Survival at sea.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.

"ABANDON SHIP!" may be the most terrifying words a passenger or member of the crew ever will hear. "We were waiting for hours and hours," recalls Isa Santana, who survived the 1956 sinking of the Andrea Doria with her six-year-old daughter Annabel. "If the ship sank. I was ready. I was prepared to go; l had my daughter right by my side."

"I remember there was a lot of excitement and hysteria throughout the ship," says Annabel Santana, who grew up to be a consulting manager for Wang Labora tories in New York. "Children don't have a sense of danger. I was fortunate that way. But I remember seeing people in distress. I realized it was a serious situation--so sure, it was disturbing."

While the Santanas survived, the family of Adella Wotherspoon was not so fortunate. Two sisters, two cousins, and an aunt were among the 1,021 people who perished in the June 15, 1904, fire on the General Slocum in New York's East River. Wotherspoon only six months old at the time, was among the slightly more than 300 who lived through the second largest inland water disaster in U.S. history. "My mother said very little about it over the years," relates Wotherspoon. 'She was horribly burned up her left arm and neck, which makes me think she was holding me in her right arm when we dropped into the water. My father and uncle stayed on board as long as possible to look for the children. My uncle had his clothes burned right off him. The life preservers were filled with sawdust and the lifeboats were secured with wire and couldn't be moved. The entire ship was a safety disaster.

"My family apparently all were separated at some point because my aunt gave an interview where she said that I was 'restored to my parents.' possibly I was fished out of the water by someone. I don't know."

Sadly for many families, a lot of infants didn't make it. "In the hospital afterwards, someone tried to claim me as theirs," says Wotherspoon. "My mother asked what sex their baby was, and they said, 'boy.' My mother told them I was a girl, and that was that. But as a child, I guess I could be a bit of a brat, like most kids are growing up. When I'd get mad at my mother. I'd ask her. 'Are you sure I'm yours? Are you sure you didn't switch me in the hospital?'"

Wotherspoon's mother, Anna Liebenow. was to endure further tragedies. She bore another child, a boy, but he died within a month of birth. Her husband passed away of tuberculosis at age 36.

"The captain was given a 13-year prison...