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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 1958)
1! MSB i i i k i r r f ' Ffimilp WppJcy. Aupusf J. I95S I 1 I : V V CAW ten ilP'iM . V RAISE THE ANDREA Y y . V' v. 1 : 1 'Ad Richard Meyers, chief salvage engineer, shows Andrea Doria from its grave 240 feet beneath '' ' I r t 3 Here's how Meyers and Conti plan their daring gamble with several experts betting on King Neptune. how he hopes to lift the luxury si the Atlantic, an unparalleled attem undersea adventure, led by I wo days after the Andrea Doriaj pride of the Italian passenge fleet, went down in a collision! with the Stockholm in July, 1956, Armando Conti dispatched a telegran to his native Italy. In it he offered til raise the ship from its grave, 50 miles off Nantucket, Mass. During the two years which hav since gone by, a number of marintx engineers have called this feat a vir-f tual impossibility, or a project so com -t plex and costly as to be impractical Nevertheless, today finds the indomi table Conti preparing to bring thai Doria to the. surface, an accomplish- ment which certainly would ranla among the greatest and most thrilling sea salvage efforts of all time. To this challenging job, Conti! brings: some experience in ship sal-l vage, money, and an almost unlimi-j ted amount of determination. The effort may fail. There are tides! and sudden squalls to reckon with Certainly the divers will be darinjf death every time they descend thet 240 feet to the vessel s resting place, And even if the attempt succeeds, it might not prove financially wortlit the trouble. On the other hand, lifting the linerj from the bottom of the Atlantic may! make millions, become one of the big- gest news stories of the year, and shec new light on the cause of the tragedy --sbT -AJs ;Jt?-.-.. The Italian vessel sank July 26, 1956, about 1 1 hours after colliding with the Swedish liner Stockholm. Fifty persons died in the disaster. Horatio Alger immigrant, may Whatever the outcome, Conti is going "full steam ahead." What is it that drives him on? Prof it, perhaps, although Conti already is a solid success in money matters. More likely, the satisfaction of doing something the "experts" say can't be done, and restoring the Andreo Doria to the sea lanes as the romantic sym bol of Italy's post-war renaissance. "I know what the so-called experts are saying about my scheme to re float the Doria" says Conti, "and frankly, I just don't care. My engi neers have studied our proposed op eration from all sides. They say that the Doria can be raised, and that's good enough for me!" oming here as an immigrant boy of 16 with only three years of schooling, Conti worked first in the coal mines of West Virginia. With the savings of seven years earning 15c a ton he moved to Trenton, N. J., and turned to selling automobiles. But his business interests kept growing: real estate, liquor, banking, salvage, building. During World War II, he and his employees sold over $5 million worth of Government bonds, and in 1956 he won a Horatio Alger Award, a recognition shared by such notables as Herbert Hoover, Bernard Baruch, and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. Though white-haired, short, I salvage the ill-fated pride of and heavy-set, the 'Trenton tycoon" has been compared with Howard Hughes and the late Mike Todd for his impulsive charm and aggressiveness. Conti's engineers, Richard Meyers of Wyandotte, Mich., and Max Gene Nohl of Milwaukee, Wis., hope to raise the Doria in 1959 after probing the wreckage late this Summer. They first will test their salvage techniques on the $2-million Prins Wtllem V, sunk in Lake Michigan off Milwaukee. Wa ter, wind, and weather probably will alter their theories somewhat, but basically here's how they expect to raise both the Willem and the much larger Doria: Divers will take down dozens of de flated rubber buoys and attach them to various parts of the ship. These cylindrical buoys are made of single sheets of corded rubber three-eighths of an inch thick. Inflated with air, they resemble floating tin cara only they will measure about 500 feet long and 15 feet in diameter. Meyers, Conti's chief engineer, says that when these buoys are hooked to the ship and pumped full of air, they will have a lift of some 18,000 tons and raise the Doria slightly off the ocean bottom. By -placing the buoys properly, she can be lifted evenly. The next step involves two ships that normally carry ore. Their sea cocks will be opened and their holds Meyers and Armando Conti, industrialist who is financ ing venture, demonstrate how slings may lift the ship. the Italian passenger fleet. flooded until they are riding low in the water. Steel cables will be run from these ships down and around the wreck. Then, by pumping the water out of the ore ships, they will rise and lift the Doria still farther from her grave. The vessel lies on a hard sandy bot tom about 18 miles south of a shal lower area called Davis South Shoal. The plan calls for letting the ship re main underwater, resting in the sling of cables, while the ore boats pull her toward the shoal, 120 feet deep. "This portion of our blueprint is the most hazardous," Meyers says. 'The success or failure of our opera tion will depend entirely on whether we can get the Andrea Doria onto the shoal." If and when the plan succeeds, divers would be able to work with comparative ease, seal the hole in the Doria'i starboard side, compress air into her hull, and resurface her. AJ hat happens then? One possibil- ity is that after being towed to a dry dock, it will be found that the Doria't wounds are mortal and not worth healing. As scrap, the 30,000-ton vessel may bring $4 million. Pieces of it probably would be in brisk demand as souvenir items. One manufacturer already has proposed chopping her up into cuff links! That part of the cargo undamaged by water might be worth another $1 million. The purser's safe on C Deck is said to contain $250,000 in currency, and the ship's safety deposit boxes, more than $750,000 in cash and jewels. The hold has some 200,000 pieces of mail said to be worth $1 million. If the ship is made whole again, there's a possibility she will embark on a national tour, stopping at 50 At lantic and Pacific seaports for public exhibit. It's been estimated that all in all, the raising of the Andrea Doria could conceivably ring up a profit of $16 million. On the other hand, the salvage at tempt may cost $3 million, and the imponderables of the Atlantic could wipe out in a day the investment of many months. There still is some question, too, as to what property rights are held by those who built the ship and insured her, to say nothing of the passengers on her last voyage, nor of who owns the wreck to start with. Bringing the Doria to the sur face again might well start a long and infinitely complicated series of ad miralty law cases that could exhaust the patience of all parties. But right now, Conti and Meyers are hopeful and determined. 'The Andrea Doria will be raised," Conti asserts. "And with luck, she will trav el the sea lanes again, as bright and seaworthy as ever."
