Category: Disasters

SS Andrea Doria: The Last Great Ocean Liner Disaster

This is one ocean liner I had heard of long before I started this blog. She was another beauty that didn’t last as long as she should have. She had all the latest innovations of her day, including radar, a double hull, and watertight compartments. Yet, like the Titanic before her, one night in 1956 changed everything. The crash was eerily close to what happened to the Empress of Ireland except it took a lot longer to sink. There are so many stories connected to this ship. The “miracle girl,” the concept car that was in the cargo hold, the hero ship, Ile de France, and many more.

I also want to recommend the book The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria: The Sinking of the World’s Most Glamorous Ship by Greg King and Penny Wilson. It helped me immensely while writing this post. The same authors wrote one I read on the Lusitania.

Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember (about the Titanic) had been published the previous year, and several passengers were reading the bestselling account of the Titanic during the crossing from 44 years before. For at least one passenger, the story offered reassurance rather than fear. Remembering how the Carpathia had answered Titanic’s distress calls, she believed that other ships would come for them as well. She was right. Before the night was over, the Andrea Doria would have her own rescue fleet, most famously the brightly lit Île de France.

She was built by the Italian Line as a symbol of Italy’s recovery after World War II. Named for the famous sixteenth-century admiral Andrea Doria, she was launched in 1951 and entered service in January 1953. Elegant inside and out, she quickly earned a reputation as one of the most beautiful ocean liners in the world.

The Andrea Doria was also considered one of the safest ships in the world at the time, thanks to an advanced system of watertight compartments and double hull construction. She was built to remain afloat even if two of her compartments flooded, a design that gave her operators and passengers great confidence in her seaworthiness. For several years she sailed the transatlantic route between Genoa and New York.

On the night of July 25, 1956, her fate would change. She was approaching the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in dense fog. Traveling in the opposite direction was the Swedish ocean liner MS Stockholm. Through a combination of navigational misjudgments, radar misinterpretation, and the fog, the two ships collided. The reinforced icebreaker bow of the Stockholm struck the starboard side of the Andrea Doria, tearing a huge gash into her hull and opening several compartments to the sea. The Stockholm’s bow didn’t merely puncture the Andrea Doria’s outer hull. It drove roughly 30 feet into the ship, cutting through passenger cabins (as we will tragically see) and tanks before the two vessels separated.

Linda Morgan was fourteen years old, traveling on the Andrea Doria’s final crossing with her mother, stepfather, and younger half-sister, eight-year-old Joan Cianfarra. Linda and Joan shared cabin 52, while their mother and stepfather were next door in cabin 54. Both cabins sat almost directly in the path of the Stockholm’s bow.

When the two ships collided just after 11 p.m. on July 25, 1956, the Stockholm’s reinforced bow tore through the area where Linda was sleeping. What happened next remains one of the most incredible survival stories in maritime history. Somehow, the collision carried Linda from her bed and deposited her among the wreckage on the crushed bow of the Stockholm. She had literally gone from one ship to the other during the collision.

In the darkness and fog, a Stockholm crewman heard a voice calling from the bow wreckage in Spanish, crying for her mother. A Spanish-speaking crew member went to investigate and found Linda there, confused but alive. She reportedly asked him, “I was on the Andrea Doria. Where am I now?” Linda suffered a broken arm and other injuries but had survived something almost impossible to imagine. Sadly, her stepfather and younger stepsister did not survive. Her mother was badly injured but lived. The newspapers soon gave Linda a name that would follow her afterward: “the Miracle Girl.” Read more about this incredible girl. Read about the other heroes here.

The collision caused the Andrea Doria to list severely to starboard almost immediately, which tragically rendered many of her lifeboats on the port side unusable. Among the ships that answered the distress call was the French ocean liner SS Île de France. Her captain immediately turned his ship around and raced toward the scene. The Île de France would take hundreds of survivors aboard and become one of the heroes of the disaster. The disaster claimed 46 lives, most of whom died in the initial impact rather than in the sinking itself.

A severe list is more than just a ship leaning to one side. As the angle increases, openings that normally sit safely above the waterline can become submerged, allowing even more water inside. Lifeboats can also become difficult or impossible to launch, and simply moving through corridors and stairways becomes dangerous. Most frightening of all, if a ship loses enough stability, the list can continue until she capsizes. For most of the 11 hours she was listing, that was a constant worry.

