David and Louise Hollyer were returning to the U.S. after five years in Europe. They packed their belongings and were done by 9 p.m. and their baggage now joined a mountain of luggage on the Promenade Deck. There was something sad and nostalgic about the final night aboard a ship, and their mood was not lightened by the doleful sound of the foghorn and the clammy mist as they took a final turn around the deck. They paused for a brief nightcap at the bar before returning to their cabin, 374 on A Deck, to turn in about 10:30 p.m.

It was slightly past ten o'clock that Wednesday evening. From her seat at one of the tables in the first-class Dining Room, Beverly Green chatted with her friend Jean Ruth as she sipped an after-dinner drink. Jean and Donald Ruth were prior acquaintances who had encountered the Greens in Capri. They were delighted to learn that they were returning from their vacations on the same ship. The Greens invited the Ruths to join them for late drinks in the Belvedere Lounge, high up on the front of the Boat Deck.

About 10:30 p.m., as the Greens and Ruths were finishing dinner, a third couple approached the table. Colonel Walter G. Carlin and his wife, Jeanette roomed in cabin 46 next to the Ruths' cabin 48 in the first-class section on the Upper Deck. By coincidence they were also assigned deck chairs next to the Greens, so the three couples became frequent shipboard companions.
"Will you join us in the lounge for a drink?" Jeanette Carlin asked Beverly Green.
"We've already invited Jean and Donald," Mrs. Green replied. "Why don't you join us?"
Mrs. Carlin appeared ready to accept the invitation, but her husband looked tired and doubtful.
"Why don't we just go up, pack, and get ready for bed?" he said.
Carlin extended his arm to his wife and together they walked out of the dining room. The Carlins made their way to an elevator near the middle of the ship. They rode up one level to the Upper Deck, then walked forward through the hallway past the Ruths' empty cabin, to their number 46. It was on the starboard side, about one-third of the way back from the bow and almost directly beneath the Belvedere Lounge. The cabin was spacious and comfortable, with two single beds separated by a dressing table.

Meanwhile, the Greens and Ruths left the dining room and rode an elevator three levels up to the Boat Deck, and walked forward to the Belvedere Lounge. The elegant lounge was decorated with tapestries, paintings, and wood carvings set against glossy blond paneling-all accented by soft, indirect lighting. Windows on three sides normally provided a panorama of the open sea ahead of the ship, but tonight the view was obscured by a thick fog.
It was slightly past 11:00 p.m., when, about thirty feet below the Greens and the Ruths, Jeanette Carlin selected a book from her luggage and pulled the covers of her bed over her to escape the air conditioning. Walter Carlin walked down a narrow passageway of the cabin that extended back toward the corridor. The bathroom was located at the end of the passageway. Just as he pulled out his toothbrush, he steadied himself against a sharp left turn the ship seemed to be making.

Dinner was to have been a special event for Linda Morgan that night. The fourteen-year-old walked with her family along the open promenade high up on the Boat Deck; tonight the family was to dine with the captain. Linda's father was Edward P. Morgan, whose nightly news cast on the ABC radio network, was popular throughout the United States.
Linda's parents were divorced in 1946 and her mother, Jane, forty, was now married to Camille Cianfarra, forty-nine, the Madrid correspondent of The New York Times. After four years in Spain, The Times had granted Cianfarra a furlough, and he was bringing his wife, Jane, their eight-year-old daughter Joan and Linda back to America. He had earlier reservations on the Leonardo da Vinci, another Italian Line ship, but business had forced him to postpone the trip.
The family climbed into an elevator that took them down to the first-class Dining Room. The maitre d' greeted them at the doorway with an apologetic expression.
"I'm sorry," he said, "the captain will not be able to join you for dinner this evening. He must remain on the bridge. Because of the fog."
After dinner, the Cianfarras could not decide whether to stay awake or go to bed early. They played the horseracing game for a while in the first-class Ballroom. During the trip Cianfarra had won $95 at bingo and another $45 for making the closest estimate of the length of a day's voyage. But tonight his good luck had ended. After losing at the races he yawned and decided he was sleepy.
"Let's go to bed," he suggested, and the others agreed.
Linda Morgan followed her family down to the Upper Deck and along the corridor to cabins 52 and 54.

