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| Herman Peterson |
The Stockholm sailed east out to the north Atlantic. The night was foggy, and around 11 o’clock, south of Nantucket, all of a sudden another ship loomed out of the fog. Neither ship could avoid the impact. The Stockholm rammed into the ship which turned out to be the Italian luxury liner, the Andrea Doria. The Andrea Doria was mortally wounded by the impact; she listed and eventually sank. The Stockholm stayed afloat and helped rescue the Andrea Doria’s passengers. Many other vessels, including another cruise ship the Ile de France, came to the rescue of the Doria’s passengers. 51 people died that night, but over 750 were saved. [I have included a few web links below that tell the story in more detail]
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| The Andrea Doria |
The Stockholm limped back to New York City on Thursday evening with her original passengers, Herman Peterson among them, as well as some of the rescued Andrea Doria passengers. How did Herman react to this disastrous experience? Thanks to cousin Michele who shared a letter from her mother Alice, Herman’s youngest child, we know some of the details of what Herman did when he returned to New York City.
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| Alice Peterson Stevenson |
Alice finally got some answers on Friday when she spoke on the phone with “Gladys” in New Jersey (does anyone know who Gladys was/is?), who reassured her that her dad was OK. Alice continued, “I asked her if Dad had said that he would telephone home, but she said he had said, yes, he would let them know he was OK, that he would WRITE them. I really got a bang out of that....good old steady Dad will WRITE! Oh that I had inherited a similar nervous system!”
Alice found out that Herman had alighted from the Stockholm and immediately booked passage on the Bergenjhord, a Norwegian ocean liner, that was leaving on Wednesday. Alice went to New York on Sunday to see her dad who told her that he wasn’t going to let anything keep him from visiting Sweden. He also told her that his roommates, two men from Michigan, went straight back home to stay put.
Alice recounts another anecdote that is worth sharing here:
“When I was with Dad in New York he took me to the headquarters for the Stockholm passengers - a room off the lobby of his hotel....While in the hq we were chatting with the man in charge there and he told Dad that the Swedish-American Lines was hosting a cocktail party on Monday evening for all the Stockholm passengers...I looked at Dad thoroughly expecting to see a scowl come over his face, but to my complete surprise he smiled and said ‘Yah, I’ll be there.’ I nearly fell off my chair. Later we found the invitation in his mailbox and he opened it. I was kidding him and asked what he would drink at the cocktail party, that I didn’t want any rumors floating back to the Swedish Embassy that he had gotten tipsy in New York, etc. etc. He laughed and said that he would probably drink orange pop. I asked him if he liked ginger ale, and he said yes he liked ginger ale. So I tactfully suggested that he might ask for that instead of orange pop. I got so tickled at him.”
So Herman survived his night of disaster on the sea. He probably drank a ginger ale toast with other Stockholm passengers that Wednesday evening, and then turned his attention to getting to Sweden. As far as Herman was concerned, the disaster with the Andrea Doria was just a detour from his main objective, seeing his family in his homeland.
Sources, links, etc.
The Story of the Andrea Doria from the History Channel
The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria
A National Geographic Documentary
Pictures of the MS Stockholm
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