On her last night out, the Italian Liner Andrea Doria sliced through a gentle ocean, and an awesome wall of North Atlantic fog closed in around her. But the ship's mood as she neared the U.S. was fog-free and gay. A movie (Foxfire) was running in one of Andrea Doria's four theaters; in the plush, boat deck Belvedere lounge, dancers swayed to the rhythms of an eight-piece orchestra. Their last song: Arrivederci, Roma. In the cardrooms, bridge foursomes pondered hands. On deck late strollers tasted the mist and sniffed for land smells. Below, passageways were lined with baggage already packed and prepared for customs. Some passengers had retired early, and were already lulled to sleep by the soothing roll and the sea sounds.
Eight days earlier the fast and fancy three-year-old Andrea Doria— had departed her home port of Genoa and headed for Cannes, Naples and Gibraltar. Leaving the Rock, the 29,000-ton liner raced westward on her 101st Atlantic crossing. For Captain Piero Calamai and his crew it wa's; routine. For the businessmen, the priests and nuns returning from Rome, the Italian-Americans ending old-country visits, the immigrants bound for the golden shore, the crossing was an event.
On the Upper Edge. Not many miles away, passengers aboard the Swedish-American liner Stockholm were testing their first night at sea. The 12,644-ton Stockholm, more tourist than tony, had sailed shortly before noon that day from Manhattan for Copenhagen. After she slipped out into the Hudson River, she idled in the stream while the larger (44,356 tons) lie de France swung from her pier down the Hudson. Then in file the two ships moved past Manhattan's towers, out through the Narrows into the open sea. By 11 p.m. Stockholm, lie de France and Andrea Doria were all churning through the busy, often angry water south of Nantucket, known as "the Times Square of the North Atlantic."
Through the stretch of the Atlantic, from Sheepshead Bay to the Nantucket bearing and beyond, runs Track Charlie, at this time of the year one of the principal transatlantic shipping lanes. By routine but not rule, westbound vessels follow the northern side of Track Charlie, eastbound ships the southern. But that evening the eastbound Stockholm was holding to the northern edge. On a clear night the course holds no serious hazard. But for three days fog had covered the sea from Newfoundland's banks down to Nantucket. The view from a ship's bridge was scarcely farther than the bow. Radar sets searched the seas ahead, but longtime masters with tight schedules reduced speed only slightly for foul weather.
Out of the Darkness. Shortly after 11 p.m. one of Andrea Doria's card players looked idly out of a starboard window and gasped. The cause of her sudden shock: eerie lights of another ship glinting and sprinting out of the darkness towards Andrea Doria. A moment later, with a grinding, crunching roar, Stockholm's knife-sharp prow (reinforced for ice in northern ports) ground 30 ft. deep into the starboard quarter of Andrea Doria, just abaft her flying bridge. Then, with a shudder and shower of sparks, the shivering vessels jerked apart.