SHIPPING: Dona's Daughter

Only eleven days after the Andrea Doria sank off Nantucket two years ago, the state-controlled Italian Line decided to commission Genoa's great Ansaldo shipyards to build a replacement. This week the Dona's nearly completed successor, the $30 million Leonardo da Vinci, slid down the ways.

Like the Doria and her sister postwar ship from the Ansaldo yards, the Cristoforo Colombo, the Leonardo upholds the Italian reputation for style and tourist catching comfort, from her rakishly angled superstructure to her 536 cabins equipped with individually controlled air conditioning and infra-red heat, and her retractable stabilizer fins for smoother steaming in rough...

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