On the night of July 25, 1956, the Italian luxury liner “Andrea Doria” was struck by the Swedish liner “Stockholm” about 40 miles off Nantucket, and sank some 11 hours later.
It wasn’t on the scale of the Titanic, but 46 people died.
Among the surviving passengers aboard the Andrea Doria that night was nine-year-old Pierette Domenica Simpson, looking forward to arriving in America with her grandparents from their native Italy.
In 2006 she wrote a book about her shipwreck experience. That’s when I met her.