99 Fun Facts About Famous Ships

From which port did the Titanic depart on her maiden voyage in April 1912?

Southampton: as Titanic pulled away, the liner New York's mooring ropes snapped, and a collision was only narrowly avoided.

Who led the Franco-American expedition that found the Titanic wreck on 1 September 1985?

Robert Ballard found Titanic lying in two main pieces, proving she broke apart as she sank instead of going down intact, as long assumed.

Which company employed Titanic's two wireless operators?

Marconi employed them: Jack Phillips and Harold Bride worked for the Marconi International Marine Communication Company, not the White Star Line. Phillips died in the sinking; Bride survived and later testified.

Which Cunard liner picked up more than 700 Titanic survivors from the lifeboats?

Carpathia's engineers cut the ship's heating and hot water to send every bit of steam to the engines, and she was later sunk by a U-boat in 1918.

The Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes in 1915; off which country's coast did she go down?

Ireland: she went down off the Old Head of Kinsale, and though a passenger liner, she was also carrying rifle ammunition in her cargo.

As of 2025, which warship, first commissioned in 1778, is the world's oldest naval vessel still in commission?

HMS Victory was Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, where a French sharpshooter on the Redoutable shot him on her deck and he died hours later.

As of 2025, which American frigate, launched in 1797, is the oldest commissioned warship still afloat?

USS Constitution earned the nickname Old Ironsides in 1812, when many of HMS Guerriere's shots reportedly bounced harmlessly off her hull.

Which leaky ship sailed with the Pilgrims in 1620 but turned back?

Speedwell leaked so badly that her voyage was scrapped, and some of her passengers squeezed aboard the other ship for the crossing.

What agreement did the Pilgrims and 'strangers' sign aboard ship before going ashore in 1620?

The Mayflower Compact was needed because they had landed outside Virginia's territory, and some 'strangers' argued no one there could command them.

Which naturalist sailed around the world on HMS Beagle's second voyage?

Charles Darwin was only 22 and expecting to become a parson when he sailed, and he spent over three years of the voyage exploring on land.

HMS Endeavour carried James Cook to Tahiti to observe which event in 1769?

The transit of Venus was not the voyage's only goal: Cook also searched for a great southern continent, and found New Zealand was two islands, not that land.

What cargo was HMS Bounty sent to the Pacific to collect before the 1789 mutiny?

Breadfruit plants: Bounty was to carry breadfruit saplings from Tahiti to the West Indies as cheap food for enslaved people, until the 1789 mutiny.

Where did the Bounty mutineers burn the ship in 1790?

Pitcairn Island: the mutineers set Bounty ablaze there in January 1790, probably so that Royal Navy searchers could not spot her.

Which British warship did the Bismarck destroy in May 1941, triggering a massive Royal Navy pursuit?

HMS Hood blew up in the Denmark Strait with only three survivors, and the hunt that followed ended with Bismarck sunk three days later.

What kind of aircraft crippled the Bismarck's steering?

Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from Ark Royal jammed her rudder, so British battleships were able to catch her the next morning.

Columbus's flagship Santa María met what fate in 1492?

She ran aground off Hispaniola on Christmas Day 1492, and Columbus used her timbers to build a fort he named La Navidad.

What was the original name of Francis Drake's ship the Golden Hind?

Pelican was renamed Golden Hind in 1578 to honour Drake's patron Sir Christopher Hatton, whose family crest was a golden hind.

Which Swedish warship capsized on her 1628 maiden voyage and was raised in 1961?

Vasa's sinking led to an inquiry to find those responsible, but in the end no one was punished for the disaster.

Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose sank in 1545 in which strait?

The Solent took her as Henry VIII watched from the shore, and one survivor blamed open gunports that let the sea pour in as she heeled.

Which English city displays the raised hull of Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose?

Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard shows the hull, which after its 1982 raising was sprayed for years with a preservative to stop its waterlogged timbers shrinking and cracking.

The Cutty Sark is named after a character in which poet's work?

Robert Burns's witch Nannie wears only a 'cutty sark', a short shirt, in Tam o' Shanter, and the clipper later gave up China tea for Australian wool.

Since 1954 the Cutty Sark has been displayed in dry dock in which part of London?

