When the famed Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria departed Naples, Italy, on July 17, 1956, a young Rensselaer graduate was among the 1,706 passengers heading for New York City and an epic adventure of tragedy and heroism.

Jerry Reinert was a 21-year old Brooklynite, returning home from a European tour – a gift from his widowed mother upon his graduation from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

At 11:10 p.m. the night of July 25, the 29,500 ton, 700 foot-long Andrea Doria, a luxury liner often called “the floating art gallery” because of its immense collection of shipboard artwork, was rammed by the reinforced-steel ice-breaking bow of the Swedish liner Stockholm in thick fog 45 miles south of Nantucket Island. 

A 40-foot gash was rent in the Andrea Doria’s starboard side, sending her 220 feet down to the bottom of the Atlantic the next day. Fifty-one people died, but in one of the biggest maritime rescues in history, 1,612 passengers and crew were saved.