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Cruise Ship Accident Stirs Thoughts of the Andrea Doria

First thing Saturday, Pierette Domenica Simpson’s boyfriend called and said, “Go online. You’ll be interested.”

She checked the headlines. Something about an Italian ocean liner in trouble. The way the ship was listing, the report that it was taking on water, the light from the cabins reflecting in the water, the passengers’ struggle to clamber into lifeboats — everything seemed so familiar. “I thought, ‘How can this be? It’s 56 years later,’ ” Ms. Simpson said.

For Ms. Simpson, the wreck of the Costa Concordia brought back memories of one of the most famous disasters in maritime history, an accident that she survived as a 9-year-old girl: The collision on July 25, 1956, that left the Italian ship Andrea Doria, bound for New York City, listing in the Atlantic after being struck by a Swedish ocean liner, the Stockholm.

“It was unreal and surreal, the fact that they were both leaning on the starboard side,” she said. “If you put the two photographs together of the night scene of the Concordia and the night scene of the Andrea Doria with the incline on the starboard side and the lights coming from the portholes, you cannot tell the difference.”...

Read entire article at NYT