For about eleven hours after the collision, the Andrea Doria remained afloat, slowly listing further as spectators, journalists, and rescue vessels gathered nearby, and photographs and film footage of her final hours became iconic images of the era. Early on the morning of July 26, 1956, she finally capsized and sank beneath the waters off Nantucket, coming to rest on her starboard side at a depth of roughly 240 feet. For three years, she represented Italy’s return to the world’s oceans after the devastation of World War II. It was caught on film for national television at the time.

The wreck of the Andrea Doria remains a very popular, though very dangerous, site for experienced scuba divers. It is sometimes referred to as the “Mount Everest of diving” due to strong currents and deteriorating structure that have claimed the lives of several divers over the decades. The disaster also prompted significant changes in maritime safety regulations, particularly regarding radar use and navigational protocols in low-visibility conditions. Even today, the Andrea Doria is remembered as a symbol of the golden age of ocean liner travel. She was a ship whose beauty and promise were cut short by one foggy night off the New England coast.

There was one remarkable survivor of the Andrea Doria disaster that remained with us until very recently: the MS Stockholm herself. Repaired after the collision, she went on to have an extraordinary career under several owners and names, eventually sailing as the cruise ship Astoria. Her final passenger service came in 2020, an incredible 72 years after she entered service. After several years laid up in Rotterdam, the former Stockholm was finally sold for recycling in 2025. The ship whose bow had disappeared deep inside the Andrea Doria had survived her by nearly seventy years.

For all of you CAR FANS…the Andrea Doria was carrying a cool concept car, and it is still down there, part of the Doria now.

SS Daniel J. Morrell: A Ship Chasing Its Survivor

Imagine you’re on the 60-year-old SS Daniel J. Morrell. It’s dark early morning on the Great Lakes. The wind is blowing nearly 70 mph, the waves are reaching 20 to 25 feet, and your ship is breaking apart beneath your feet. You somehow make it onto a life raft. Cold, soaked, exhausted, and alone in the darkness, you suddenly see lights in the distance. Relief washes over you. A ship is coming to rescue you. You’re going to live!

Then the unthinkable happens.

You realize those lights aren’t on a rescue ship at all. They’re on the bow of the Daniel J. Morrell, the very ship that had just sunk beneath your feet! The ship had broken in two, and the bow was still steaming toward you through the darkness. It sounds like something from a horror movie, but it really happened. That is exactly what the lone survivor experienced.

I’m very wary of these kinds of ships. The Edmund Fitzgerald, the MV Derbyshire, the SS Carl D. Bradley, and the rest of these long and narrow cargo ships. Now, I’m not an engineer or anywhere near it, but they look so unnatural. In calm seas, they are fine, but when a storm comes up, they are punished severely for being so long and narrow, and many have broken in two. They also have many cargo holds, and if they aren’t completely sealed, water can come in and start weighing the ship down. But I must also say, to be fair, that some of those ships have operated for over 60 – 100 years! So, who am I to question?

The SS Daniel J. Morrell was one of the most respected ships on the Great Lakes. Built in 1906, she was considered a modern vessel for her time and spent decades hauling bulk cargo across the lakes. At 603 feet long, she was among the largest ships on the Great Lakes when launched. Crews regarded her as a strong ship, and she earned the nickname The Queen of the Lakes. By the 1960s, however, she was showing her age. Like many older lake freighters, she continued working long after newer ships had appeared.

On November 29, 1966, the Morrell was caught in a powerful storm on Lake Huron. During the night, the ship began to experience severe stress from the waves. Then the unthinkable happened. The vessel broke in two. The bow section separated from the stern and continued moving through the darkness. The crew had almost no warning. Men scrambled to launch life rafts and lifeboats into freezing conditions that offered little chance of survival.

Only one man survived, crewman Dennis Hale. After escaping onto a life raft, he spent hours exposed to the cold while watching one of the strangest and most disturbing sights imaginable. In the darkness, he saw what appeared to be a ship approaching. For a moment, he thought rescue had arrived. Then he realized the terrible truth. The vessel moving toward him was not a rescue ship at all. It was the bow section of the Daniel J. Morrell, still floating and moving on its own after breaking away from the rest of the ship. Few survivors in maritime history have experienced a more haunting moment.

