SEQUELS: The Italian Story

For eleven days the grave-faced master of the Italian Line’s Andrea Doria waited while the young third mate of the Swedish-American Line’s Stockholm told a story in a Manhattan courtroom that implied that the Italians were to blame for the July collision that sank Andrea Doria (TIME, Oct. 8). Last week came turn for Captain Piero Calamai, 58, to take the stand, and his anxiety still showed as he sat with bent shoulders, pale and tired-looking.

On fatal July 25 Andrea Doria was steaming westbound at 23 knots from Genoa to New York when, about 3 p.m., some 175 miles off Nantucket, she ran into thick fog, testified Captain Calamai. He personally took command of the bridge, cut speed to 21.8 knots, ordered automatic fog warnings sounded at 1½-minute intervals (audible at a distance of four miles). Around 8 p.m. his second and third mates came on watch, joining him on the bridge. He hung closely within a few degrees of the westbound lane of Track Charlie, the “informal” sea lane marked out by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey: although the Italians and Swedes do not necessarily observe Track Charlie, Captain Calamai testified that he usually did, and that never in his 100 transatlantic crossings had he come upon an eastbound vessel running close to the westbound lane.

At 10:45 p.m., Andrea Doria’s radar picked up the outbound Stockholm (which he did not identify) on the radar screen about 17 miles off Dona’s starboard bow. He and his officers watched her closing rapidly, although they did not plot her course. When the ships were three to four miles apart, said the captain, he ordered a 4° turn to port to leave more passing room (see cut). Calamai insisted that the ships were steaming thus starboard to starboard, whereas the Swedes insist that they were port to port. When Stockholm was two miles off and still closing, Calamai and his third officer walked to the starboard wing of the bridge. “Why don’t we hear him?” asked the third officer. “Why doesn’t he whistle?” Not until Stockholm was about one mile off through the fog, Calamai testified, did the third officer see through his binoculars a “glow” of white light.

Less than a minute later Calamai noticed Stockholm’s white lights ranged in a pattern to indicate that the Stockholm had turned to starboard towards Doria.

Fearing collision, he ordered a sharp turn to port, personally pushed the button for the prescribed two-short-blast signal for port turn, and sent Andrea Doria churning through the dark sea at more than 20 knots in a desperate effort to cross in front of Stockholm. When Stockholm began her turn, Calamai testified, she sounded no warning signal. Had he been warned by signal of her starboard turn, he could still have swung to starboard. “Would that have avoided a collision?” asked a lawyer for the Italian Line. “Certainly,” said Piero Calamai.

With some 40 other witnesses still to testify, Captain Calamai’s was by no means the last word on the collision. But when the time came to weigh evidence in the cases involving $40 million in lawsuits, it would be a hard word to ignore because of his impressive manner and his solid record of 20 years of ocean-going command without mishap prior to the collision with Stockholm.