The Wreck of the Andrea Doria Part 2: The Eyewitness Accounts

July 2022

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  Sam Willis 

  From the Society for Nautical Research in partnership with Lloyd’s Register Foundation, I’m Sam Willis. And this is the Mariners Mirror podcast, the world’s number one podcast dedicated to all of maritime history. Hello everyone and welcome to the Mariners Mirror podcast, and in particular to episode two of our investigation into the remarkable story of the wreck of the Andrea Doria. Today we hear from two more eyewitnesses of the events, Linda Hardberger and Mike Stoller. One of the great joys of studying this wreck is that we don’t have to rely on actors reading out aged hand written accounts of the wreck. We can actually talk to people who were on board, and you can’t get closer to history than that. Linda is now 80 and lives in San Antonio in Texas. She’s been a teacher, a librarian and a museum curator and she is a mother, and she has been boating for 40 years. Mike Stoller you will probably have heard of or if not, then you most certainly will have heard of some of the things that Mike has created. He is the Mike Stoller from the songwriting team Leiber and Stoller and they wrote Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock, and Stand By Me.  And to put all of this into some sort of chronological context to help you with the wreck, Hound Dog was first released in February 1953. That’s five months before the wreck of the Andrea Doria, and Jailhouse Rock was released in September 1957, so just one year after the wreck of the Andrea Doria. And I’ll just add here for my own chronology that at the time I was minus 20. So to take you on to the rocking 1950s, but to a cold, misty and frightening morning in the rocking 1950’s, here are the excellent Linda and Mike. As ever I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed talking with them. Linda, thank you very much indeed for joining me today.

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Sam. It’s a pleasure. Thank you.

   

  Sam Willis 

  So tell me, how do you  file your memories of such an extraordinary event? How old were you when you were on board?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  I was 14 years old. I just had a birthday.

   

  Sam Willis 

  And what was your reasoning for travelling on the ship?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  My parents were, well, we were all living in Spain; my stepfather worked for the New York Times, and he was having home leave, which you get every four years. We were living in Madrid. And my sister and my mother and I were all going with him. I was in the process of starting high school, a boarding school in Pennsylvania. So I was going to stay. And my my mother, my step sister and my stepfather were all going to go back to Madrid after they’d spent the three months in the United States.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Right. So how many of you were there in the party that were travelling back?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Four of us.

   

  Sam Willis 

  And did all survive?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  No, my stepsister and my stepfather were both killed, and my mother survived. My mother had a lot of problems for the rest of our lives and in fact, died on the anniversary of the Andrew Doria in, gosh I’ve forgotten, but it was about six or eight years, oh, no, I know, it was 1968 because it was the year my husband and I got married.

   

  Sam Willis 

  What an extraordinary coincidence. So take me back to  your memories; I suppose as being a 14 year old girl you perhaps have good memories of this.

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Oh,  it was a great trip. We got on it at Gibraltar and basically it had very lovely weather until we got just east of Nantucket. And then that last day, that evening actually, everything fogged in. And we were actually supposed to have the captain come for dinner. And we were told that the captain wasn’t going to come down for dinner because  the weather was so bad. He was going to stay up on the bridge. And so we we had dinner and then my sister and I went to bed and shortly thereafter and when I believe, I’m not too sure, they were having, at the end of the voyage you usually have some kind of a party, and I’m pretty sure that they were there. But they went to bed fairly early because we were going to be getting into New York quite early. So they were also in bed, and we had adjoining cabins. My mother and I were on the outside of the ship, and my stepfather and sister are on the inside. And when I guess the Stockholm came through our cabin, because we were on the outside, we made it and my sister and my father did not.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Do you remember what your first impressions of what the ship was like when you got on board?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Yes, it wasn’t the first time I’d ever been on a ship because in those days that’s really how you travelled a lot. That was fine, it was not quite as fancy as it is now. And it took several legs before you got to where you were going. So a ship was kind of part of the holiday. It took you a week  at least for us. But the Andria Doria was pretty fancy, it was one of their top of the line ships. And it was also kind of wonderful because it was full of kids. And they had a special playroom for my sister who was seven years younger than I was so she was only seven. And so they had a swimming pool, although it was kind of chilly, but anyway it was very fancy, very lovely. We had movies every afternoon, and I’d never done that before. So  it was fun.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Real luxury. What class were you travelling?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  We were travelling first class.