George P. Kerr, his wife Matheson and their daughter Kyrie, had originally booked these adjoining rooms. The Kerrs were on their way from their home in Rome to a holiday in Mexico. They had boarded the ship in Naples. "I don't want to be with you all the time," thirteen-year-old Kyrie had complained to her parents. "I'm grown up now."
Kerr had his daughter moved to a single cabin high up on the Boat Deck, while he and his wife switched to cabin 67 on the port side of the Upper Deck. When the Cianfarras boarded the ship in Gibraltar, cabins 52 and 54 were available. Linda and Joan were in 52. The two half sisters chatted excitedly about the morning. The doorway adjoining their parents' cabin opened and the Cianfarras walked in to say good night. Linda reached for the light switch and the stateroom went dark.

Dr. Thure Peterson ordered a half bottle of champagne with dinner.
"We'll celebrate," he said to his wife, Martha; "it's our last night out."
A white-jacketed steward brought the champagne in a silver ice bucket that mirrored the reflected light of massive crystal chandeliers overhead. The Petersons talked softly together as they ate their dinner. Martha had been right. The relaxing voyage was just what they needed, instead of two weeks of busy sightseeing in Italy. The couple was returning home to Upper Montclair, New Jersey, after a month-long vacation in Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland. Mr. Peterson had tried to extend the trip two weeks so they could tour Italy. He attempted to change their reservations from the Andrea Doria to another Italian Line ship, the Cristoforo Colombo, scheduled to sail two weeks later. But the Cristoforo Colombo was fully booked. Instead, he made airline reservations for July 26. Martha finally persuaded him that a week on an ocean liner would be more relaxing than foot-wearying sightseeing. The Petersons decided to honor their original reservations and had boarded the Andrea Doria at Cannes, France, on July 17. Thure Peterson sat back in his chair in the dining room, and checked his watch. It was 10:30 p.m.
"Let's turn in early," he suggested.
The couple left the dining room on the Foyer Deck and stepped through the main foyer area and up a flight of stairs to the Upper Deck. They found their cabin, 56, next to the Cianfarras.

The chiropractor and his wife had no way of knowing that their room had previously been assigned to two other families. Robert Young, the shipping inspector, was concerned about his wife's sensitive stomach, and had asked to be switched from cabin 56 to a room back toward the middle of the ship where the rolling motion would be less discernible. Cabin 56 was then assigned to Nora Kovach, twenty-four, and her husband, Istvan Rabovsky, twenty-six, Hungarian ballet dancers who had been granted asylum in the West in 1953. Having completed a European dancing tour, they were returning to their new home in the United States. But when they boarded the Andrea Doria at Genoa they complained that cabin 56 cost $60 more than they wanted to pay. They were switched to cabin 77, a smaller, less expensive room about amidships on the portside. The seemingly unpopular cabin 56 was then given to the Petersons.

Dr. Peterson slipped the key into the lock, and as the door opened he noticed immediately that the maid had confused their beds. She had placed Martha's white nylon nightgown on Thure's bed near the porthole, and put Thure's bathrobe on Martha's bed. The doctor asked his wife if she wanted to change beds.
"No," she answered.
When they had first seen the cabin, Martha had walked over to the porthole to look out. There was no reason for her to sleep next to the water. She chose the bed against the corridor wall, adjacent to an elevator shaft. The couple prepared for bed. Martha turned on the reading light over her bed and opened a book. Thure Peterson threw off his robe and crawled  into his bunk. Cabin 56 grew quiet.

 Father John Dolciamore, thirty, and Father Richard Wojcik, thirty-three, had planned to go to bed right after dinner. But as they ate in the dining room a third priest approached them. He was fifty-six-year-old Father Paul Lambert, pastor of St. Philomena's Catholic Church in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, whom they had befriended during the voyage. Every night since leaving Naples the three priests had played a game of Scrabble.
"How about a farewell game tonight?" Lambert asked.
He was a friend to the two younger priests, and they did not want to disappoint him. But they wanted to be fresh in the morning for their train ride back to the Chicago archdiocese.
"We plan on getting up pretty early tomorrow," Wojcik said. "Maybe we should forget it for tonight."
Lambert's face drooped. "Come on," he said, "it's our last chance."
"Perhaps we could play quickly," Dolciamore suggested.
Lambert agreed to hurry through his dinner and join them soon. Dolciamore and Wojcik left the dining room, took the elevator up to the Boat Deck, and found a table in the quiet cardroom just behind the Belvedere Lounge. Lambert soon joined them. As they arranged the letter tiles for their game, the three men talked about the fog, and of the difficulty in navigating the ship in such blinding conditions.
"I guess they've got radar," Lambert said nervously. "I hope they know how to use it.
The Scrabble game dragged. Dolciamore checked his watch and saw that it was already past 11:00 p.m. He hoped the game would end soon. He and Wojcik could then go to sleep in their cabin, number 58, next to the Petersons.

