49 Fun Facts About Famous Ships

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

She was built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast and registered in Liverpool, but sailed from Southampton for New York. About 1,500 of the 2,208 aboard died.

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

Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel found the ship had split in two near the surface. Ballard went on to locate the Bismarck in 1989.

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 reached the Titanic's lifeboats two hours after she sank and rescued over 700 survivors?

Captain Arthur Rostron raced through the ice fields at full speed. Carpathia was herself sunk by a German U-boat in July 1918.

How long did the Lusitania take to sink after a German torpedo struck her off Ireland in May 1915?

The Lusitania sank in about 18 minutes after U-20's torpedo struck her off the Old Head of Kinsale on 7 May 1915; only six lifeboats got away and 1,198 people died, including 128 Americans.

HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, holds what distinction today?

Floated out in 1765 and first commissioned in 1778, she has sat in dry dock at Portsmouth since 1922 and is the flagship of the First Sea Lord.

USS Constitution, launched in 1797, is the oldest naval vessel still doing what?

USS Constitution is the oldest naval vessel afloat: second only to HMS Victory in commission, she remains in the water at Boston. Capturing HMS Guerriere in August 1812 earned her the nickname Old Ironsides.

How many passengers did the Mayflower carry to America in 1620?

The Mayflower carried 102 passengers, plus about 30 crew, on the 1620 crossing; after some ten weeks at sea she anchored off Cape Cod, her companion Speedwell having turned back with leaks.

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

The Mayflower Compact, signed on 11 November 1620 in Provincetown Harbor by 41 men, bound Pilgrims and non-Pilgrim 'strangers' alike to a rudimentary self-government before anyone went ashore.

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

Charles Darwin, a recent Cambridge graduate, sailed on HMS Beagle's 1831–36 second voyage under Captain Robert FitzRoy, spending much of it ashore studying geology and wildlife.

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

Cook observed the transit of Venus from Tahiti on 3 June 1769; Endeavour had been launched in 1764 as the Whitby collier Earl of Pembroke, and afterwards charted New Zealand and Australia's east coast.

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

Breadfruit plants: Bounty sailed in 1787 to carry breadfruit saplings from Tahiti to the West Indies as cheap food for enslaved plantation workers; Fletcher Christian's mutiny on 28 April 1789 ended the mission.

Where did the Bounty mutineers burn the ship in 1790?

Pitcairn Island: the mutineers ran Bounty ashore and burned her there on 23 January 1790, while Bligh, cast adrift in an open boat, navigated some 3,600 nautical miles to Timor.

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

HMS Hood, the Royal Navy's largest warship, blew up in the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941, leaving three survivors from 1,418 men; Bismarck herself was sunk three days later on 27 May.

What kind of aircraft crippled the Bismarck's steering?

Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers did it: fifteen of the open-cockpit biplanes flew off HMS Ark Royal on 26 May 1941, and one torpedo hit jammed Bismarck's rudders, leaving her steering in circles.

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

She ran aground off Hispaniola, hitting a sand bar near modern Cap-Haïtien on Christmas Day 1492; her timbers built the settlement of La Navidad. Her original name was La Gallega.

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

She sailed from Plymouth in 1577 as the Pelican; Drake renamed her Golden Hind in 1578 after the crest of his patron Sir Christopher Hatton, and she completed the circumnavigation in 1580.

How far into her maiden voyage did the Swedish warship Vasa sail before sinking in 1628?

Vasa sailed roughly 1,300 metres before a light gust heeled her over on 10 August 1628; top-heavy and under-ballasted, she capsized in Stockholm harbour and was raised in 1961 after 333 years.

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

She sank in the Solent off Spithead on 19 July 1545 while leading an attack on French galleys, watched by Henry VIII from Southsea Castle; the hull was later raised in a complex salvage operation.

In what year was the Mary Rose raised from the seabed?

The Mary Rose was raised on 11 October 1982, eleven years after divers relocated the wreck in 1971; Vasa had come up in 1961, and the two hulls are the best-preserved warships of their eras.