   

  Sam Willis 

  You saw the nicest bits of it? I  hear that the ship was a floating art gallery. Do you remember a bit? Do you remember it being like that?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  No, I became an art historian In my later years, but I honestly was not particularly interested in art at 14. My parents had dragged me to the Prado for ever in the afternoon and at this point I was really happy to just have this supply.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Very good. No more art. You were all done. So well, the terrible night you say that the Stockholm came through your cabin, were you in exactly the line of where it struck?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Exactly. Everybody below us did not make it. I mean our cabin was right at the level of the bow of the the Stockholm. The Stockholm was an ice breaker because it would go north, and so their bow was reinforced. So it was a pretty tough bow, and when it came in it just kind of sliced us.

   

  Sam Willis 

  What are your memories of the moment of collision?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  I have no memories of the moment of collision,  although I do remember a very loud noise and a big bump. I mean, it was a huge sort of bump. And  then the next thing I know I’m outdoors on my mattress in my pyjamas, but I’m looking at sky. And I have no idea where I am. I thought, I mean, I’m pretty sure I was on the Andrea Doria. But I wasn’t and I tried to get up and I realised that I had several broken bones and wasn’t going to be able to move. So I started calling for mother in Spanish, which is sort of an interesting sidelight, because my first language is Spanish. I was born in Mexico. And apparently when you’re  in a sense of stress and an area of stress, you revert to your mother tongue. And coincidentally, I mean, this is all written in books. But coincidentally, there was a sailor on the Stockholm, the only sailor on Stockholm that was a Spaniard. And he was intrigued by the fact that he was hearing somebody calling in Spanish, because I was from the bow because I was in an area of the boat where the passengers are not normally allowed. It’s a   working area. It’s where the the anchors are and all the chain and all that machinery. So there’s usually no passengers on that part. So he was curious. So he came out and found me and picked me up and I kept hearing another woman yelling and I thought that was my mother, but apparently it  was not. And so he brought me into the cabin  inside. It was a steward, I think  that’s what you call them, and he was looking over the manifest; he asked me my name. And he looked over the manifest and didn’t find my name on there. And at that point, I was going by my stepfather’s name. So I tried my father’s name and that didn’t work. And so he asked me, and I said, so where am I ? I mean, is this the Andrea Doria? And he looked rather puzzled and quite shocked. And he said no, this is the Stockholm and then they took me down to the infirmary. And then it  took two days to get back to New York.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Gosh, how extraordinary

   

  Sam Willis 

  Did you have difficulties, you know, processing this event in the  subsequent years? No doubt you did

