8:00 am Plane: INJURED CHILD RESCUED IN BASKET
The four year old Italian girl with the fractured skull was now aboard the helicopter.
While the helicopters hovered over
the Stockholm
the scene had
come to look like an international convention of ships at the Times Square of
the Atlantic, as the waters off Nantucket have been popularly known.
The Ile de France and the
freighter Cape Ann had departed, but there remained the transport Pvt.
William H.Thomas and the tanker Hopkins (which had arrived in time to
help in the rescue), the Navy
The
Coast Guard cutter Evergreen, the first of eleven cutters to take part in
the disaster, arrived at 8:06 A.M. and immediately assumed command of the
disaster area. Coast
Guard headquarters in New York and Boston had dispatched all available craft
through the night until a few minutes after 6 A.M., when the cutter Humboldt
left Boston. The
Thomas, then the United States command
ship at the scene, radioed: PLENTY SHIPS NOW. NO FURTHER ASSISTANCE NEEDED.
She would soon roll over on her starboard side, the men in the lifeboats knew.
The destroyer escort Allen which came alongside Captain Calamai's lifeboat at about 8:30 A.M. Captain Calamai expressed his thanks but declined the invitation to board .He preferred, he told the United States warship, to wait for the promised Coast Guard tugboats. The destroyer escort, returning from a training cruise for Navy reservists off St. John's, Newfoundland, had reached the scene before daybreak but after the rescue operation had been completed.
8:30 am Coast Guard: FIVE INJURED CREW REMOVED FROM STOCKHOLM BY HELICOPTER.
8:40 am Coast Guard Evergreen: MAIN DECK LINE STARBOARD SIDE AT WATER'S EDGE. VESSEL WENT COMPLETELY OVER ON ITS STARBOARD SIDE SLIGHTLY DOWN BY THE HEAD. ESTIMATED LIST A MINIMUM OF 45 TO 50 DEGREE. HULL RUPTURED JUT AFT OF BRIDGE. PENETRATION ONE-THIRD OF BEAM OF SHIP, LENGTH 40 FEET. VESSEL TOOK A 25 DEGREE LIST IMMEDIATELY AFTER COLLISION.
The helicopters transported the injured to Nantucket Airport where an attempt to give Alf Johannsson a transfusion didn't work. Alf died of a skull fracture. The four remaining survivors were transported to Boston's Logan International Airport by a Coast Guard Amphibian. The little girl and Lars Falk were then transported by a Coast Guard helicopter to Brighton Marine Hospital, the other two injured survivors were transported by ambulance.
The little girl had a note pinned on her clothes that stated she was Italian. The only identifying item was a bracelet with a ram's horn. Hospital officials later took pictures of the girl for publication in newspapers and on television in an effort to find the girl's parents, or anyone who could identify their tiny patient. Locating her parents was of utmost importance, the little girl, unconscious since she was airlifted from the Stockholm, was in serious condition and near death.
The other three crewmembers were in fair condition all with multiple fractures.
Captain Calamai's torturous vigil came to an end five minutes before nine in the morning when he sighted a squat, black-hulled craft with white superstructure advancing slowly toward him from the north. The small boat turned out to be the Coast Guard Cutter Hornbeam, bearing the designation W394 on her hull, which had left Woods Hole, Massachusetts, seven hours before. The cutter, equipped with towing bit and equipment, rounded the sagging bow of the Andrea Doria and came alongside lifeboat No. 11.
A
spark of life fluttered in the haggard face of Captain Calamai when he
recognized the small craft as the long-awaited tugboat.
Helped aboard the cutter, Captain Calamai climbed directly to the
pilothouse of the small boat to take up the problem of towing with the young
lieutenant, Roger F. Erdman, who commanded the Hornbeam.
The other men in lifeboat 11 and from lifeboat No. 5 also climbed aboard
and were happy to accept steaming hot coffee from the Coast Guard crew.
Thirty-one men in the third lifeboat accepted the hospitality of the
Navy's destroyer escort Allen, while waiting for word
of the outcome of
the conference in the pilothouse of the cutter.