Here we have a local woman in history cache.
SS Andrea Doria, was an ocean liner for the Italian Line home-ported in Genoa, Italy, known for its sinking in 1956, where of the 1,706 passengers and crew, 1,660 were rescued, while 46 passengers and crew lost their lives.
As 14-year-old Madge Young was strolling the deck of the luxury liner shortly before she and her family retired for the night, she remembers her father, Robert, making a comment that was not only prophetic but would stay with her the rest of her life. He observed, "If they don't slow these things down in the fog, one of these days something's going to happen."
Just a few minutes later, at 11:11 p.m., on July 25, 1956, the westbound Italian steamship Andrea Doria, considered one of the most beautiful superliners ever built and due to dock in New York at 6 a.m., was rammed by the Swedish motorship Stockholm traveling east, the smallest liner in regular service, but with a prow built to follow in the wake of ice breakers. The collision occurred about 45 miles south of Nantucket and 180 miles east of Ambrose Lightship, the main entrance to New York Harbor.
In a diary entry, Madge Young Nickerson, now a more than 30-year permanent resident of Alton, whose family ties to the town go back generations, recalled at the moment of impact her father was just getting into bed in her parents' stateroom, while her brother David, three years her junior, was already asleep. Her mother, Virginia, was washing out her husband's shirt, and Madge was brushing her teeth.
"All of a sudden, there was a terrible crash. I fell into the bathtub. It felt like two hard bumps. There was a horrible jarring noise with it," she remembers.
After emerging from the bathroom, she found her brother still sleeping, while her father had grabbed a life jacket and her mother a coat. "I wasn't scared at all. I just thought they had stopped the engines suddenly… I was bewildered and wondered why Daddy told me to get my life jacket. I thought, 'What a big "do" Daddy is making out of this whole thing.' But I thought it would be fun to wear the life jacket with pajamas. Daddy was trying to arouse David."
Robert T. Young was not an average passenger and had reason for his immediate trepidation. For most all of his working life he was associated with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), eventually serving as president and chairman of the board. As he explained in an article published in the USA Today magazine in July 1981, on the 25th anniversary of the disaster, "[ABS] does not underwrite insurance, but its reports and records for individual ships are referred to by insurance companies and, when it puts its seal of approval on a ship, it is said to be 'classed'; therefore, ABS is referred to as a classification society." Madge Nickerson confirmed that the Andrea Doria had been doubly classed by both ABS and its Italian counterpart. Young continued, "… I spent almost all my professional life as a classification surveyor, almost 20 years of which were served in various countries outside the U.S."
When he saw the Doria's stabilizing bilge keel rise from the waves, he knew the liner was doomed.
Nickerson says she and her family had crossed the Atlantic several times and would continue to do so through the 60s and 70s. After postings in Buenos Aires, Antwerp and London, in 1956 the Young family was due for home leave. Before departing Europe, they had taken a trip to Italy and booked their return to the U.S. from Naples. Because their original adjoining cabin reservations near the forward end of the ship might prove uncomfortable for Virginia, they were changed to port (left) amidship.
As Nickerson marveled, "Our original booking was in Cabin 56 on the starboard
side, which was right at the point of impact when the subsequent collision occurred."
In Cabin 52, a shipboard pal of Nickerson's who was later to become well-known in the art world was asleep at the time of the crash, along with her sister, while her stepfather and mother were in Cabin 54. When the girl awoke, she was still on her mattress, her autograph book by her side, under a starry sky, lying in the wreckage of the Stockholm's bow. The force of the impact had catapulted her to the other ship. Hospitalized in New York, she was to learn that her stepfather and sister had been killed and her mother severely injured. Nickerson said of the disaster, "My family and I were so fortunate, while others suffered such devastating loss and injury."
As the ship listed further to starboard, women and children slid down from the port side to the waiting arms of men, no longer able to stand, and were led over the side. Nickerson remembers, "Stepping onto that dangling rope ladder for the 50-foot descent was the scariest moment for me." Fortunately, the French liner Ile de France had reversed its eastbound direction and, along with several other boats, came to the aid of both damaged ships. Of the 1,706 passengers on the Andrea Doria, 46 died in the collision or as a result of it, while five Stockholm crewmen perished. It has been called the greatest sea rescue in peacetime history.
