To Captain Calamai, the report of the severe list came like a second stroke to a man who had suffered his first, unexpected heart attack. It meant his ship was sinking immediately after the collision.
The Engine room consisted of three chambers in the center section of the 697 foot ship. The first room forward was the Generator Room, 47 feet long and 75 feet wide, containing five huge diesel generators, lined side by side across the breath of the room, which provided for the main electrical needs of the ship.. Behind that was the Boiler Room containing two boilers to supply hot water for passenger services and four huge boilers to supply high-compression steam to drive the ship's turbine motors. The third chamber was the Main Engine Room containing the twin turbine engines and most of the controls for the ship's pumps and machinery. Twenty-two officers and men were on watch in the three rooms at the time of the collision because of the fog precautions. The impact ruptured the starboard turbine motors, which began to spurt oil. The engine was shut down by First Assistant Engineer Giuseppe Mondini even before the order came from the bridge. When the order came for full stop the port engine was switched off. Men were sent forward to the Boiler Room and the Generator room, and aft to the rear of the ship where the rudder machinery was located, to check for damage.
The Andrea Doria was designed and constructed as a two compartment ship in conformity to at least the minimum standards of stability. The 697 foot length was divided into eleven watertight chambers in such a way that if any two of the chambers became fully or partially flooded in an emergency, the other chambers would contain enough air and buoyancy to keep the ship afloat. The watertight chambers were formed by the watertight bulkheads which extended across the width of the ship and from the bottom up to the level of A Deck. The only openings in these bulkheads were watertight doors, which when closed were as watertight as the bulkheads themselves. Thus water entering any one or even two compartments would be contained, and since the ship was designed to list no more than 15 degrees at the worst, it should remain afloat under the worst conditions imaginable. The Andrea Doria was theoretically "unsinkable".
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| Collision Course: Diagram of the bottom deck of the Andrea Doria |
In fewer than five minutes after the collision, the Andrea Doria was listing more than 20 degrees and to Alcisio Chiappori, chief engineer, it meant that water would overflow one compartment into the next compartment progressively until the ship sank-if she did not capsize first. Unless he could correct the list, the ship was lost.
The engineers who had gone forward from the Main Engine Room discovered the source of water pouring into the ship. The Stockholm bow had ripped open the compartment immediately forward of the Generator Room. It was the deep tank compartment, 55 feet long, which contained ten huge tanks with a capacity for 1,000 tons of fuel oil. The tanks were arranged with three outboard and two inboard tanks on each side of the compartment, with an access tunnel, about seven feet high and four feet wide, running from the Generator Room to a small pump and control room, a sort of cul-de-sac, at the forward end. The tunnel had four laterals branching off toward the hull at the forward and rear ends of the compartment. The tunnel and its laterals permitted access through manholes to the fuel tanks below the compartment, which were called "double bottoms".
The Andrea Doria, like all modern ships, had a complete double bottom made up of a series of fuel and water storage tanks the entire length of the ship. The double bottom, besides being an excellent storage space, served the double purpose of adding ballast weight to the lowest part of the ship and protecting the vessel from being punctured by underwater objects. For added protection, the Andrea Doria also had a series of wing tanks for carrying fuel and water along the sides of the three engine rooms. Extending to the top of the engine rooms, the tanks served as a double hull protecting the three largest compartments from being punctured.
If the Stockholm had hit at any one of the three engine room compartments, or even two compartments, the Andrea Doria could have withstood the damage. The sea would have flowed across the open compartments the width of the ship and there would have been hardly any list.
But in smashing open the deep-tank compartment, the Stockholm had struck a vulnerable spot. Her bow pierced the five fuel tanks on the starboard side of the compartment and left intact the portside tanks. The ten fuel tanks near the end of the voyage had been empty. Thus some 500 tons or 240,000 gallons of sea water gushed into the starboard tanks, providing that much dead weight on one side of the ship, while the air-filled port tanks rose out of the sea like a balloon. The more the ship listed to starboard, the more hundreds and thousands of tons of water poured into the 40-foot hole in the side of the Doria, and the more water that flowed into the starboard side, the more the ship listed. It seemed only a matter of time before the ship would roll over on her starboard side and go down.
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| Collision Course: Close up of the deep tank compartment and Generator Room. The flooded tunnel prevented the crew from reaching the Tank Pump room. Pumping water into the port tanks may have corrected the list by providing ballast on the port side. |
The engineers discovered there was no way they could stop the flooding of the Generator Room. It was originally thought a watertight door between the access tunnel and Generator Room was missing. 25 years after the collision Peter Gimbel, a diver, discovered the Stockholm had smashed the watertight bulkhead between the Generator Room and the deep-tank compartment and split the hull with an 80ft gash.
Sea water, mixed with the black oil of the ruptured double bottom tanks and the residue of the deep tanks, flowed into the Generator Room. The water found its natural way to the starboard side of the room, adding to the list of the ship. Slowly it rose up the inclined deck toward the center of the room, threatening to short-circuit successively the five dynamos that produced 3,750 kilowatts of electricity for the ship.
There was nothing Chief Engineer Chiappori could do to save the Generator Room. He had put to work all the suction pumps of the ship, but they were unable to stem the rising water. As the water level approached the electrical parts of the No. 5 generator, which was closest to the starboard wall, he had that generator switched off. It was merely a matter of time before all the generators would be useless, but he posted an electrician at the generator control board with orders to shut off each generator only at the last possible minute when the rising water threatened to touch an electrical part. That was to prolong the operation of the electrical plant because as the electricity supply decreased, fewer pumps could be used to cope with the flooding water.
Chief Engineer Chiappori, who was a vacation replacement for the regular chief engineer, learned that there was no practical way he could flood the port tanks of the deep tank compartment. That had been his best and most obvious hope of righting the list of the ship. But the pumps and controls for flooding these tanks were located in the cul-de-sac room at the forward end of the flooded tunnel.
The engineering officers and men worked furiously against time and the inrushing sea. The air-conditioning had been shut down to conserve electricity and the three engine rooms had become unbearably hot and steamy. The list of the ship made it almost impossible to maintain one's footing on the wet and slippery grating of the deck. The Boiler Room and the Main Engine Room had been dry for some time after the collision, but slowly the water and oil which had drained from the upper decks into the bilges began to overflow through the floor gratings into the Boiler Room and Engine Room. Even with every available pump on the ship in operation, it was, the engineers knew, a losing battle.
The situation was reported to the bridge by telephone and the men expected the ship to capsize before long. The list hovered at about 22 degrees and many ships had gone into the death throes at a lesser degree of list. Captain Calamai ordered virtually everyone on the bridge to turn to and launch the lifeboats. He directed them first to the port side lifeboats on the high side of the ship. He ordered Second Officer Badano to summon the lifeboat crews to their stations. The loudspeakers in the crew's quarters twice announced: "Il personale destino alle imbarcazioni si portino ai propri posti!" (The personnel assigned to the lifeboats are to report to their assigned posts!)