Greenwich has been her home in dry dock since 1954, and she survived a 2007 fire during restoration before reopening in 2012.

Brunel's SS Great Britain of 1843 was the first big ocean-going ship to pair an iron hull with what?

A screw propeller: she was the first big ocean ship to pair one with an iron hull, and after being scuttled in the Falklands she was towed home to Bristol in 1970.

Which steamship laid the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866?

Great Eastern was by far the biggest ship of her day, but she lost money carrying passengers before finding her calling laying cable.

Shackleton's Endurance was crushed by pack ice and sank in which sea in November 1915?

The Weddell Sea's pack ice trapped and crushed Endurance, yet all 28 men survived after escaping in the ship's boats to Elephant Island.

Which explorer's lost ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were finally found in the Canadian Arctic?

John Franklin's ships vanished while seeking the Northwest Passage, and Inuit testimony later helped searchers locate the wrecks.

Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 raft Kon-Tiki was built mainly from what?

Balsa logs, lashed together with rope, carried the raft for 101 days before it struck a reef in the Tuamotus.

Kon-Tiki's voyage aimed to show people from which continent could have settled Polynesia?

South America: the voyage showed the crossing was possible, but it could not prove anyone had made it, and many scholars disagreed with Heyerdahl's theory.

The Japanese surrender ending World War II was signed on the deck of which US battleship?

USS Missouri hosted the ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945, and the 'Mighty Mo' is now a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, where America's war began.

Which Pearl Harbor battleship lost 1,177 men when a bomb detonated her magazine?

Arizona was left where she sank, beneath a memorial whose marble wall bears the names of all those killed aboard her.

USS Monitor fought the Confederate ironclad Virginia to a stalemate at which 1862 battle?

Hampton Roads: the day before the ironclads met, Virginia had rammed the wooden USS Cumberland, smashing a huge hole in her hull and sinking her.

Which famous British battleship rammed and sank the German submarine U-29 in 1915?

HMS Dreadnought was built to fight enemy battleships but never did, even missing Jutland during a refit; ramming U-29 was her one real action.

Which nuclear submarine became the first to travel under the North Pole, on 3 August 1958?

USS Nautilus had been turned back by deep drift ice on her first attempt in June 1958, before succeeding that August.

Which barrel-shaped submersible, built by David Bushnell in 1775, became the first used in combat?

Turtle's pilot, Sergeant Ezra Lee, could not fix his charge to HMS Eagle's hull in 1776 and abandoned the attack.

The brigantine Mary Celeste was found adrift and deserted in December 1872 near which islands?

The Azores: Dei Gratia found her seaworthy with her cargo of alcohol intact, but Captain Benjamin Briggs, his family and crew were never seen again.

The Italian liner Andrea Doria sank in 1956 after colliding with which Swedish ship off Nantucket?

Stockholm struck Andrea Doria's starboard side in fog, yet 1,660 of the 1,706 people aboard the Italian liner were rescued before she sank.

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a 1975 storm on which of the Great Lakes?

Lake Superior swallowed her without a distress signal, all 29 crew died, and Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 ballad made her famous.

Where did the Exxon Valdez run aground in Prince William Sound in March 1989?

Bligh Reef: Captain Joseph Hazelwood had left the bridge, and the third mate was in charge when the ship struck it just after midnight.

Which container ship blocked the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021?

Ever Given was held by Egypt for months after she was freed, until her owners agreed a compensation deal.

Which line operates Icon of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship when it debuted in 2024?

Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas was christened by footballer Lionel Messi, days before her maiden voyage from Miami in January 2024.

Seawise Giant, still the longest self-propelled ship ever built as of 2025, was what type of vessel?

A supertanker: Iraqi aircraft set her ablaze in 1988 during the Iran–Iraq War, yet she was repaired and served on under new names until being scrapped in 2010.

Which intelligence service bombed Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1985?

France's DGSE sank her with two limpet mines, killing photographer Fernando Pereira, and France denied involvement until Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admitted it.

Which research ship, built as a Royal Navy minesweeper and later a Maltese ferry, became Jacques Cousteau's?

Calypso was bought by Loel Guinness, a former MP, who leased her to Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year.