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  I had an enormous time dealing with it. In fact, I went to see a movie called Black Stallion and in the opening scene there’s a torpedo hitting a boat and before I knew it I was in the front lobby of the of the movie house. I cannot… .I’ve never seen Das Bot, I’ve never seen Titanic, I’ve never seen the movies and, and for some reason, I guess it’s makes sense, but for some reason an enormous rush of water gives me some pause, it makes me nervous. And then the other part was what is it that that identifies you? And I noticed the other day, there was a story about the woman  that was burned with napalm in  Vietnam, and she said, I’m not the napalm girl anymore, and luckily by now, I mean, I’m 80 years old, I’m about to be 80. So, it’s kind of worn off, and a lot of people don’t know about it, and so forth. So I’ve basically gone along and used  my maiden name, I didn’t use my married name for a long time. And people would call but not for a long time, but when there was an anniversary, you know, the first anniversary, the tenth, whenever, I’d get calls, but after a while, it kind of slowed down. And it became not my major identity, and so I was able to get past it.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I mean, you sound you’re very fluent, and very lucid talking about it. Is it still difficult to talk about?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Yes. This is actually the first time I’ve really talked about it in a long time. A couple of times, a couple of authors. And then the National Geographic did a piece but actually with the National Geographic I had somebody else read their book, I didn’t go.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Well, we’re very grateful for your time and your emotional input on this. In the aftermath of it, were you interested in who was  going to be apportioned blame for the event? I suppose you’re a teenage girl, it was easy for you to not think about it and carry on your life. Do you have any kind of investment in how the investigations went?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Not at all. My husband  having a lot more much later, because as reading the books ,he’s a trial lawyer, and he’s a litigator. So he was quite interested in how the whole insurance thing went down and so forth. A different thing than it would be now. But no, I wasn’t particularly. The only other thing that ever happened was the man that saved me, my dad got in touch with him and he stayed in touch with him for a while. And, you know, then he started asking for money. And he was starting a coffee shop in Canada and so forth and so on, but after a while, like I kind of lost track of him. So I didn’t, you know, Pierette  is so nice, she also asks  if we want to go to a reunion, and my theory about that is what do I have to talk about at a reunion. I mean, I I don’t really want to revisit the whole thing. And I’m sure that all these survivors are very happy about it, but I kind of want to go beyond it.

   

  Sam Willis 

  And  try and move forward.

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Yes.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Do you think it’s important for other people to learn about what happened?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Ah, not really.  The only thing that I think is of some use is if people who are in this kind of a situation can talk about survivor’s guilt. There’s no doubt at all that I had survivor’s guilt. And  I think, you know, all the tragedies that we’ve had here in Texas, with a church where 19 people were killed and so forth, all the people that didn’t get killed are going to have a lot of trouble living with why they’re still here. And that was an issue that I did struggle with when I was little.  Other than that I think it’s historically interesting I guess, it doesn’t really do much for me, but I don’t  think it’s any kind of a learning lesson or anything like that.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Have you ever been back on a passenger liner?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Yes, my father decided, this is my real father, decided that it was kind of like being on a horse and you had to get back on. And so for my graduation from high school, which is four years later, I went over to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth, the QEII.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Do you have any memories of that crossing?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Yes, I do. Because there were several sort of ironic issues. One of them was that I was asked to be the person that demonstrated how to put on a life jacket, which was strange because obviously I never put on a life jacket, so I had no idea. The other thing was that half of the ship, I mean, most of the sailors on Andrew Doria, because they knew what to do and where to go were the ones that saved themselves first, in fact, the man that saved my mother was one of the last people  off the ship. And then the other one was that I got an invitation to meet with the captain around lunchtime, right after we had left, we got on about nine o’clock. And about noon, they wanted me to come up to lunch. And I had a room mate at the time, and my room mate was actually Mary Martin’s daughter, she was my room mate in high school. So I thought that why we were being invited to have tea or whatever it was. And so we went and when we got there they were very nice. We had a nice tea and at the end of it, he said, OK,  some guy came in and some steward came in and said, OK, it’s all clear. And I thought, well, that’s odd. And it turns out, they had made a giant announcement that they were they were going over the Andrea Doria at that time, they didn’t want me to hear the announcement, but they ended up telling me about it anyway.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Wow. That is extraordinary, isn’t it? I wonder who told them that you were a survivor of the Andrea Doria in the first place? Was that your  your dad?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  I’m pretty sure my father did.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Yes, handled in an interesting way. I’m not sure getting you to put the lifejacket on was most clearly thought through.

