With support from the University of Richmond

New perspectives on how history is made

From ‘Death Ship’ to Cruise Ship

Among its oceangoing sisters, the S.S. Stockholm has always been infamous as the ill-fated vessel that struck and sank the Italian liner Andrea Doria in dense fog off Nantucket 50 years ago. The collision — on July 25, 1956 — resulted not only in 51 deaths and the daring rescue of hundreds from the swells of the Atlantic; it also assured a name for the Stockholm as “the death ship” of the high seas.

Nonetheless, on Wednesday morning, there it was: sailing through the narrows, up the Hudson and docking at a West Side pier. Yesterday it sat at its mooring at Pier 90 — albeit with a new hull, new innards and a new name.

The ship, rechristened Athena last year, had arrived in New York at the end of a trans-Atlantic cruise with a passenger list of Britons, many of whom were aware of — and apparently unfazed by — its macabre past.
Read entire article at NYT