Nautical Disaster Figure. He was the sea captain and master of the Italian ocean liner "SS Andrea Doria", which was sunk after a collision with the Swedish American Line's "MS Stockholm" off Massachusetts' Nantucket Island in a thick dark fog at 11:11PM on July 26, 1956. Two minutes after seeing each other, the "Stockholm" with a sharp icebreaker bow plunged into the right side of the "Andrea Doria" inflicting a mortal wound directly under her bridge. A portion of the lifeboats belonging to the "Andrea Doria" were lost in the initial collision. The next morning at 10:04 AM, the "Andrea Doria" sank into 240 feet of the Atlantic Ocean. The "Andrea Doria" had, including 572 crewmembers, 1,660 passengers, and of the fifty-one people dying from the maritime incident, five were crewmembers from the "Stockholm." Captain Piero Calamai was born into a seafaring family. His father Orestes had founded the renowned Italian maritime trade journal "La Marina Mercantile", and his younger brother Marco rose to Admiral in the Italian Navy. He was a July of 1916 graduate of the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno. During World War I, he entered the Italian Navy after graduation as an ensign and served with distinction, earning the Medaglia d'argento al valor militare or the Silver Medal of Military Valor. Following the war's end, he served as an officer and later staff captain on several different Italian ocean liners up to Italy's entrance into World War II in June of 1940. During the war, he was again in the Italian Navy, and earned a second Medaglia d'argento al valor militare for his actions in beaching the badly damaged Italian battleship "Caio Duilio," which had been torpedoed by a British Fairey Swordfish bomber on November 10, 1940. Returning to service in the Italian merchant marine after the war, he was given command of the new ocean liner "Andrea Doria" in December of 1952 and remained her commander until the ship was sunk in collision on July 26, 1956. He had over 20 years of experience and over 100 uneventful transatlantic crossings with the "Doria." A long detailed investigation followed, which led to the question of the lights of a third vessel, which may have confused decisions made and caused misinterpreting the situation. An out-of-court settlement was reached with a trial being averted, and though each blamed the other, neither was officially held responsible. Following Andrea Doria's loss, he never returned to sea, grieved the loss to his dying day, and was later heard to say, "When I was a boy, and all my life, I loved the sea. Now I hate it."