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  It was totally ridiculous. I had no idea how to put one on.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I was going to  ask if you have  ever been to any of the  exhibitions around the Andrea Doria or seen any of the artefacts that have been raised or taken, any interest?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  No, I have not. I know that there’s there’s a Maritime Disaster Museum, I’m not sure that’s what they call it, on  Nantucket. I think it’s either Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard. And I’ve been invited to come very nicely, but no, I haven’t seen any of that.  The other thing that kind of irritated me, but if you look me up, there’s a link on Google. There’s a link to another guy who I think at this point is deceased.  He says on there that he asked me if I wanted the key to my cabin. So I don’t know how he found it, how he got it. But anyway, he had the key to my cabin and I had refused it. And the truth is he never asked me if I wanted the key to the cabin. I wouldn’t have wanted it necessarily but I just never did it, which made me realise how much sort of misinformation is on Google.

   

  Sam Willis 

  That’s the key to your cabin when you were on the Andrea Doria And it was it was a story linked to.

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  But it was the number of the cabin.

   

  Sam Willis 

  But I wonder where that story came from and who  would benefit from it, from just a wrong storyline that maybe was a mistake?

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Well, it was on his website. I mean, if you enter Andrea Doria, or if you go to my Google entry, which of course I didn’t have anything to do with, there’s a link to this guy. And he collects Andrea Doria memorabilia. That’s another thing I don’t really understand. But  I guess it’s interesting, anyway he does. And in there he states, it makes it makes me sound rather nasty, you know, rude; that he had very kindly offered to give me the key and I had summarily turned him down. That’s not exactly what It said but I found it rather, anyway, I think he’s deceased now. And I don’t know if his website still is

   

  Sam Willis 

  Difficult to find you’re being presented as something that you’re not.

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Yes, and the other thing that’s really, oh, there were a couple of things

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  sort of funny. Geraldo Rivera, who is this really crazy, well, I don’t know, he’s really kind of a charlatan. But he considers himself a reporter, went through this whole thing for weeks about how they were going to bring up the safe from the Andrea Doria.  And then we’re going to open it up on live TV.  And I kept telling my husband, there’s nothing in there, because we all were asked to take all our stuff out. And so I said there’s nothing there, but he went on and said there was a bunch of bullion and that Cary Grant’s wife had a bunch of jewellery that she was bringing home, she was on the boat too. He was on the ship too. And we’d all the night before it taken all our stuff out. And so of course, there was nothing there after he done all this, but I watched the whole show. But I thought that was pretty funny. The other thing that I really do get upset about is this whole concept of bringing the ship up. To me that’s a cemetery, that’s a burial ground, and it needs to be left alone. And I just assume it’s very difficult to get down there. And I know that a lot of people have died trying, and I wish they’d quit and just leave it alone.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I think that’s a very good place to end our story. Linda, thank you very much indeed for talking with me today.

   

  Linda Hardberger 

  Yes, you’re welcome.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Where are you Mike? Are you in LA somewhere?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Yes, I’m in my home in LA. Where are you?

   

  Sam Willis 

  I’m in Cornwall, in the south. The most beautiful part of England, in the southwest.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Oh yes, I.ve been there.

   

  Sam Willis 

  And today the sun is shining just like it is probably in LA.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Is Torquay in Cornwall?

   

  Sam Willis 

  Torquay is in Devon. It’s the County next door but that’s very close to where I actually live. It’s known rather optimistically as the English Riviera. Well, listen, thank you so much for talking with me today. I’m very excited and also feel very privileged as well. You’ve written some of the music which I’ve grown up with. Let’s talk about the Andrea Doria. How old were you when you were on board?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  I was 23.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Wow. And how old are you now Mike?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Well, say on my next birthday, on my next birthday I’ll be 90.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Wow. So long ago, but I suspect that your experiences when you were 23 were so profound. You haven’t forgotten them?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Not all of them. No. I may have forgotten some of my interviews about them. But

   

