Sacrificed for the State
As the Stockholm arrived at New York’ s Pier 97 on July 27, a furious debate began over who was at fault.
It was hard to understand how two ships collided in high seas when they had seen each other on radar.
The Italians claimed that the Stockholm veered and pointed straight at them. According to the Swedes, it was the Andrea Doria that cut across the Stockholm’s path.
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When the contents of the ship’s black boxes — the sperry course recorders — were examined, it became clear that the Stockholm that made the fatal error, by turning right and ramming into the Andrea Doria.
A commission of inquiry from the Italian Ministry of Marine reached the same conclusion after a year of investigations. A final report stated that the accident was "essentially caused by the dangerous maneuver of Stockholm Third Officer Ernst Carstens-Johannsen."
The document was never released.
The companies that owned the ships, the Italian line and the Swenska Amerika Linye, had settled their liability claims out of court, saving their insurers millions of dollars. If the Swenska Amerika Linye had been found responsible, the company would have had to have faced a $116 million compensation request filed by a third-party attorney.
"This would have certainly meant bankruptcy for the Swedish company. It would have not been good for the Italians," Eliseo said.
Eliseo explained that the Swenska Amerika Linye was the main foreign client of Ansaldo, which was controlled by IRI, Italy's state industrial holding company. IRI also controlled the Italian line, which owned the Andrea Doria.
"It happened that the Swenska Amerika Linye had just commissioned Ansaldo to build the Grispsholm liner. So they preferred to keep the documents under secret and sacrifice Captain Calamai," Eliseo told Discovery News.
While the Stockholm officials were promoted (Nordenson was given the command of the newly built Gripsholm), Calamai was abandoned by his company.
A later investigation by U.S. naval engineer John Carrothers came to the conclusion that Stockholm Third Officer Ernst Carstens-Johannsen caused the crash by misreading his radar, assuming it was on the 15-mile-range scale (further away) when, in reality, the scale was at five miles.
In a study published in 1971 in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Carrothers explained that this was an easy mistake since the scale was not illuminated and there was no variable range indicator. A computer simulator at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy has recently confirmed Carrothers’ study.
From his house in Sweden, Carstens-Johannsen continues to deny any responsibility. "I did not make any mistake," he told the Italian state television channel RAI 1.
On March 10, 1972, Carrothers wrote Calamai about his investigation, saying, "Rest assured, Captain Calamai, there are many of us who would be more than willing to serve under your command at anytime."
Calamai never opened that letter. Destroyed by the burden of fault, he died on April 7, 1972 in Genova. On his deathbed, his last words were: "Are the passengers safe?"