Where has the retired liner RMS Queen Mary been moored as a hotel since 1967?

Long Beach, California: during the war, while carrying troops, she had accidentally sliced through and sunk her own escort, the cruiser HMS Curacoa.

The Empire Windrush's famous 1948 voyage docked at which port near London?

Tilbury is where she docked in June 1948 with 1,027 passengers, and the post-war migrants who came on this and later ships became known as the Windrush generation.

Which ship is permanently moored on the Thames as a museum run by the Imperial War Museum?

HMS Belfast, a Town-class cruiser that helped sink the Scharnhorst in December 1943 and bombarded the Normandy beaches on D-Day, has been moored by Tower Bridge as a museum ship since October 1971.

The Costa Concordia struck a rock and capsized off which Italian island in January 2012?

Giglio: the ship had strayed close to the island for a sail-by salute when she struck rocks, and Captain Francesco Schettino was later jailed for 16 years.

Where did Ken Warby's Spirit of Australia set the 1978 world water speed record?

Blowering Dam in New South Wales is where Warby, in a boat he had built in his back yard, reached about 511 km/h, a record still standing as of 2025.

Which Titanic sister ship, nicknamed 'Old Reliable', rammed and sank a German U-boat in 1918?

Olympic survived a 1911 collision with the cruiser HMS Hawke, whose ram bow tore holes in her hull, and she served on until the 1930s.

Which shipping company owned the Titanic, having already lost the Tayleur on her maiden voyage in 1854?

White Star Line chose to compete on size rather than speed, ordering a trio of liners larger than anything that had come before.

Which sister ship of the Titanic struck a mine and sank in the Aegean in 1916 as a hospital ship?

Britannic was the largest ship lost in the First World War, yet she took 55 minutes to sink and 1,036 of the 1,066 people aboard survived.

Which pirate captured the French slave ship La Concorde in 1717 and renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge?

Blackbeard sailed her for less than a year before wrecking her off North Carolina, where the remains were discovered in 1996.

The explosion of which US Navy ship in Havana Harbor in February 1898 helped trigger the Spanish–American War?

USS Maine had been sent to protect US interests during the Cuban War of Independence, and her loss became a rallying cry for war with Spain.

Aboard which schooner did Mende captives revolt off Cuba in 1839, leading to a US Supreme Court case that freed them?

La Amistad means 'The Friendship' in Spanish, and former president John Quincy Adams helped argue the captives' case before the justices.

In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, what is the name of the Nantucket whaling ship commanded by Captain Ahab?

The Pequod is named for the Pequot tribe of Native Americans, and all three of her masts are replacements for ones lost in a typhoon off Japan.

Which legendary ghost ship, the subject of an 1843 Wagner opera, is doomed to sail the seas forever?

The Flying Dutchman was first printed as a story in 1821, set off the Cape of Good Hope, and the future King George V later reported a sighting.

Which future US president commanded the patrol boat PT-109 when a Japanese destroyer rammed and sank it in 1943?

John F. Kennedy towed a badly burned crewman to safety by clenching the man's life-jacket strap in his teeth, then scratched a rescue message on a coconut.

Which US cruiser was sunk by a Japanese submarine in July 1945, shortly after delivering atomic bomb parts to Tinian?

USS Indianapolis sank in 12 minutes, and her crew drifted for days facing dehydration and shark attacks before rescue; only 316 survived.

Which Japanese battleship, armed with the largest guns fitted to any warship, was sunk by US aircraft in April 1945?

Yamato was sent on a one-way mission to Okinawa with orders to run herself ashore and fight until destroyed, but carrier aircraft sank her on the way.

Which Russian battleship's 1905 crew mutiny became the subject of a celebrated Sergei Eisenstein silent film?

Potemkin's mutineers sailed to Romania to seek asylum, and once the navy had its ship back she was renamed Panteleimon.

Which Russian cruiser fired the blank shot said to have signalled the 1917 storming of the Winter Palace?

Aurora is preserved as a museum ship in Saint Petersburg, where she opened to the public in 1957 as a monument to the October Revolution.

Which US Navy ship, commissioned in 1961, became the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier?

USS Enterprise stretched 1,123 feet, the longest naval vessel built, and she was the only ship of a class once planned to number six.

