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On Andrea Doria's upper decks the explosive collision hurled the card players to the floor and ripped their tables from the sockets. Bar patrons were showered by their nightcaps and banged by flying glassware. Moviegoers were hurled into screaming heaps. Promenaders were slammed against bulkheads.In the Belvedere lounge the dancers picked themselves up from the floor and dazedly headed toward muster stations.
Below decks the crash and the quick list of Andrea Doria lifted sleepers out of bed and hurled them around cabins, to be sprayed by flying porthole glass. Passengers on stairways were jerked off and slapped to the deck. Passageways were filled with settling dust, smoke drifted back from the long (40 ft.) gash along the ship's starboard. Oil and water sloshed along the corridors. Over the ship's loudspeaker came Italian commands to remain calm, but they were only half heard or not understood. Women screamed. The tilting passageways, jammed with piles of baggage, jammed tighter when brusquely awakened sleepers, heading for deck, met passengers hurrying down to their cabins to look for families and get lifejackets. Old women clutched holy pictures and wailed. Young women clutched babies and fought for the open deck.
Crunching Echoes. The string of first-class cabins, raked by the sharp prow of Stockholm, was in shambles. In one, New York Timesman Camille Cianfarra had been killed; his wife lay pinned in her bed. In an adjoining room his daughter and stepdaughter were shot through the shredded hull.— In another cabin Thure
S. Peterson, New Jersey chiropractor, tried to free his wife Martha, caught in the wreckage. She died within minutes, spine and legs broken. Colonel Walter J. Carlin of Brooklyn staggered out of a bathroom after the crash to find that his wife and his cabin had vanished. Cinemactress Ruth Roman rushed into her stateroom, woke her sleeping three-year-old son Dickie, told him calmly, "We are going on a picnic." The crunching echoes of the crash were still dying as wireless operators aboard the two ships sparked through the fog a twelve-dash automatic alarm signal to trip alert bells in radio rooms at sea and monitor stations along the U.S. coastline.
As receiving operators logged the time—11:22 p.m. E.D.T.—a crisply urgent message from Andrea Doria followed on the 500 Kc. international distress band: SOS . . . COLLISION . . . 40°30' N, 60°53' W . . . SEND IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE.
The Wait for Salvation. On Andrea Doria electric lights flickered but burned bright again. Under their calming glow, the momentary panic ebbed. Passengers in nightgowns and pajamas joined others in evening dress on a deck slanting first at 25°, then at a steep 35°. Most had found their lifejackets; those who had not, clutched rubber cushions from the deck chairs. As the liner settled, some passengers and crewmen climbed to the high-tilted portside lifeboats, found them hopelessly far from the water and hanging too awkwardly to be swung out. Some slid to the low starboard side, where ropes and ladders were being let down. Andrea Doria got away eight boats and radioed a plea for more.