SS Andrea Doria (pronounced [anˈdrɛːa ˈdɔːrja]) was a luxury transatlantic ocean liner of the Italian Line (Società di navigazione Italia), put into service in 1953.

It was thick fog and when SS Andrea Doria finally noticed the eastbound passenger liner Stockholm of the Swedish American Line, they were already too close to each other and on a collision course.

Struck on her starboard side, the top-heavy Andrea Doria immediately started to list severely and take on water, which left half of her lifeboats unusable.

These ships were intended to deliver express service on the Italian Line's "Sunny Southern Route" between Genoa and New York, stopping only at Cannes, Naples and Gibraltar.

[10] Three slower prewar vessels, Saturnia, Vulcania and Conte Biancamano, among the handful of dowagers to survive the conflict, would follow a meandering route that included additional stops at Azores, Lisbon, Barcelona and Palermo.

Initially, Andrea Doria had been scheduled to depart Genoa on her maiden voyage on 14 December 1952, but amid reports of machinery problems during sea trials, the departure was delayed to 14 January 1953.

On Wednesday, 25 July, just before noon, the passenger liner Stockholm of the Swedish American Line departed New York Harbor on her 103rd eastbound crossing across the Atlantic, headed to her home port of Gothenburg, Sweden.

The captain had reduced speed slightly from 23.0 to 21.8 knots (42.6 to 40.4 km/h), activated the ship's fog-warning whistle, and had closed the watertight doors, all customary precautions while sailing in such conditions.

Andrea Doria, remaining at her cruising speed of almost 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph) engaged in a hard turn to port (left), her captain hoping to outrun the collision.

In addition, following the rules and guidelines set by the International Conference for Safety of Life at Sea of 1948, Andrea Doria was designed to handle a list, even under the worst imaginable circumstances, but not one greater than 15°.

Compounding things, the list also complicated normal lifeboat procedures on the starboard side, making it necessary to lower the boats empty and somehow get evacuees to board them at water level.

[20] The US Navy transport USNS Private William H. Thomas, en route to New York from Livorno, Italy, with 214 troops and dependents also responded to the signal and made immediate progress towards the site.

[21] 44 nmi (81 km; 51 mi) east of the collision site, the French Line's Île de France was eastbound from New York en route to her home port of Le Havre, with 940 passengers and a crew of 826 aboard.

On that voyage, having left New York the same day as Stockholm, she was under the command of Captain Raoul de Beaudéan, a well-respected veteran of the seas who had served the French Line for 35 years.

His attempt was unsuccessful, but after communicating with Stockholm, Cape Ann, and Thomas, he grasped that the lives of over 1,600 people were at risk, turned Île de France around, and set a direct course for the Andrea Doria.

[22] Indeed, help was direly needed, as in spite of the efforts made aboard Andrea Doria to launch her starboard lifeboats many left only partially loaded, carrying in all only 200 panicked crewmen and very few passengers.

Shortly after daybreak, a four-year-old Italian girl with head trauma and four seriously injured Stockholm crewmen were airlifted from that ship at the scene by helicopters sent by the Coast Guard and U.S. Air Force.

In all, six different ships participated in the rescue of the passengers and crew of Andrea Doria, including the heavily damaged Stockholm, which steamed back to New York under its own power with a United States Coast Guard escort after the others.

It was later revealed that she had been thrown from her bed when the two ships collided only to land on Stockholm's deck, suffering moderate but not life-threatening injuries and earning the epithet "miracle girl".

Assisted by the American Red Cross and news photographers, the frantic parents of four-year-old Norma Di Sandro learned that their injured daughter had been airlifted from Stockholm to a hospital in Boston, where the previously unidentified little girl had undergone surgery for a fractured skull.

She and her elderly mother Margherita Baratta had been en route to Redwood City, California, to visit her sister, after which Agnes had intended to audition for the San Francisco Opera House.

In speaking with Chatterton, Gennaro recalled excitedly waking up that morning and driving to New York with his father and two older sisters to meet the rest of their family, but as the survivors from Andrea Doria came ashore, they waited for five or six days until it was confirmed that Angelina, Biaggio and Victoria were among the 51 people who lost their lives in the disaster.

However, largely because the out-of-court settlement agreement between the two shipping companies ended the fact-finding that was taking place in the hearings immediately after the disaster, no resolution of the cause(s) was ever formally accomplished.

[45] In 1968, film director Bruno Vailati, together with Stefano Carletti, Mimi Dies, Arnaldo Mattei, and Al Giddings (an experienced American diver), organized and directed the first Italian expedition to the wreck, producing the documentary titled Andrea Doria -74.

This outcome apparently confirmed other speculation that most Andrea Doria passengers, in anticipation of the ship's scheduled arrival in New York City the following morning, had already retrieved their valuables prior to the collision.

Divers call Andrea Doria a "noisy" wreck, as it emits various noises due to continual deterioration and from the ocean currents moving broken metal around inside the hull.

[49] During dives using the Cyclops 1 submersible, owned by OceanGate and piloted by Stockton Rush, damage was caused to the Andrea Doria after direct collision on the port side of the bow.

Dr. Robert Ballard (who found the wrecks of the ocean liner RMS Titanic, the German battleship Bismarck, and the American aircraft carrier Yorktown and torpedo boat PT-109) who visited the site in a US Navy submersible in 1995, reported that thick fishing nets draped the hull.

In Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, a Victor-class submarine stakes out a New York-to-Europe convoy intended to reinforce NATO against a Soviet attack by sitting next to the wreck of Andrea Doria – hoping to confuse magnetic anomaly detector readings.

In Clive Cussler's Serpent (1999), the Andrea Doria was purposely sunk by the secret organization called the "Brotherhood" to hide the fact of pre-Columbian contact of Mayans and Europe made by Phoenicians.