  Sam Willis 

  Sure, well, take us through what was happening in your life at age 23.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Well, I got married for the first time at 22. And a year after I got married I got a cheque for a recording, a song called Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots. And it was the biggest cheque I think I ever got, it was $5,000. I’d never seen that much money at one time, and I had always wanted to go to Europe, and I had never had the opportunity. So I went with my first wife. We flew from LA to Copenhagen with a couple of stops on the way, a 25 hour trip. And spent three month, it was more than three months, in Europe, travelling all about and of course, ending up in Italy. And for our trip home on a ship, originally I had been booked on a Greek ship. And I went to the auto club here in California to buy coupons for gasoline, and they said, oh, you know, we can get you on a wonderful ship that’s better than that Greek ship, it’s called the Andrea Doria, that new ship. So I went back to the fellow who had booked us on the  Olympia I think it was, the Greek ship. And he said, oh, yes, if you can get on the Andrea Doria, take it, you’ll never forget it. He got it right.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I’ve heard that the ship was a floating art Palace. I mean, that’s something the Italians seem to be very proud of. Is that how you remember it?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Well, it was quite beautiful. And of course, I was not in first class where they had perhaps the better art. But it was very beautifully done, it was a beautiful ship. It was terrific.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I was wondering about whether there would have been entertainment on board, but was there. There are often Steinway pianos in the 1950s on cruise ships. Do you remember there being any music?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  I don’t specifically remember.  I remember recorded music, but oddly enough while I was driving and then moving about first we went to different cities. And when we got to Paris, we went to Olympia, the music hall, or the Vaults club music hall and Edith Piaf was performing there. And she did the French translation called L’Homme a la Moto, which was back then Charles’s Motorcycle Boots in French. And it was quite a thrill.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I bet it was.  I mean, having Edith sing one of your songs in translation. So let’s get back to this  vessel. Were you travelling with your wife? Was there anyone else in your party? It was just the two of you was it?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Right? We were in cabin class. And the room that we were in, the cabin, I should say, I remember it all being kind of grey. The walls and everything was metal, there were no windows. And it was like bunk beds I think, one above, one below, there was a ladder. And that’s what I recall and a cabinet with a drawer, two drawers, that’s what I recall.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Do you remember the Promenade decks where you could take take the air and enjoy the whole business of going across the Atlantic?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Yes, because that’s where we went after the accident, after the collision. And actually I had gone to bed early that night. I wanted to get up early the following morning, because we were due to arrive in New York City. And I wanted to witness the arrival and see the Statue of Liberty as I imagined my grandparents had seen it when they emigrated from Europe and arrived in the New World.

   

  Sam Willis 

  When was that? What year was that? Were they emigrating?  Any idea on that?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Yes, would have been in the late 1890s.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Which country did they come from?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Well,  I’m not sure where they departed from, but they had been in Russia in a small town, which is now a major city in Poland called Byalstock.

   

  Sam Willis 

  And did they settle in New York or did they move elsewhere?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  No, they settled in New York. My dad was born in Manhattan in 1903.

   

  Sam Willis 

  And where did they have you? Where did you appear in the world in America?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  I appeared in the Borough of Queens in 1933.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Fantastic. So getting back to New York, was it properly coming home  for you. This wasn’t just just a port that coincidentally was where you were going? It was really home?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Well, till I was 16 I lived in Queens. I moved to Los Angeles when I was 16 and moved back to New York 8 years after that, and I moved  to Los Angeles from New York twice, once in 1949 and once in 1989,and I’m still here.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Very good. So you woke yourself up early while in  your bunk bed.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  My  first wife promised with some other young ladies that they would dance with a very shy Italian fellow. She finally said come on get up, you’ll get up in time to see the Statue of Liberty. So I threw on some clothes that I had, I think a wash and wear shirt and a corduroy jacket.  And we went up and I was kind of bored. Had a glass of champagne, was heading aft where there was a card room to see if there was maybe a poker game going on, or something.  When the the ship hit us, of course, I didn’t know the ship and had no idea what had happened. I just didn’t, I was kind of bounced around on my feet but I maintained my footing. But people were suddenly wondering what had happened, people were talking about a  popular book out, I think it was called A Night To Remember or something, it was about the Titanic. And it was a book, in fact, I had been reading it and some people were wondering if we’d hit an iceberg and of course it was July, getting close to New York. And we had no idea for a long time what had happened, what caused the ship to tilt over so far, we were listed.