Among the sleepier passengers sitting in the Belvedere Lounge was Marion W. Boyer. After dinner that night, Marion Boyer had said to his wife,
"Let's not bother to go up to the Belvedere Lounge. We have to get off the ship early tomorrow morning. If we're smart, we'll be at the head of the line."
Mrs. Boyer frowned. "This is our last night aboard. Maybe they'll put on a good show."
Reluctantly, Marion Boyer followed his wife up to the elegant lounge. He sat drinking Fachingwasser while Mrs. Boyer happily watched the passengers dance. Shortly before 11: 00 p.m., he nudged his wife.
"Let's go get some sleep now. We have to get up early."
"First, I'd like to have another cup of coffee," Mrs. Boyer insisted.
Boyer reluctantly ordered the coffee. Mrs. Boyer suddenly turned to watch a vivacious woman dance past their table, smiling at her partner. She was Ruth Roman, at age thirty-two a veteran actress in more than twenty motion pictures. Miss Roman was returning from a European vacation accompanied by her three-year-old son Richard Hall and a nurse-companion, Grace Els. Richard was born during Miss Roman's marriage to Mortimer Hall, a Los Angeles radio station owner. The child was asleep in cabin 82 on the Upper Deck, while Grace Els sat patiently with him.
It was getting late. Many of the guests had begun to leave. Marion Boyer wanted to join them; he could not stay awake. The Boyers occupied room 178 on the Foyer Deck, directly below the Carlins and the Ruths. Boyer waited with growing impatience as his wife drained the last of her coffee.
"All right, now let's go," he said, rising up from his chair. "It's past eleven."
"Wait till I finish my cigarette," Mrs. Boyer retorted.
Her husband, annoyed, sat back down.

The voyage had been an absolute fantasy for thirteen-year old Peter Thieriot. Every year his parents took a grand vacation, but this year he, too, had been invited as a reward for his graduation from grammar school. Ferdinand Thieriot, thirty-five and his wife, Frances, thirty-six, had flown with Peter to England. The Thieriots originally planned to fly home, but Frances persuaded her husband to try a voyage. At a Madrid travel office they were informed that the Andrea Doria would stop at Gibraltar. Thieriot asked for a suite with adjoining rooms, but none was available. Instead Ferdinand and Frances reserved one-half of deluxe suite 180 for themselves, knowing they would have to share it with another couple. Peter was assigned to a small room, cabin 186, by himself about fifty feet farther aft.
Peter quickly made friends with some of the other teenagers on board, and spent most of his days with them. In the evenings, however, he grumbled when he had to dress for dinner in the formal dining room. After dinner that Wednesday evening, Peter sat in the first-class Ballroom fascinated by the spinning wheel of fortune, which determined the outcome of the horse-race game. The last spin was a disappointing moment, a sign that the voyage was practically over. As stewards cleared the horseracing paraphernalia, Peter knew his parents would feel it was time for him to be in bed. As if to confirm his suspicion, Ferdinand Thieriot glanced at his watch. "Time to hit the sack," he announced.
Peter started to protest that it was the last night out, then he saw that his parents, too, were ready to leave.
"We all have to get up early," Ferdinand Thieriot said. He turned to the couple seated with them. "Coming?" he asked.
"No. I think we'll go up to the lounge and have a drink," said Max Passante, a pleasant, forty-four-year-old geologist, who had become a shipboard grandfather to Peter. "We'll be down to bed later. See you in the morning."
Passante and his wife had reserved half of suite 180 before Ferdinand Thieriot had booked passage. The Thieriots left the Passantes in the Ballroom and walked two levels down to the Foyer Deck. Frances Thieriot walked Peter to his room across from the ladies' dress shop. Frances Thieriot then walked forward to deluxe suite 180, located on the starboard side of the ship directly across from the chapel and beneath the Cianfarras and Petersons.

One of the passengers absent from the Belvedere Lounge that evening was fifty-seven-year-old Richardson C. Dilworth, the mayor of Philadelphia. During the voyage, he devoted hours to his two favorite pastimes, reading and dining. He had been delighted to find Ruth Roman on board and, in fact, in the adjacent cabin. During the cruise he and Ann introduced themselves to the actress, who invited them to visit her in California. That Wednesday night, the Dilworths were tired. The mayor knew that his vacation would end at the dock in New York. His driver would be there to propel him to Philadelphia and the business of the city. Before dinner he asked a ship's officer if the fog would delay their arrival. He was assured that the Andrea Doria could make almost top speed in fog. They would arrive only an hour or two late.
"Tomorrow's going to be so busy," he said to Ann as they finished dinner, "let's go to bed now."
"OK. I want to get up early anyway. I want breakfast before we get off."
The Dilworths walked to cabin 80, on the starboard side of the Upper Deck, down the corridor from the Carlins, Cianfarras, and Petersons. The mayor began to undress.
"I guess I'll just leave my clothes here tonight," he said, arranging his suit neatly on a hanger near the foot of the bed. "There's no sense in packing them away in the wardrobe if we're going to get back into them so early tomorrow."

