The Andrea Doria, once considered the most beautiful ocean liner ever launched, was made famous for her sinking in the North Atlantic.
The Andrea Doria sank on July 25, 1956, en route to New York from Genoa, Italy, after it collided with another passenger ship, the Stockholm. Of the Andrea Doria’s nearly 1,500 passengers and more than 600 crew members, more than 2,000 people were saved, in one of the most stunningly successful rescues in maritime history.
She made her maiden voyage on January 14, 1953, and after surviving a force 9 storm, arrived in New York 9 days later to a welcoming delegation.
Recently, we aquired some rare footage of this historic event – including life jacket drills! This rare 16mm film was transferred to digital with heavily modified equipment. Each frame was backlit with remote halogen lighting and captured through a condensor lense directly to a Canon GL2 and held on non-compressed files for preservation. You can see an excerpt of this rare video here. (Frame rate been adjusted to 29.97 fps using a blending technique). For more information call 615-479-8510. (used with permission from the Landers family via their home movies).
You can read more about the Andrea Doria here.
The Memories to DVD Blog 
Thanks for making this footage available. I have linked it to my own web page on radio history. I have an audio clip from radio reporter Douglas Edwards reporting on the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956 at http://www.otr.com/andrea.html.