The Folly of Trusting Technology

 

Today’s blog post is a reprint from June 25, 2012. I have made a few minor changes for formatting and similar purposes.¹

The Folly of Trusting Technology

On a foggy night in July 1956, two passenger liners used the same shipping channel to head in opposite directions. The Andrea Doria was right where it should be, with the captain on the bridge and its foghorn blowing every two minutes. It probably should have been traveling at a slower speed as it sailed through the fog, but radar was supposed to compensate for the loss of visibility.

The Stockholm was heading east in the westbound channel rather than using the eastbound channel twenty miles south. The westbound channel was shorter and faster, and the Stockholm’s captain claimed it crossed the northbound and southbound lanes at a safer point. The action was permissible because use of the designated channels was recommended but not required. After setting a course, the captain retired to his cabin, leaving an inexperienced third officer on watch.

The captain and crew of the Andrea Doria tracked an oncoming ship on radar and determined that the two ships would pass starboard to starboard (right side to right side) at a close but safe distance. The third officer on the Stockholm also tracked an oncoming ship on radar and determined that the two ships would pass port to port (left side to left side) at a close but safe distance. It was only when the two ships were near enough to see each other through the fog that they realized they were on a collision course.

The Stockholm was significantly smaller than the Andrea Doria, but its steel-reinforced bow was made to slice through the ice floes of the North Atlantic. It also proved effective at slicing up the Andrea Doria. It didn’t go all the way through, but it cut open a number of first class and tourist class cabins and sent their occupants to a watery grave.

Forty-four Andrea Doria passengers died from the collision, a child died from a rescue-related injury, a male passenger died from a heart attack while resting on a rescue ship, and a woman died six months later from injuries incurred during the disaster. The death toll on the Stockholm was five—all crew members who were in their quarters in the bow at the time of the accident.

But the number of survivors was the bigger story. In an amazing rescue effort coordinated by the Coast Guard and involving Navy and commercial boats as well as a French ocean liner that turned round to assist, almost 1,700 people were saved in the eleven hours before the Andrea Doria sunk to the bottom of the ocean. And in an ironic twist, the crew of the wounded but still seaworthy Stockholm rescued many of them.²

The shipping companies and the insurer settled the case before it went to trial, so there was no formal finding of fault. From the sources I read, I think it was a combination of circumstances and human error.

But the greatest contributing factor may have been over reliance on technology. Either the radar was wrong or the crew misread it. The Titanic sank because everyone thought it was unsinkable, and the Andrea Doria sank because crew members thought radar was infallible.

It isn’t safe to put too much faith in technology.

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¹ The picture at the head of this post shows the Andrea Doria on a previous voyage and has been artistically doctored to avoid copyright infringement. The pictures of the sinking are incredible, but they are not in the public domain yet. Although I might be able to claim fair use, I’d rather play it safe and refer you to the Internet to find them for yourselves. Or you can see them in the resource books I have listed in the next footnote.

² If you want more information, I recommend Desperate Hours: The Epic Rescue of the Andrea Doria, by Richard Goldstein; The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria: The Sinking of the World’s most Glamorous Ship, by Greg King and Penny Wilson; or Collision Course: The Classic Story of the Collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm, by Alvin Moscow. They contain a lot of duplicate information, so unless you are doing serious research (as I was), you may want to limit yourself to reading only one. For a more personal view, however, I also recommend Alive on the Andrea Doria: The Greatest Sea Rescue in History, by Pierette Domenica Simpson, who is a survivor of the shipwreck.