Which Confederate submarine became the first to sink a warship in combat, off Charleston in 1864?

H. L. Hunley sank the Union sloop Housatonic but never made it back to base, and 21 crewmen died in her three sinkings during a short career.

Which Russian nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea in August 2000 with the loss of all 118 crew?

Kursk was shaken by two explosions that nearby crews felt, yet the Russian Navy did not begin searching for her for more than six hours.

Which German warship was scuttled off Montevideo in 1939 after the Battle of the River Plate?

Graf Spee's commander ordered her sunk after false reports convinced him that a far stronger British force was gathering outside the harbour.

Which sister ship of the Bismarck was capsized in 1944 by RAF Lancasters dropping Tallboy bombs?

Tirpitz was nicknamed the 'Lonely Queen of the North' because she was so rarely deployed, which made life for her crew very monotonous.

Which Argentine cruiser, a survivor of Pearl Harbor as USS Phoenix, was sunk by a British submarine in 1982?

General Belgrano was sunk by the submarine Conqueror with the loss of 323 lives, decades after earning nine battle stars under the American flag.

The French munitions ship Mont-Blanc exploded after a 1917 harbour collision, devastating which Canadian city?

Halifax suffered what was then the largest human-made explosion in history when the burning Mont-Blanc detonated after striking the Norwegian vessel Imo.

Which country captured the US spy ship USS Pueblo in 1968 and later put her on display as a museum?

North Korea never gave her back, so Pueblo is officially a commissioned US Navy vessel held captive, moored as a museum in Pyongyang.

Pirates from which country hijacked the cargo ship Maersk Alabama in 2009, as shown in the film Captain Phillips?

Somalia's pirates made the Maersk Alabama the first US-flagged ship to be successfully seized by pirates since the early 19th century.

In which Gulf city did the retired Cunard ship Queen Elizabeth 2 reopen in 2018 as a floating hotel?

Dubai's government investment arm bought her when she retired from Cunard service in 2008, but she sat laid up for almost a decade before opening to visitors.

Which French ship, the largest and fastest passenger vessel of 1935, burned and capsized at a New York pier in 1942?

Normandie had been seized by US authorities and was being converted into a troopship when the fire broke out, coming to rest half submerged on the bottom of the Hudson.

Which American ship crossed the Atlantic in under three and a half days on her record-breaking 1952 maiden voyage?

SS United States averaged more than 35 knots to take the Blue Riband from the Queen Mary, which had held the eastbound record for 14 years.

Which bathyscaphe carried Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh to the deepest point of the Mariana Trench in 1960?

Trieste was designed by the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard, whose son Jacques was one of the two men aboard for the record dive.

Which Royal Navy ship's scientific voyage of 1872–1876 laid the foundations of modern oceanography?

HMS Challenger found the Mariana Trench in March 1875, and her scientists came home with about 4,700 species of marine life new to science.

Which polar ship carried Roald Amundsen to Antarctica for the first expedition to reach the South Pole?

Fram, meaning 'Forward', was built so that Fridtjof Nansen could freeze her into the Arctic ice and drift with it towards the top of the world.

Which racing schooner from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, is the vessel shown on the back of the Canadian dime?

Bluenose worked as a fishing schooner between races, and although the coin design dates from 1937, Canada only officially declared it to be her in 2002.

Captain Scott's first Antarctic ship, RRS Discovery, is the centrepiece of a visitor attraction in which Scottish city?

Dundee is where she was built for Antarctic research, and her first expedition carried both Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton south.

The Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery carried English settlers across the Atlantic in 1607 to found which colony?

Jamestown's little fleet was led by Christopher Newport aboard the Susan Constant, the largest of the three, and he sailed home that June leaving 104 colonists behind.

Which Nantucket whaleship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific in 1820, inspiring the novel Moby-Dick?

Essex's stranded crew suffered dehydration, starvation and exposure on the open sea, and the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism.

Which English painter showed HMS Temeraire, a veteran of Trafalgar, being towed away by a steam tug to be broken up?

J. M. W. Turner left the canvas to the nation, and in a 2005 BBC Radio 4 poll the public voted it Britain's favourite painting.

