While visiting Genoa’s maritime museum on his Italian Riviera, Genoa & the Cinque Terre pre-trip extension to O.A.T.’s Northern Italy: The Alps, Dolomites & Lombardy adventure, Bob went on an unexpected voyage through his family’s past.
By Bob Brady, 24-time traveler from Braintree, MA
The Genoa and Cinque Terre pre-trip extension to O.A.T.’s Northern Italy trip unexpectedly resulted in learning more about my Italian grandfather’s teenaged emigration to America. Rather than taking advantage of the first full day’s open schedule "afternoon at leisure" to recuperate from jet lag, I chose to walk a very short way from our hotel to the Galata Museo Del Mare, Genoa’s maritime museum on the harbor in the city’s Porto Antico section. The large, four-floor facility features nautical collections and interactive exhibits. There’s even an in-harbor decommissioned Italian Navy submarine, the Nazario Sauro, that one can board.
I started at the first floor and gradually worked my way to the museum’s third level. Here, I was transported into the past to experience the process that my then 17-year-old grandfather encountered in 1900 as he set out alone for America. Before entering the exhibition on Italian migration, I was greeted by an attendant who handed me my "papers"—replicas of a filled out emigration form and an Italian passport. I needed these in order to "board" a steamer that would transport me to the New World.
Walking up a gangplank, I entered the ship simulator and came upon a cramped below deck steerage area where impoverished passengers such as my grandfather would reside during the Atlantic crossing. Closely spaced bunkbeds and communal bathrooms prevailed, neither providing a modicum of privacy. Hard wood bench seating and community tables served as a dining area. Only scattered tiny portholes connected the occupants to the outside world. Crossing the rough ocean in such confined quarters could not have been a pleasant experience.
The first glimpse of arrival for the immigrants at their destination was portrayed by an image of the Statue of Liberty as would have been seen through a small steerage porthole. The exhibition continued and provided interactive multimedia stations the stressful interaction at Ellis Island between the new arrivals seeking permission to enter and the immigration officials who had the power to send back those not deemed acceptable. Fortunately, my grandpa received his clearance and embarked upon a new life. The floor’s 29 exhibit areas filled in a generational gap in knowledge and revealed more fully a memorable part of family history.
Images at the museum recreate the experience of seeing the State of Liberty for the first time.
After this overwhelming experience, I climbed a staircase to the museum’s top floor. Another surprise ancestral discovery awaited me. Here resided a presentation on the SS Andrea Doria, a ship that had called Genoa as its home port and was once dubbed "the most beautiful ship in the world." It capsized and sank off the coast of Nantucket on July 26, 1956 after a collision in thick fog with the MS Stockholm the prior evening. The display featured a reconstruction of the ocean liner’s external and internal living environment that also included many artifacts.
A postcard illustrates the SS Cristoforo Colombo, built in Genoa.
Near the end of his life, my grandfather returned to Italy and sailed on the Andrea Doria’s sister ship, the SS Cristoforo Colombo, also built in Genoa. Given their affiliated identical construct, they shared a common design and interchangeable contents so that I was able to picture my ancestor’s later transatlantic voyage made under much better conditions than the original. A prized possession of mine is a picture postcard of the Andrea Doria/Cristoforo Colombo addressed to me from my grandfather with a note on the back written by him in his style of broken English. I found another one of those postcards preserved among the items encased in a display on the fourth floor!
What’s next? Further family research and DNA testing has identified a paternal Scottish branch on the family tree. Perhaps, I’ll make another discovery as I’m scheduled to take the Scotland Revealed trip this year!
Perhaps you’ll uncover your own ancestral discoveries when you join us on Northern Italy: The Alps, Dolomites & Lombardy.
