Andrea Doria Continues To Claim Lives 32 Years Later -- Wreck Of Famed Italian Luxury Liner Lures Divers To Their Deaths In Atlantic

HACKENSACK, N.J. - To an elite cast of New Jersey adventurers who spend their weekends scouring the sunken remains of shipwrecks on the Atlantic's murky floor, the Andrea Doria beckons.

The obstacles to reaching the ill-fated vessel, which sank 42 years ago off Nantucket, Mass., are daunting: bone-chilling temperatures, ferocious currents, clouds of silt that swallow all light and the crushing pressures that bear down under 24 stories of dark ocean.

Wreck diving, like any extreme sport, is recreation turned obsession.

"We're not recreational divers," said Bill Cleary, 37, a personal-injury lawyer from Palisades Park, N.J. "But we're not thrill-seekers either. We dive for wrecks because it's like coming nose to nose with history and because it tests the limits."

Cleary and his good friend Vincent Napoliello, two members of an expanding field of skilled divers capable of penetrating those depths, tested those limits in August by trying to reach the pinnacle of the sport.

Napoliello didn't survive.

Mount Everest of shipwrecks

The Andrea Doria is, for many scuba divers, the Mount Everest of shipwrecks - and just as deadly. Between June and August, three divers, including Napoliello, perished while exploring the decks of the sunken ocean liner.

The deaths coincided with a surge of interest in reaching the storied ship. Built for the Italian Line at a cost of $30 million and called the Grand Dame of the Sea, the Andrea Doria was a 700-foot, 11-story floating museum, replete with murals, rare wooden panels, ceramics and mirrors.

On the foggy night of July 25, 1956, it was steaming toward New York with 1,600 passengers when it collided with the Stockholm, a smaller Swedish ship. All but 51 passengers were rescued.

Ever since, the massive, submerged relic has been alluring for divers.

When Cleary first thought to charter The Seeker to take a group of his friends on a four-day excursion to the Andrea Doria, he knew about the roster of trouble that had hit the vessel in preceding months.

So he and Napoliello analyzed earlier accidents. "We wanted to be prepared so that if something did happen, we would not panic," Cleary said.

"All the guys were ribbing each other about everything," recalled Cleary, who had gathered 11 of his friends for the dive. "Vince had brought up an old lady's shoe on an earlier dive, and we were kidding him about giving it to his girlfriend."

But Napoliello, 32, an investment adviser from Manhattan, was not in the mood. After an early-morning dive, Napoliello spent the rest of the morning on a satellite phone with colleagues conferring about the falling stock market.

It was after 3 p.m. when Napoliello and Dennis Murphy - a first-time Doria diver - entered the water, destined for a closet filled with pieces of Andrea Doria china. The saucers and plates are cherished trophies of such dives.

"It's like taking a rock from the top of Everest, except in this case the rock actually says `Andrea Doria' on it," Cleary said.

"I went down to 230 feet, and I saw Vince," Cleary said. "He grabbed my arm and made contact with me, as if to say, `Everything's OK.' "

About 25 minutes after seeing Vincent Napoliello, Cleary was ascending the anchor line from the deck of the Andrea Doria. The ascent is a laborious process that is planned in advance on a laptop computer.

Like a line of mountain climbers attached to a rope, divers returning to the surface can be found at different depths all along the anchor line. If everyone was following the plan properly that day, Cleary expected that right beneath him, about 20 feet down, was Napoliello.

"When I got to my stop at 30 feet, I could see clearly enough that the bubbles coming up from below were from a set of divers who went in after Vince," Cleary said. "The second I recognized it wasn't Vince, I knew Vince was dead."

`I was frantic'

Taking a risk, Cleary abandoned his ascent and headed back down to 50 feet, passing McDowell on the way. McDowell gestured as if to ask, "What on earth are you doing?" But Cleary continued the descent.

"I was frantic," Cleary said. "I've been diving with Vince for three years. He's gotten me out of situations that you wouldn't believe."

Cleary took out his regulator and held his breath, hoping to spot another set of bubbles coming from his friend. He stared into the gray water beneath him and saw nothing. It was time to turn back.

For those who have never been wreck diving, Cleary said, it's tough to understand the thrill. Much of the excitement stems from researching the history of the vessels. Part of it, he said, is the test of will and skill involved in diving a wreck. But part of it is more difficult to explain.

"When you get inside one of these old ships, it's like you're looking back in time," Cleary said. "I remember my first dive in New Jersey, I reached into a hole in the wreck and I pulled out a 50-year-old bottle of root beer that had come from New Brunswick.

"To some people, that's trash," he said. "But to me, it's like a symbol of my accomplishment."

There is videotape of Vince Napoliello shot during his final trip to the Andrea Doria by another team of divers. The tape shows Napoliello alive but swimming in the wrong direction, away from the anchor line that would lead him to the surface.

Trouble at 205 feet

Napoliello's diving partner that afternoon, Dennis Murphy, told Cleary they first encountered trouble late in the dive. Down 205 feet, Napoliello signaled that he was out of air and grabbed Murphy's backup breathing hose.

The two shared a tank briefly, but then Napoliello signaled that everything was solved, and he swam away. The video, shot 35 to 40 seconds later, appears to show Napoliello breathing fine. But for some reason, while Murphy headed for the anchor line, Napoliello swam the other way. He was not seen again until his body surfaced.

Cleary said an autopsy has determined that the 32-year-old suffered a massive heart attack while diving the Doria - possibly induced by the panic when he thought he had run out of air. But because he had an ample backup supply, his death remains something of a mystery.