   

  Sam Willis 

  It was misty and dark where you just weren’t able to see the other vessel, or I suppose the other vessel might have just drifted off.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  I ran downstairs to get life preservers, and then I ran way up and I found my wife I guess. I don’t know which side of the ship it was on, the port or starboard, but it was elevated, it was the high side. But we couldn’t see through the structures above, we couldn’t see the low side. We were hanging on to the rail to keep from sliding, and we were on the high side for a number of hours.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Did they manage to start launching lifeboats then?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  I don’t know  when that happened.  We only heard one word, for all the lights went off for a while and some of them came back on. And one word from, we assumed from the captain, which might not have been the captain himself, but it was in a very shaky voice saying stai calmo, keep calm, and that was it. That was the only communication that we had. And we were standing with a number of young people, there was some Americans and some Middle Eastern fellows. And we just told each other lies like oh, it’s going to straighten out you know, there’s no problem. The Andrea Doria was advertised as unsinkable, and we were kind of clinging to that thought. But eventually we decided to go a little further aft and that was where a swimming pool was. It hadn’t been emptied and so the deck was very wet and people started to go to the low side. And they slipped, people were breaking bones and eyeglasses and such, sliding down. Eventually, we got down to the low side. And then we were able to see that there was this other ship, the Stockholm. And we saw some boats, lifeboats motorised, moving in the water. But we got down a Jacob’s ladder into a broken lifeboat, which was actually an Andrea Doria lifeboat which must have been cut loose. Because on the high side, they couldn’t be lowered because they would hit the side of the ship.  And on the low side, many of them were broken in the collision apparently, and this one fell into the water and we were getting into it down a Jacob’s Ladder. And when we looked straight ahead, there was this ship and it was all lit up. And it said II’e de France and of course we wanted to go there. But the rudder on our lifeboat was broken, it was not a motorised boat. It was operated by hand; you had pipes that came into the boat and you pushed, and that was to propel the boat. Everybody pushing.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Sort of hand cranked  boat.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  More or less, yes, I think what we post operated something  beneath the boat that propelled it,  but we couldn’t steer it. And we  went out and eventually we almost collided in our little lifeboat, almost collided with a ship called the Cape Ann, a freighter. And fortunately we stepped out onto a little platform and a series of stairs up into this freighter, at which point we felt safe.

   

  Sam Willis 

  They wrap you up in blankets and take you back to New York.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Well, it was 12 hours from when we left, because it was still standing by for a while to pick up, perhaps, stranded passengers, and then we headed for New York. And I was supposed to meet my partner, my wrting partner at that time, Jerry Leiber. We had planned to meet in New York and I had to pay cash, I remember that. And I had a few lira in my pocket and paid to send a wire to Atlantic Records, the company that we were producing records for in New York. And then obviously I  informed Jerry that I was alive and coming in; he was watching on television from a hotel room in New York. So the wild thing is that when I finally came in, and the freighter docked in New York, I came down the gangplank and Jerry was there and he ran up to me and he said, Mike, we had a smash hit. First thing he said to me, and, you know, we hadn’t seen each other in over three months. And  I said, are you kidding? He said, No, hell no. I said, Big Mama Thornton, because she’d had a big rhythm and blues hit three years before? And he said no, some white kid named Elvis Presley. And so I had a feeling on the ship, when I said to myself, this is it. I thought I was going to die, literally.  And I went from feeling like I was going to die to learning I had a big number one hit in America.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Wow. What an extraordinary, it was one wave of emotion.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  What was quite a day.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Yes the best understatement. Did you feel a real need to talk about your experiences on the Andrea Doria afterwards or did the world just  pick you up and wizz you along because of the success of Hound Dog?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  Well, some of each, I don’t know that I wanted to dwell on it, I mean immediately after of course.  We had some insurance or the boat had some insurance, and we got a little bit of money and I was in New York. And so we actually stayed in New York and wrote a couple of songs that were recorded while we were in New York for the balance of that year, which was 1956. The accident was July 25, I believe, yes, and I didn’t get home to Los Angeles till the first or second of January. Yes, I mean, there was a lot to do about this terrible tragedy, because so many people were lost.  Not as bad as it could have been,  but still it was over 50 people that were lost.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Were there any journalists? So anyone kind of trying to seek out the story? Were you contacted for your own own version of events?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  I don’t believe I was contacted by journalists. Now, I’m sure some people were and there were some famous people aboard,   active actresses. So there were a lot of stories about it.

