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Book Summary
A glamorously splendid ship sails to New York with thousands of people aboard. One of the most modern ocean liners ever built, her safety features are state-of-the-art and fill her passengers and crew with confidence. The ship is the pride of its home country. On the bridge is a master mariner with decades of experience at sea. Despite all this, however, disaster strikes late one night with a freak collision. It’s a crippling blow, but no one realizes it yet. She’s going to slip beneath the Atlantic and rest in a watery grave. Her much touted safety features are totally useless. The ship sinks, and the disaster makes headlines around the world.
This, of course, is the story of the Andrea Doria.
The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria recounts the sinking of the Italian Line’s flagship in July 1956. It reads like a modern-day A Night to Remember. Given how Walter Lord’s book on the Titanic disaster was captivating readers that whole summer, it’s highly appropriate. Several of the Andrea Doria’s passengers, in fact, were reading it on this last voyage. Walter Lord used eyewitness accounts to paint a detailed, minute-by-minute account of the Titanic’s sinking. Greg King and Penny Wilson have done the same thing for the Andrea Doria disaster.
My Thoughts
I first listened to this book on Audible but enjoyed it so much that I had to go and buy a physical copy. It’s quite simply a masterpiece. The authors, Greg King and Penny Wilson, capture the sinking in magnificent detail. The Andrea Doria survivors’ “stories are inspiring, dramatic, and occasionally tragic and deserve to be better known.” I teared up at several points in the book: the Stockholm Third Officer’s misreading of his radar screen, the Île de France‘s dramatic arrival, little Norma Di Sandro’s tragic story, and Thure Peterson’s long struggle to save his wife Martha. The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria is more than a book about a sinking ship: it tells the human side of the disaster.
It’s a long book at 344 pages. But it didn’t feel like it to me at all. I found myself totally engrossed the entire time. The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria is incredibly detailed and contains a lot more information on the Doria than just her sinking, like her construction in Genoa, the care that went into her lavish interiors, and details on the massive rescue operation that saved 1,660 people. The book also made me aware of AndreaDoria.org, which survivors started in 1998 to “keep the Andrea Doria alive.” The website contains personal recollections and a wealth of other resources. It’s a treasure trove on the Andrea Doria.
Conclusion
Like Walter Lord did in A Night to Remember, Greg King and Penny Wilson have perhaps written the book on the Andrea Doria disaster. The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria is an in-depth, fascinating read that’s bound to satisfy even the most discerning of ship nerds (and I use that term affectionately). I cannot recommend this book enough!
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