Snippet 7
In January of 1953 the Andrea Doria made its maiden voyage to New York harbor from Italy. The ship was a state of the art transatlantic carrier. it touted its sea worthiness based on stabilizers, claiming they would prevent the ship from sinking and also provide a smooth sail on a frequent angry Atlantic Ocean. June of that year I sailed to Naples on that ship. I was nine and my brother was eleven.
The ship had three classes of service: first, cabin, and third. First class passengers enjoyed the higher decks. My parents had booked passage in Cabin Class for the four of us. We had two bunk beds, a porthole between the upper bunks. We had a sink in our cabin. The toilets and showers were down the hall.
That nine-day voyage gave me a taste of independence that I had never imagined. My brother and I met up with Philip and Filomena, a brother and sister our own ages. We became a team and spent nearly every day exploring the ship from top to bottom, taking staircases wherever they would take us. Since we were together, our parents didn’t seem to worry about us. I guess they figured we couldn’t go that far. But far we did go, even to a cargo area where we saw coffins and ran upstairs so fast we could barely catch our breaths.
“Oh my God, do you believe that. Could it be?” Filomena screamed.
“There must have been six of them,” I added.
“We can’t tell our parents. They’ll yell at us for going there,” the older boys agreed.
The daily activities sheet was slipped under our door every night and we were excited to see what feature film they would be showing in the ballroom converted to a theater. PG ratings were still in the future. I remember vividly Marilyn Monroe in Gentleman Prefer Blondes and Robert Taylor in Ivanhoe. We would rush to get the front seats, carrying peaches or pears we’d taken from the dining room. I had Bolognese sauce for the first time and ate it every day at lunch and dinner. The bowls of fruit had the darkest, firmest, and blackest cherries I’d ever seen. The most exciting treat was the afternoon tea with its pastry carts. Cream puffs were my favorite, so much so that I followed the waiter around as he served the guests and stole puff after puff without his notice. At dinner my mother asked,
“I guess you’ll have the pasta again.”
“No, I don’t want it,” I cried.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Did you eat too many cream puffs today?”
It never occurred to me she saw what I was doing. I guess she knew I’d find out for myself about over indulging. I had the worst stomach ache.
The ship became a world of adventure and exploring its nooks and crannies gave me a sense of freedom, a sense of wonder and curiosity. One evening after dinner we gathered in the ballroom where the adults were dancing to a live band. I slipped away to see if I could peak into the first class ballroom. While there were doors that prevented passengers from entering this ballroom, I managed to slip through when a crew member exited it. I stood in a dark corner and believed I had entered a movie film. The women were wearing long, silky dresses and the men wore tuxedos. They moved along the dance floor as if gliding on ice. Everyone was smoking. The laughter was subdued under a grand chandelier. The seats were curved and covered in white leather. Fortunately, no one saw me and I was able to slip out as easily as I had slipped in on the heels of a crew member.
When I returned to our ballroom the band was playing a Tarantella and the laughter was hearty and loud. None of the women wore a long dress and some of the men were in shirtsleeves. My dad always wore a suit and tie. My mom wore a beautiful black dress. I even had on my black patent leather MaryJanes. Suddenly I felt like we didn’t belong, neither her nor there. Who were we? Who was I?
On July 25, 1956, three years after my voyage, the Andrea Doria sank after a collision with the Stockholm. The ship that engineers claimed wouldn’t sink sank. It was hit in the area that housed all the electrical controls, leaving it helpless. I remember reading the newspaper reports with great zeal and great sadness. Television news showed it listing on its starboard side, exposing its under belly. As it disappeared into the sea, something in me died too.