We went from Bradley Beach New Jersey toward the ship along with several hundred other small boats. When we arrived about a half mile from the ship, we only found one passenger, other boats found others.
I think the actual collision was off Nantucket, but it was about 45 minutes later on the way back to New York, that they decided the ship was going to sink and needed a rescue effort.
Cool. That’s like a 6 hour ride one way!
From wiki:
“SOS DE ICEH [this is Andrea Doria] SOS HERE AT 0320 GMT LAT. 40.30 N 69.53 W NEED IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE”
Assessing damage and imminent danger[edit]
Immediately after the collision, Andrea Doria began to take on water and started to list severely to starboard. Within minutes, the list was at least 18°.
That means it was 235+ miles from your location to where the Andrea Doria was hit (and made no further way), and the closes land on LI was 140 miles away. If your granddads fishing boat was really fast for the time, it would have run at about 20 knots, or about a 12 hour trip way off shore to the canyons, then about a 7 hour run back to the closest point of land.
If I were making a run like that, even in great weather, LONG before satnav and probably even when a fisherman would have LORAN, with guaranteed nighttime operations, I sure wouldn’t be taking a wee lad with me.
I’ve fished those canyons that far out. It’s not pretty on a nice day. It’s certainly not small boat territory.
Your granddad must have been a really ballsy dude.