THE COLLISION OF THE ANDREA DORIA,(Southport Video, $39.95).
The last voyage of the 697-foot-long, Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria is recreated in this video documentary. Eyewitness testimony, rare photographs, film footage, newspaper headlines, and remarkable underwater photography of the once-magnificent ship as she lies today in 255 feet of water on the ocean floor are used to reconstruct how the lavishly appointed vessel, en route from Genoa, Italy, to New York City with 1,706 passengers and crew on board,collided with the Swedish-American Line’s Stockholm on the night of July 25, 1956, off the coast of Massachusetts. As they made their way in dense fog, the two ships found themselves on a collision course. Recognizing almost simultaneously the imminent danger, the respective captains ordered course changes that only served to make matters worse; the Stockholm rammed the Andrea Doria broadside, causing her to list almost immediately. Rescue efforts by the Stockholm and other ships in the area resulted in the saving of all but 44 lives; yet because of the value of the palatial ship, the disaster was one of the costliest in maritime history. Neither shipping line claimed responsibility for the collision, and at the hearings called to investigate the accident, the captains and crews of each ship gave drastically different accounts of its cause.