By the time rescuers arrived, Hale was the only member of the 29-man crew left alive. Investigators later determined that age, metal fatigue, and the tremendous forces of the storm had contributed to the breakup. The disaster shocked Great Lakes shipping and raised concerns about the condition of older freighters still in service. It also foreshadowed later losses such as the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. The image most people remember, however, is not the investigation or the wreck itself. It is Dennis Hale alone on a raft in the darkness, believing help was finally coming, only to discover he was looking at the broken remains of his own ship steaming toward him.

Reader halffastcyclingclub added this in a comment. Years later, Dennis Hale wrote about more than just his physical survival. While alone on the raft, he said he saw dead shipmates and was visited by a stranger who warned him not to eat the ice from his coat because it would lower his body temperature even further. Shortly after his rescue, Hale told a priest about these experiences but was discouraged from speaking about them again. For years he largely kept that part of the story to himself. Hale later said that finally talking openly about what happened aboard the Daniel J. Morrell, and the survivor guilt that followed him, became an important part of his healing. He eventually told the full story in his autobiography, Shipwrecked: Reflections of the Sole Survivor.

SS Edmund Fitzgerald: The Mighty Fitz

I think some of the best stories come from the Great Lakes, both good and bad. Looking back, I’m so glad that Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about this cargo freighter. Tragedies should get recognized, and hopefully, lessons will be learned from them. I learned about it at 9 years old with the song. Without that, I probably never would have known about her. Because of the song, she is remembered along with the Lusitania and Titanic. But, unfortunately, she will not be the last cargo freighter we will see. The Great Lakes have taken many of them before and after.

She was a steamship. The SS means “Steam Ship” or “Screw Steamer.” The word “Screw” means the propellers; that is what they were called. In fact, the steamships had warnings on the back of their ships, like below; the Titanic had one as well. They did this so tugboats and others would not follow too close and be sucked into their propellers. For those who think steamships were only in the 1800s and early 1900s, there are some still in operation today.

She was launched in 1958 and quickly became one of the most famous ships on the Great Lakes. At 729 feet long, she was the largest ship on the lakes at the time and carried taconite iron ore from Minnesota to steel mills around the lower lakes. Her crews respected her. She had a reputation as a dependable ship and often set cargo records. For years, she worked without major incident and became something of a celebrity among Great Lakes sailors and ship watchers. Her nickname was The Mighty Fitz. She was huge, a little over two American football fields long.

That changed on November 10, 1975. The Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, loaded with ore pellets and headed toward Detroit. She was sailing with the freighter SS Arthur M. Anderson when both ships encountered one of the worst storms ever recorded on Lake Superior. Winds reached hurricane force, and waves climbed to enormous heights. During the evening, the ship reported damage and problems taking on water. Then, at about 7:10 p.m., she suddenly disappeared from radar. No distress call was sent. All 29 crew members were lost.

The exact cause of the sinking is still debated. Some believe the ship struck a shoal and suffered fatal damage. Others think huge waves overwhelmed her, or that structural problems weakened the hull. Investigations have never produced a single answer that everyone agrees upon. The wreck was discovered on November 14, 1975, resting in two large sections on the bottom of Lake Superior, about 530 feet down. Over the years, she became more than a shipwreck story. She became a symbol of the dangers faced by Great Lakes sailors. It is estimated that 6,000 to 10,0000 shipwrecks are in the Great Lakes, with over 30,000 souls lost. That figure is staggering to me.

After the wreck was found, divers eventually recovered the Fitzgerald’s bronze bell. In 1995, a memorial service was held where the original bell was replaced on the wreck with a replica. During the ceremony, the names of all 29 crew members were read aloud, and the bell was rung once for each man. It wasn’t about the ship anymore. It was about making sure the crew would never be forgotten.

The tragedy might have remained known mainly around the Great Lakes if not for Gordon Lightfoot. While he was reading a magazine article about the sinking, Lightfoot was struck by how little attention the crew seemed to receive outside the region. He felt the men deserved to be remembered as people, not just as part of a disaster. In 1976, he wrote and recorded the song, and it became one of his biggest hits and introduced millions of listeners to the story. Even today, many people first learn about Fitzgerald, like I did, through Lightfoot’s song. That helped ensure that the crew and their ship would never be forgotten.

