The lures and dangers of diving to the Andrea Doria

Around 50 people lost their lives when the Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria collided with another ship off the coast of Nantucket on July 25, 1956. But since then, as many as 16 people have died diving down to the wreck of the luxury vessel.

In 2015, Tom Pritchard, an expert diver, went missing while exploring the Andrea Doria. Most recently, another experienced diver, who traveled from Gateshead, England, was pulled from the water unconscious during a July trip to the shipwreck and later died. According to The Cape Cod Times, police are investigating the possibility of an equipment malfunction in his death.  

By Steve Bielenda’s tally, 18 people have died on excursions to the Doria, known as the Mount Everest of diving because of its allure and difficulty.

The retired ship captain, who led excursions to the wreck between 1981 and 2001 and has 20 years of experience diving down to it himself, said it’s not the Doria itself that’s dangerous to divers.

“It’s an inanimate object,” he said. “It does nothing to you. It’s the diver — the equipment, what they do, and their health.”

Dan Crowell, who also ran a charter to the Doria from the late ’80s until 2002 and has over 200 dives to the wreck, agreed.

“It’s not really any more dangerous than any other wreck,” he said. “It’s just an inanimate object laying on the bottom of the ocean. But any dive, regardless of its depth or location, can be dangerous.”

What makes the Andrea Doria so enticing to divers

The Andrea Doria sinks off Nantucket on July 25, 1956.

The allure of the Andrea Doria is its artifacts, such as the ship’s china, that divers can find and keep, according to Crowell.

“If [they] didn’t come back with a piece of china, they felt, I guess, like they weren’t an accomplished diver or adequate diver, whatever the case may be,” he said.  

According to Victor Mastone, director and archaeologist of the state’s Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources, the Andrea Doria rests in international waters, outside the state’s jurisdiction. He said the owner of the shipwreck has not enforced its salvage rights over the small items, such as plates, removed by divers.

“It’s just a very common practice,” he said, adding that the site, though known to be dangerous, is a popular one for divers.

In addition to the temptation of artifacts waiting to be found, Crowell said the wreck’s moniker as “the Mount Everest of wreck diving” “feeds everyone’s ego.”

He said the phrase was coined by Al Giddings, a cinematographer who filmed the wreck in the 1960s. (Giddings made the comparison because while he was filming there was a high current that — with the light and silt — made it look like there was a blizzard underwater.)

The nickname stuck.

“Diving the Andrea Doria is kind of a notch in your belt,” Crowell said.

The dangers of diving

Two divers return to the boat after diving to the Andrea Doria in 1968.

While Crowell and Bielenda said most of what makes the Andrea Doria dangerous is typical of wreck diving, Bielenda added there a few things that increase the risk with the sunken ocean liner, which rests in about 240 feet of water.

“The wreck becomes dangerous because of its depth and the attitude of the diver,” he said. “And then factor in health issues, and then factor in that you’re dependent upon equipment.”

The remoteness of the wreck’s location, about 50 miles off the coast of Nantucket and about 100 miles from Long Island’s Montauk, only adds to the existing dangers. Help is miles away, and the wreck’s proximity to the continental shelf can mean stronger currents, according to Crowell.  

A little weather pattern could bring in 15-foot waves within 20 minutes, Bielenda said.

Most trips to the Andrea Doria are made from the middle of June to the end of August, when the weather patterns — and the water temperature — are best.

Generally divers have about 30 to 40 minutes when going down to a depth of 200 feet, which includes the descent and ascent, Bielenda said.

“It goes in the blink of the eye, and you can’t really travel too far,” he said.

Crowell, who saw two people die going to the Andrea Doria in a span of 13 months, said generally most fatalities in diving are related to medical issues. Water, he pointed out, is 800 times denser than air, so each move a diver makes takes 800 times more effort.

The weight of the equipment required, the depth of the dive, and the cold temperature of the water just add stress on the body.

“What people don’t understand is the amount of physics and physiology that are involved — that once you break those parameters, your likelihood to survive is not very good,” Crowell said.

As for the attitude of the diver, Bielenda said he turned down more people than he took out to the wreck. He’d interview potential passengers on his ship on the phone beforehand, he said, getting information not just about their diving ability, equipment, and experience, but their “psyche.”

“You want to know what kind of person they are,” the former ship captain said. “When you get a person who starts talking about wanting to recover artifacts — ‘I’m an artifact collector and I need to get a piece of china,’ — you know you’re going to have a potential problem.”

All the china is inside the ship — and going inside the deteriorating wreck presents another layer of risk during a dive.

What it’s like inside the shipwreck

Divers examine the stern of the sunken Andrea Doria.

Bielenda said because of its depth, divers usually can’t see the Andrea Doria until they’re about 40 or 50 feet away from it.

“It would just come up as this big ominous shadow, black shadow,” he said. “That’s what you would first see. Then as your eyes adjusted, and you got closer to the wreck, then the distinguishing marks of the ship would come out and you’d see it.”

With little light making it inside the wreck, which rests on its side, divers must depend on the lights they bring with them.

Divers swim into a hole, where first class passengers once boarded, that leads to a corridor that stretches across the width of the vessel. With the ship resting on its side, the passageway is vertical. To find china, divers have to drop down the corridor (with the walls as ceiling and floor) to about 205 feet below the surface, where there is an opening going into the ship’s main dining room.

“You have to work your way in, keeping your buoyancy so you’re not touching the bottom or the walls and everything,” Bielenda said.

Doing so would disrupt the thick coating of silt and mud inside the ship and create clouds of dirt, making it impossible to see, he added.

Getting tangled in cables and wires hanging through the rotted walls above and debris inside is another risk.

“The wreck is falling apart,” Bielenda said. “It’s an underwater junk pile. And then take that underwater junk pile and cover it with sea anemones, dirt, and marine growth. So it’s like an underwater garbage pail that you’re diving into.”

A draw for years to come

Crowell, who’s witnessed 13 fatalities on diving excursions, said he expects the pull of the Andrea Doria to continue for decades since there aren’t many wrecks where divers can find an artifact that serves as a “trophy” of the visit to the ocean’s depths. “It’s a very fun, very exciting thing to do,” Crowell said. “That’s why we all do it. It’s kind of one of the rare things where you can go out and feel like a true Indiana Jones.”

Mastone said the wreck is collapsing.

“It’s eventually going to be undiveable,” he said.

Crowell said when he was running excursions, everyone understood the risks and most would say it was worth it.

Still, he says he hopes to never again have to be around another fatality or recover a body.

“It’s not a fun thing to do,” he said.