Théodore Géricault's vast 1819 painting shows a raft of desperate survivors from which wrecked French frigate?

Méduse was wrecked off the coast of what is now Mauritania in 1816, and Géricault took on the scandal without a commission to launch his career.

The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia was built on the salvaged hull of which scuttled US steam frigate?

USS Merrimack had been burned to the waterline and sunk by the US Navy to keep her from capture, yet her lower hull and engines were reused.

From which US aircraft carrier did sixteen B-25 Mitchells take off for the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo?

USS Hornet never got her aircraft back: fifteen were destroyed in crashes and the sixteenth landed at Vladivostok, where the Soviets kept it.

Which Ming dynasty admiral commanded seven great treasure-ship voyages across Asia between 1405 and 1433?

Zheng He sailed for the Yongle Emperor, and his voyages stretched China's trade networks all the way to the Swahili coast of Africa.

Which pharaoh's cedar ship, sealed in a pit beside the Great Pyramid around 2500 BC, was rediscovered in 1954?

Khufu's ship measures 43.4 metres and ranks as the world's oldest intact ship, having lain undisturbed in the Giza bedrock for some 4,500 years.

Which English archaeological site yielded an undisturbed Anglo-Saxon ship burial that held a famous ceremonial helmet?

Sutton Hoo's burial chamber also held gold dress fittings, a lyre and silver plate from Byzantium, a world often compared to that of Beowulf.

Which type of oared warship filled the fleet that Themistocles had Athens build to fight the Persians at Salamis?

The trireme was rowed with one man to each oar, and Herodotus reports 378 of them in the allied Greek fleet that year.

In the Disney pirate films starring Johnny Depp, which ship does Captain Jack Sparrow fight to win back from Barbossa?

The Black Pearl gives the first film its subtitle, and Sparrow spends that story trying to reclaim her from his mutinous first mate.

In the 1975 film Jaws, what is the name of Quint's fishing boat that sets out to hunt the shark?

The Orca was played by two identical 42-foot models that the production team built for the shoot.

In Greek mythology, which ship carried Jason and his crew to Colchis on the quest for the Golden Fleece?

The Argo is usually said to be named after her builder, Argus, who had the help of the goddess Athena, and her crew became known as the Argonauts.

Which class of mass-produced American cargo ship, 2,710 of them built from 1941 to 1945, symbolised US wartime industry?

The Liberty ship was mocked by Time magazine as an 'Ugly Duckling', yet build times fell from about 230 days to a median of just 39 by 1943.

Which hull marking, compulsory under British law since 1876, shows the legal limit to which a ship may be loaded?

The Plimsoll line is named for Samuel Plimsoll, the MP who campaigned against dangerously overloaded coffin ships, and it lets anyone see at a glance whether a vessel has been overloaded.

Which German ship, sunk by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic in January 1945, is modern history's deadliest shipwreck?

Wilhelm Gustloff was built as a cruise ship for the Nazi 'Strength Through Joy' organisation, and by one estimate 9,343 people died when she went down.

The steamboat Sultana exploded in April 1865, in America's worst maritime disaster, on which river?

The Mississippi tragedy was overshadowed by the end of the Civil War: built to carry 376 passengers, Sultana was packed with more than 2,000 people, many of them freed Union prisoners.

Who became the first person to sail around the world alone, finishing in 1898 aboard the sloop Spray?

Joshua Slocum turned the three-year voyage into the best-selling book Sailing Alone Around the World, then vanished at sea aboard Spray in 1909.

Which billionaire's name fronted the Glomar Explorer, built for a secret 1974 CIA bid to raise a Soviet submarine?

Howard Hughes told the media the vessel would mine manganese nodules from the sea floor, a cover story for recovering the Soviet submarine K-129.

Which of Columbus's ships, the fastest of his 1492 fleet, carried the lookout who first sighted the New World?

La Pinta's sailor Rodrigo de Triana sighted land on 12 October 1492, and the ship's name can be translated from Spanish as 'the painted one'.

On the sitcom Gilligan's Island, what is the name of the charter boat that is shipwrecked with seven people aboard?

The SS Minnow was named in reference to Newton Minow, the FCC chairman whose 1961 speech had lambasted television producers.