When the Fitzgerald failed to arrive at Whitefish Bay, wives and children were simply waiting for their husbands and fathers to come home from another routine trip. Most Great Lakes voyages ended without incident. These were the twenty-nine men who sailed aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald on her final voyage. More than fifty years later, they’re still remembered by their families, friends, and everyone who believes their story should never be forgotten. The 29 crew members who lost their life companion page.

Yep…it would not be complete without this

RMS Empress of Ireland: Canada’s Titanic

There have been bad shipwrecks, but this is one of the most horrific ones I’ve read about. If you read my Titanic posts, I said that she gave her crew and passengers two hours and forty minutes before she sank. The Empress of Ireland sank in 14 minutes and in the worst, most heartbreaking way. It didn’t have to happen; in a deep fog on the Saint Lawrence River, another ship rammed into her, and she only had 14 minutes of life left, as did most of her passengers. There were 1477 souls on board; only 465 survived. More passengers (crew not included) died on the Empress than on the Titanic. The Empress could hold 1,542 passengers and up to 420 crew, so this was not a small ship. This tragedy was given the name “Canada’s Titanic” by the press, not me. It was/is the worst peacetime disaster in Canada’s history.

The RMS Empress of Ireland was launched in 1906 for the Canadian Pacific Railway. She was built to carry passengers between Quebec and Liverpool. She was a beauty! The ship was not as large as the great liners from White Star or Cunard, but she had a strong reputation. Many people considered her one of the safest ships on the North Atlantic route. She carried immigrants, businessmen, tourists, and mail across the ocean for years without major trouble. Her interiors were elegant for the time. Rich wood paneling, wide staircases, and comfortable cabins gave her a first-class feel. Captain Henry Kendall commanded the ship during her final voyage. By 1914, she had already completed hundreds of crossings and was known as a dependable liner. Personally, it’s one of my favorite ships; it was a stunning and beautiful ship.

On May 28, 1914, she left Quebec City for Liverpool with 1,477 people aboard. The weather turned foggy as she traveled down the Saint Lawrence River near Rimouski. Around 2:10 am on May 29, the Norwegian coal ship SS Storstad appeared through the fog. Both ships tried to maneuver safely, but confusion over signals and visibility caused disaster. The Storstad slammed into the Empress on her starboard side and tore a huge hole in the hull. Water rushed in immediately. The Empress of Ireland listed heavily and sank in only about 14 minutes. Many passengers were asleep and had little chance to escape. It also seems that the watertight doors were not shut. They were not automatic like a few other ships and the crew didn’t have time.

One of the interesting tragic historical parts is that the Empress was full of Salvation Army members who were traveling to England for Congress. There were about 160 members on board, of whom about 130 died. The sinking decimated the Salvation Army in Canada. Nearly the entire Canadian Staff Band was wiped out, as was much of the Salvation Army leadership. It took decades to rebuild. Most people were in bed and woke up to water, listing to the port side, and to a complete darkness nightmare. It was hard, if not impossible, to use the stairs, if you could find them in the dark, because the ship was sideways. People tried to escape through the 14- to 19-inch portholes on the port side; many didn’t make it.

The tragedy shocked Canada and the world, but it was soon overshadowed by World War I and later by the sinking of the Lusitania. The wreck site is now strictly protected by both provincial and federal Canadian law. In 2009, the Canadian government designated the ship as a National Historic Site of Canada. I won’t go into the harrowing details of what happened to many of the passengers, but it’s worth watching a documentary or reading about.

Why did it sink so fast? The Storstad punched a massive hole roughly 14 feet wide and 25 feet deep into the ship. This gaping 350-square-foot breach (for comparison… the Titanic was a 12-square-foot breach) flooded the boiler rooms and then sank her. What made it worse was that the Storstad was built with a reinforced bow for icebreaking. She tore through the Empress easily. I have a picture of the Storstad below after the accident in the pictures. The Storstad was fine afterward and sailed again after this.