   

  Sam Willis 

  It’s a really extraordinary story. Did you think twice about going back on board a ship? Was there a time you actually went back on another transatlantic vessel?

   

  Mike Stoller 

  There was. About 10 years later, my first wife and I separated with divorce.  And then I met my second wife, Corky Hale, a wonderful musician. And yes, we took a ship from where we living in New York by that time again, and we took the QEII I believe, yes.  And we went  to Southampton from New York and spent some time in London and then took a little boat across the Channel.  And actually we spent a month or so in Europe, and came back on the Leonardo da Vinci, another Italian line boat, again from Napoli to New York.  And  we actually never left the surface on that trip, it was all by ship and train and car and so on.  No, the first time I got on ship actually, that was not it. Corky and I took a sailboat in the Grenadines and ended up in the island of Grenada. And we decided we would take the first ship that left Grenada wherever it went. And we saw some Russian ships with hammer and sickle insignia so on and so forth. But when we got down to the  docks, because we could see that from where we were in a little beach side cabin of a hotel, we had a small suitcase that we had taken because we were on a sailboat and all we needed was bathing suits and shorts? And

   

  Mike Stoller 

  there was a Greek ship and I think it was somebody who was on the ship, I don’t know in what capacity exactly, probably an

   

  Mike Stoller 

  entertainment supervisor or what have you, was coming off the ship. And I said do you have a room on the ship. He said let me check. He said you could be on for one night. I said where are you going? We’re going  to Martinique. I said OK. So I gave him $40, and we got a cabin and a  first class meal and a bottle of wine included. And we got off the next day, but that night we had opened a porthole, which we were not supposed to do, because it was very hot. And the spray came in and I dreamt that it was filling up with water. And fortunately, I woke up. I was okay. And I’ve never been concerned about ships, I love the idea of ships.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I like the story of your getting a first class cabin and a bottle of wine. It feels like it was all evened out after your horrible experience on Andrea Dora.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  It was nice. Yes.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Wonderful Mike. Let’s leave it there. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing that story with us today.

   

  Mike Stoller 

  You’re very welcome. Nice to speak to you. And it’s nice to see you as a matter of fact, as I understand you can’t see me but that’s all right.

   

  Sam Willis 

  I can’t see you I imagined you.

   

  Sam Willis 

  Thank you all so much for listening. Now don’t let this be the last thing you do to interact with the Mariners Mirror podcast, please go back to our brilliant back catalogue and check out a huge range of maritime history. Yes, we have our mini series on maritime disasters, but also so much more. Please also don’t just listen to the podcast but do check out our YouTube page where we’ve got tons of fabulous video material, including the use of artificial intelligence that brings ships figureheads to life, the animation of battle plans, the use of 3d modelling to show you around magnificent ships of the past and much more. You really will not believe your eyes I promise. Please also note that the podcast comes from both the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the Society for Nautical Research. So do please check out everything that both institutions are doing. The Lloyd’s Register archive and education centre can be found at h e c.lr foundation.org.uk. and the Society for Nautical Research@snr.org.uk where you can join up and become part of a Society that has been helping to preserve maritime history for well over a century. There really is nothing better you could do with your time.

Category: Shipwrecks | Iconic Ships | Ocean Liners | Maritime Disasters