In the tourist class Social Hall, Paul Sergio presided at an impromptu party for his extended family. He watched as his playful nephews and nieces devoured their ice cream. Several other passengers had brought concertinas into the hall and couples danced, while others sang. The mood was one of festivity mixed with apprehension, as the emigrant families prepared for their arrival on the legendary shore of America.
Paul Sergio knew that the United States was a good country. Originally from a poor village in Calabria in southern Italy, Sergio had traveled to New York as a young man. Already an accomplished cobbler, he easily found steady work. He saved his wages until he could afford to return to Calabria in 1927 to marry his girlfriend, Margaret. Two years later he brought his wife and infant son, Tony, to South Bend, Indiana, where they settled.
Meanwhile, as often happens in small European villages, Paul's younger brother Ross married Margaret's sister Maria. Ross journeyed to South Bend to live with his brother while he saved enough money to bring Maria and their four children to the United States.
By 1956 Margaret was anxious to return to Calabria to visit her aging mother. Brother Ross's family could travel back with them. Ross's wife, Maria Sergio, was supposed to bring her children to the United States in April, but her oldest daughter contracted a cold and immigration authorities would not allow her to make the trip. Now Paul and Margaret Sergio were shepherding the young mother and her children across the Atlantic on the Andrea Doria.
Paul Sergio opened his pocketbook this last night out for the special treat of ice cream for Maria's four children: Giuseppe, thirteen, Anna Maria, ten, Domenica, seven, and little four year-old Rocco. "How beautiful the children are," he said to Maria. "How lucky they are to be traveling to America so young, with their whole lives to live."
At 10:30 P.m., the Sergio family left the Social Hall and went down to Maria's cabin, number 656, on the starboard side of C Deck. Paul and Margaret Sergio helped Maria prepare the children for bed.
Little Rocco, dressed in fresh pajamas, jumped into his uncle's arms. "Can I sleep in your room tonight?" he asked. "Please, Uncle Paul?"
Paul shook his crew cut in kindly refusal. "No. You've got to get your sleep tonight," he said. "You can't stay up too late. We're going to dock in only a few hours. We'll see you in the morning."
"You come and get me, Uncle Paul," Rocco said.
The gentle man tossed Rocco onto his bed. "OK."
Paul and Margaret Sergio left. A sailor on duty opened a doorway and let them through the watertight door back into the compartment where their cabin was located. In their cabin, Paul stepped over to the washbasin. Margaret slipped into her nightclothes and began to say her rosary.

For 24-year-old Liliana Dooner the excitement had built each day of the voyage. She spoke to her friends about her husband, George, a handsome young U. S. sailor she had met when he was assigned to the naval air station in Naples. After he was transferred back to the United States, Liliana had to wait years for permission to join him. Their daughter, Maria, only six days shy of her third birthday, was asleep down in cabin 641 on C Deck, in the care of a baby-sitter. Mrs. Dooner could have flown to America, but airplanes frightened her. She had sought passage on the Andrea Doria but was told at the ticket office in Naples that the beautiful liner was fully booked. Two days prior to sailing, the office had called back. Space was now available due to a cancellation. Mrs. Dooner spent much of the voyage caring for her child, who suffered severely from nausea during the trip. Liliana used the few minutes available to herself each day to swim in the tourist-class pool. She was an expert swimmer and a champion 800-meter runner. Just before 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday night, Liliana suddenly rose from her table in the tourist-class bar. "I have to go down to my room and check Maria," she explained to her friends.
"Why?" an older woman responded. "She's OK. If she gets sick, the baby-sitter will call you."
"No, I must go." Liliana could not explain the impulse, or the anxiety that suddenly engulfed her. The two previous nights she had dreamed that the Andrea Doria had sunk.
It was a long, maze like journey down from the bar to cabin 641. On the port side below the waterline, the cabin was a long, narrow room with beds at both end and a large wardrobe in the middle.
Maria was sleeping peacefully. Liliana could not understand why she had raced down. She was thinking of returning to her friends when she suddenly felt the ship lean into a sharp left turn. Liliana steadied herself against the wardrobe.

