Collision Course: The Classic Story of the Collision of the Andrea Doria & the Stockholm by Alvin Moscow
If you’re older than, say, 65, you might remember where you were when the Stockholm crashed into the Andrea Doria. I’m considerably younger than that, and had never heard of this boat crash, which apparently riveted the world in 1956. But I’m a sucker for maritime tragedies. I love seeing ordinary people turn into heroes, and I love reading about disasters I will likely never experience firsthand. (All the thrill of vicarious danger and none of the anxiety that I’m in danger of this happening to me.) The version I read was a frail yellow paperback advertising that hardback price of $4.50 had been marked down to 50 cents, so you can imagine it came out not long after the tragedy itself.
I had high hopes for this book. It was written soon after the tragedy, so presumably, they had plenty of access to survivors. In fact, the center of the book is filled with pages of photos taken at the scene. Several show the ship in the process of going under the waves. Others show pretty and/or famous and/or emotionally overwrought passengers being reconciled with their loved ones.
Alas, the writing did not hold up to the promise of the photos and the back flap. The movie star clutching her son? Their story was only given a sentence. The Italian woman tearfully clutching her surviving son? I have no idea who she was. The miracle baby, flung from one ship to the other? Even though her story was touted on the back flap, she still only got a couple of paragraphs in the book itself.
While there were more photos of the ship and its officers than I really liked, what I really would have wanted was a diagram of the paths of the two ships. Where did he captains think they were in relation to one another vs. where they were. It took me a long time to understand the mistake, and the description of how radar worked wasn’t enough for me to understand.
All in all, this book felt like if you had given someone kobe beef and they used it to make sloppy joes. It’s heartening mostly in that it seems that literature as an art is improving. The best of the past never seems to equal the adequate of the present. Or maybe the author just wasn’t quite up to the task.
I couldn’t help thinking about how I would rewrite this story to make it better. I’d pick three or four main characters, and follow their story chronologically, interweaving their stories with factual data of what was happening on the ship. I’d describe how the ship was constructed while the young boy was running around looking for his parents. I’d have the movie star’s backstory, and have quotes from her, and how she felt, and where her boy was the whole time, etc, instead of just a couple of sentences. I’d have diagrams of the distance from the starboard side to the lifeboats so that the reader could better picture how it was laid out. I’d use the dry factual stuff as beats to build tension for the human drama, and I’d eliminate almost all of the court drama in the end, since they settled anyway.
If you want to know about a piece of history, this has all the facts. If you want a dramatic retelling of a tragedy, I think there are other books that have done more with less.
