Historic Shipwreck
Jack McKenney as the alternative cinematographer. Because the garage was blocked,
McKenney entered the hole that Rodocker and DeLucchi had cut. Much of the congestion had fallen away. McKenney was able to descend partway across the Foyer until he met a ‘floor’ of rubble that covered the impact area. Gimbel dropped to the bottom
in the vicinity of the wheelhouse, but found that bridge wreckage had fallen over the collision site. Undaunted, he went over the wreck and descended along the hull to the seabed. There he made a remarkable discovery: the knife- like stem of the Stockholm had penetrated much farther down the hull of the Doria than had ever been suspected. He crawled into a crack that measured twenty feet (6m) high and two and a half feet (75cm) wide. Such massive damage to the double hull must have accounted for the immediate list and subsequent flooding. This incredible revelation served as the denouement of the film.
34 Magazine
He went over the wreck and descended along the hull to the seabed. Tere he made a remarkable discovery…
Puzzle Pieces Yet something nagged at Gimbel. For five years he mulled over what he had found; and what he had not found. Finally, he was driven to organize another Doria expedition with a twofold purpose: to recover the purser’s safe, and to find the smoking gun that shot the Doria to the bottom. Gimbel, Andersen and ten wealthy
patrons put a million and a half dollars into the project. Gimbel hired Oceaneering International, its crew and equipment – not the least of which was a live-in chamber the measured twenty-three feet (7m) in length. Once saturated, divers entered a transfer chamber which took them down to the shipwreck. Heliox, hot-water suits, and a 16-millimeter motion picture camera completed the ensemble. The team spent a month on site. They recovered a safe, but it was not the purser’s safe. The film of the
Above: This
brass plaque informed
passengers how to reach the Belvedere
Deck. The text is given in four languages:
Italian, English, French, and Spanish.
recovery was the highlight of the television special, ‘Andrea Doria: the Final Chapter’. More satisfying to Gimbel was his trek through the interior to the collision hole, which he exited. He found himself outside the hull. Because he was breathing through an umbilical hose, he could not simply swim to the transfer chamber; he had to retrace his path through the maze of sagging metal beams. From the extent of the damage that
he observed, Gimbel speculated that the bow of the Stockholm had not only pierced the watertight bulkhead that separated two watertight compartments, thus flooding both of them, but also then punctured another bulkhead and flooded a third compartment as the snared Stockholm pivoted as a result of the Doria’s forward motion. When the special aired in 1984, the
safe was opened live and the contents were revealed: thousands of paper bank notes of various U.S. and Italian denominations. That spelled the end of
commercial photographic and salvage operations on the Doria. Yet it was not the end of exploration.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68