The passengers this night could be evenly divided between those who chose to celebrate on the higher decks and those who chose to sleep in their cabins in anticipation of the morning's arrival. Of the sleepers, none rested more soundly than a young merchant sailor from New Orleans, Robert Lee Hudson did. Hudson was a passenger on the Andrea Doria, not a crewman, but he was hardly enjoying the voyage. He had signed onto the freighter Ocean Victory, but was injured in two separate accidents, which left him with two painful herniated discs in his back; an eight-inch cut on his right hand, and a nearly severed index finger. He was put off at Gibraltar to await the next ship to America. That ship was the Andrea Doria.
Hudson was assigned to a cabin near the men's ward of the ship's hospital. But his injuries were so painful that he spent most of the voyage in a hospital bed, rather than in his cabin. He had not slept well in the ship's hospital. He felt he would rest more soundly in the cabin and decided to retire early, at about 7:00 p.m. For the first time during the voyage, Hudson pulled himself up into the small upper berth of the cabin he shared with an Italian emigrant. He swallowed a painkiller prescribed by the ship's doctor and fell into a deep sleep.
As the Andrea Doria cut through the foggy waters off Nantucket, Hudson slept so soundly he did not hear the two shrieks of the ship's whistle signaling a left turn. Had he been awake, the veteran seaman would have immediately recognized it as a sign of possible danger.

Mrs. Angela Moscatiello was traveling with her two sons, Luigi, 21yrs old, and Michael, 15 yrs old. Michael was seasick for most of the voyage and was very weak from not eating, and he barely left the cabin. He looked forward to the New York arrival and a good meal. While his brother, Luigi, went off to join the farewell parties, Angela presses their best clothes for the arrival and then Angela and Michael went to sleep.

Two women met in an elevator. One of them, Ruby MacKenzie of Canon City, Colorado, confided that she was afraid of the fog.
"Why?" asked her friend. "There's nothing to worry about."
Mrs. MacKenzie shivered. "I just finished reading A Night to Remember." The book, published the year before, was Walter Lord's classic tale of the sinking of the Titanic.
"Oh, my goodness!" the friend exclaimed. "What a book to read just before an ocean voyage."

On the Stockholm, crewman Bernabe Polanco Garcia left his cabin in the bow of the ship and headed up to the deck for some fresh air. Arne Smedberg, a seaman, was sinking into bed . His bunk was well forward, near the bow.

Salvatore Castellano, an assistant cook on the Andrea Doria, was getting ready for bed.

Calgero Alfano went to bed early in his starboard side A Deck cabin. His friends aboard ship had a different idea, they came knocking on his cabin door to wake him up. 

They wanted him to go and have a drink before they arrived in New York. They pulled the hair on his legs until he woke up and left the cabin.

Shortly after 11 p.m., teenager Martin Sejda Jr. left the brightly lit interior of the Andrea Doria and went for a stroll on deck. He found himself in a sightless world. Thick veils of fog mantled the ship blotting out the sea and sky. Martin could barely make out the railing across the deck and as he felt his way toward it, the ship's whistle roared a fog warning.
Ruth Roman, the actress, was dancing in the ballroom while in the nearby card room Stanley Sanger was playing a card game with his friend, Irving Perellis. George Krendell and his cabin mate Sylvan Hendler was in the bar with Marguerite Lilley  and her cabin mate Christine Gressiere.
On deck Martin Sejda Jr. thought he saw a light off the starboard side. He peered into the gray blankness. Did something glow out there? Suddenly he saw the white shape of a ghostlike ship looming out of the darkness, her sharp prow angled toward a spot on the Andrea Doria's hull about a third of the way back from the bow on a line with, but lower than, the Belvedere Lounge.

Forward in the lounge the party was livening up. Laughter and spirited conversation filled the room. In one corner Morris Novik, president of New York's Italian-language radio station WOV, and his wife smiled at each other as the band once again struck up its favorite tune, "Arrivederci, Roma."
Marion Boyer watched his wife snuff out her cigarette and he rose to leave.
Grace McLean of Norfolk, Virginia, got up from her table to dance, leaving her purse, which contained a letter to her husband telling him what a wonderful voyage she had. She looked across the shoulder of her dancing partner and saw a blaze of light coming closer. Mrs Ellen Dean was also on the dance floor when she happened to glance out a window and saw another ship. Down in her cabin on A Deck, Frances Aljinovic of Cleveland glanced out of her porthole and saw the same lights. "Oh, my God, Mary!" she screamed to her friend asleep on the other side of the cabin. "I can see a boat next to us. Get ready to pray. We're going to be hit!"