloat for over eleven hours, allowing a large-scale rescue of about 1,660 of her 1,706 passengers and crew before she capsized and sank the next morning. Notable Facts: Andrea Doria was renowned as a "floating art gallery," with over a million dollars spent on specially commissioned artwork and mid-century modern interior design intended to showcase "modern Italy" to transatlantic travelers. Her wreck, lying on its starboard side roughly 160 feet down off Nantucket, remains a popular and hazardous destination for technical wreck divers, and her sister ship was the SS Cristoforo Colombo.