A woman for whom the memory of the disaster remained particularly troubling was Pierette Domenica Simpson, who, as a nine-year-old, was traveling to America with her grandparents to be reunited with her mother. As a language teacher in a private school 40 years later, she was asked to speak about her experience, and an interest to research it further was kindled, first through her private papers and then through more technical probing and by corresponding with survivors. One of these was Nickerson, whom she had not known on board. The two became friends over the years, and in 2006, Simpson published Alive on the Andrea Doria, to which Nickerson and others contributed. Nickerson told her, "It was not as life-changing for me as for you."
"Pierette is a stunning and very accomplished woman," said Nickerson, "fluent in five languages and a violinist with the Detroit Symphony. With no background in engineering, she studied all the possible causes of the crash."
In her book she went beyond life stories and reminiscences to deal with the continuing controversy of which ship was to blame for the accident. Both ships were insured by Lloyd's of London; the Italian and Swedish American Lines settled out of court. A three-expert commission, including Robert Young, through exhaustive review of the ships' logs and records and the testimony of crew members, placed the Stockholm at fault, blaming fog and a mistaken radar reading by that ship's Third Officer for the proximity of the two vessels. Nickerson pointed out, "For the Doria to have caused the crash, she would have had to maneuver an S-curve at 2,500 knots."
When Nickerson, Simpson, and others met at the King's Point, Long Island, Merchant Marine Academy for the 50th reunion, the occasion was considerably saddened by the death of diver David Bright, who had made over 200 dives to the Doria remains -- what Nickerson described as, "the Everest of dives." He had wanted to make one more exploration before the gathering and perished in the attempt.
On the morning of July 26, 1956, the Andrea Doria disappeared below the waves at 10:09 a.m. Captain Piero Calamai, true to naval tradition, wanted to remain on the bridge and go under with his beloved ship. He only abandoned it with great reluctance when his Staff Officer and several other officers and crewmen, who had been ordered to the waiting lifeboats, threatened to come back up the ladder to join him. The Stockholm, with a gaping hole in its bow, was towed back to New York Harbor. It was able to return to service the following spring.
Madge Young Nickerson, after attending Concord Academy and Tufts University, took a position automating the accounting for Harvard Business School. She learned programming while also acting as supervisor to the remaining "elderly 'data processors,' ladies who still did small data analysis jobs for professors on comptometers, a sort of mechanical abacus over which their fingers flew with amazing rapidity," she recalls with a chuckle. She later was involved with systems engineering, developing a tracking system for F-14 fighter jets. "That was really fun," she adds. Soon after, she became an at-home mother. In 1994, she and her father appeared on the Discovery Channel's series on survivals, and this past summer she was profiled in a Boston Globe article and featured on Channel 9's Chronicle.
She and her husband, Nick, lived in a welcoming, expansive home near Winnipesaukee, with two beaches on the property. The central room of the home is the refurbished barn, which soars two stories and houses countless family possessions and memories, including much maritime memorabilia. Looking back to that fateful night over 60 years ago, Nickerson insists her experience was different from that of most of the passengers. "I was a 14-year-old kid. I had no clue the ship would sink. To me it was pretty much a lark." She considers pensively for a moment. "I later understood why my father kissed us so firmly and hugged us so tightly before we went over the side."
NGQ QM.NMK
WLIM MA.AIE
At 1M:11 p.m., on July A5, 19EN, the Andrea Doria was hit by the Stockholm.
A+M=Q
The collision occurred about G5 miles south of Nantucket and 1C0 miles east of Ambrose.
Madge was 1D years old when the Andrea Doria sunk.
There were 1,I06 passengers on the Andrea Doria.
The collision occurred about 45 miles south of Nantucket and 1JL miles east of Ambrose Lightship.
In 19K4, Madge and her father appeared on the Discovery Channel