Remember, when it was hit, people had to act instantly to survive. The crew did all they could do, and many passengers, crew, and rescuers died while trying to save passengers.

William Clarke: A fireman (a person who shoveled coal in the burners) who also claimed to have survived the sinking of the Titanic, managed to get into a lifeboat and actively pulled around 60 freezing passengers out of the water. The Salvation Army Members: Several witnesses noted that when the chaos ensued, many of them gave their own life jackets to struggling people in the water who did not have them, choosing to drown so others could live. Robert Crellin: A passenger recognized for his bravery in saving a trapped 8-year-old girl named Grace Hanagan (who went on to become the last surviving passenger of the disaster, living until 1995)

BTW…on the videos. I try to find short ones, but many of the short ones just don’t tell the story. I will always try to give you a choice depending on what time you have. Many of these videos are by ship nerds (I mean that in the best way), so to speak. They use graphic tools to recreate the ships, not AI, in most cases.

This post is longer than what I plan on being the norm…but I felt more needed to be said about this tragic event.

Grace Hanagan tells her story and it’s beyond moving.

@abbie.cheeseman

Traveling by ocean liner back then probably felt so insane. Here’s the story of the RMS Empress of Ireland, which sank in 1914 and was less famous than the Titanic despite being similarly catastrophic #forgottenhistory #history #historytok #empressofireland #shipwreck

♬ Curious – Healing And Spirit Health & DJ Hoobidibbie

TEV Wahine: When Safe Harbor Wasn’t Safe

I’ve been posting about the Titanic for the past few weeks. With my obsessive mind, I started to look at other shipwrecks like the Lusitania, Britannic, and other wrecks. Obbverse (who rode on this ship the year before) mentioned this ship when I started the Titanic series. It was a terrible, tragic event that happened in New Zealand.

The passenger ferry TEV Wahine (Turbine-Electric Vessel) left Lyttelton for Wellington on April 9, 1968, on what should have been a normal overnight crossing. The Wahine was one of New Zealand’s best-known ships. It was a state-of-the-art turbo-electric roll-on/roll-off passenger ferry built in Scotland for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. Entering service in 1966, she operated the overnight route between Lyttelton and Wellington.Modern for the time, steady in rough seas, and trusted by passengers who made the trip regularly across Cook Strait. But as the ship approached Wellington Harbor the next morning on the 10th, one of the worst storms (Cyclone Giselle) in New Zealand history hit hard.

Winds were over 100 miles per hour in places. Waves smashed into the ship, and visibility disappeared in rain and spray. Captain Hector Robertson tried to guide the ferry through the harbor entrance, but the storm pushed the Wahine onto Barrett Reef around 5 a.m. The impact tore open the hull and started the chain of events that doomed the ship.

The Wahine had survived rough weather before. But the storm kept hammering the ship. Water flooded in and the engines eventually failed. Lifeboats became dangerous in the huge seas. Some were smashed against the ship while others overturned in the surf. Rescue efforts were difficult because helicopters and small boats were fighting hurricane-force winds themselves. Some passengers survived by floating for hours in the freezing water while local fishermen and rescuers pulled people from the harbor. Others never made it. There were 734 passengers and crew on board. Fifty-one people lost their lives that day, another died several weeks later, and a 53rd victim died in 1990 from injuries sustained in the wreck, making it one of New Zealand’s deadliest maritime tragedies.

The sinking of the Wahine shocked New Zealand much like the Titanic disaster shocked an earlier generation. It became one of those moments people remembered for the rest of their lives. Today, the Wahine disaster is still remembered in New Zealand as both a tragedy and a story of courage from passengers, rescuers, and crew. All were caught in a storm that few ships could have survived.

Before I end this, here is where a community came together. Quartermaster Tom Dartford commanded a lifeboat through 20-foot (6 meters) swells, rescuing over 100 people. Constables John Bowman & Paul Dogget: Members of the Police Dive Squad who rushed to the harbor and pulled over 100 freezing, heavily clothed passengers out of the freezing sea and into their small boat. Local Residents fought the storm and ran to the surf and pulled in strangers and carried them to their homes.

I have included two documentaries. The bottom video is just a quick 5-6 minute video, and the top one is an in-depth documentary. (Pictures at bottom)