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

Robert Burns: in his poem Tam o' Shanter the witch Nannie wears only a 'cutty sark', a short shirt. Built in 1869, the clipper later switched from China tea to Australian wool.

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

Greenwich: she was towed into a purpose-built dry dock there in December 1954 and opened to the public in 1957; a 2007 fire during restoration badly damaged her before she reopened 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 ocean-going ship to combine an iron hull with screw propulsion, crossing to New York in 14 days in 1845; abandoned in the Falklands, she was towed home to Bristol in 1970.

How many passengers could Brunel's Great Eastern carry to Australia without refuelling?

She was designed to carry 4,000 passengers to Australia without refuelling; launched in 1858 as by far the world's largest ship, her capacity was not surpassed until Imperator in 1913, and she ended up laying the 1866 transatlantic cable.

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

The Weddell Sea: Endurance was trapped in its pack ice from January 1915, crushed, and sank on 21 November 1915; all 28 men survived an epic escape via Elephant Island and South Georgia.

In which year was the wreck of Endurance finally discovered?

The Endurance22 expedition found her on 5 March 2022, nearly 107 years after she sank, upright at 3,008 metres with her name legible on the stern.

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

Balsa logs: nine balsa trunks from Ecuador, lashed with hemp rope to indigenous designs, carried the raft 6,900 km from Callao, Peru, before it struck the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus.

How many days did the Kon-Tiki voyage across the Pacific last?

The voyage lasted 101 days, from 28 April to 7 August 1947; Heyerdahl and five companions set out to show South Americans could have reached Polynesia, and his book became a global bestseller.

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; 'Mighty Mo' has been a museum ship at Pearl Harbor since 1999, moored near the Arizona memorial.

How many officers and crew died when USS Arizona's magazine exploded at Pearl Harbor?

1,177 officers and crew died when a bomb detonated Arizona's forward magazine on 7 December 1941, nearly half of the 2,403 American deaths in the attack; the hull lies beneath its memorial, leaking oil.

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

The Battle of Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 9 March 1862 was the first clash between ironclad warships; Virginia had been built on the hull of the scuttled frigate Merrimack, and Monitor's wreck was found in 1973.

HMS Dreadnought of 1906 is the only battleship confirmed to have sunk what?

She rammed the submarine U-29 in the Pentland Firth in March 1915, cutting it in two. The revolutionary all-big-gun ship never fired at an enemy battleship.

What did USS Nautilus, the pioneering nuclear-powered boat, achieve on 3 August 1958?

A submerged transit of the North Pole: on 3 August 1958 Nautilus passed beneath the pole during Operation Sunshine. Launched in 1954 and sponsored by Mamie Eisenhower, she became a museum ship at Groton, Connecticut, in 1986.

David Bushnell's one-man Turtle of 1775 was the earliest underwater craft to do what?

Be used in combat: in September 1776 Sergeant Ezra Lee piloted Turtle beneath HMS Eagle in New York harbour and tried to screw a gunpowder charge to her hull, the first submarine attack in history.

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

The Azores: the Dei Gratia sighted her some 400 nautical miles east of the islands on 4 December 1872, seaworthy with her cargo of alcohol largely intact; 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?

The Stockholm, a Swedish American Line ship, struck Andrea Doria's starboard side in fog off Nantucket on 25 July 1956; both had radar. Remarkably, 1,660 of the 1,706 people aboard the Italian liner were rescued.

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

Lake Superior claimed her on 10 November 1975 with all 29 crew; the largest Great Lakes ship when launched in 1958, she is the largest to have sunk there, 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: the tanker struck it just after midnight on 24 March 1989 under Captain Joseph Hazelwood, bound for Long Beach, spilling about 11 million gallons of crude, the largest spill in US waters until Deepwater Horizon in 2010.

For how many days did the container ship Ever Given block the Suez Canal in March 2021?

Six days: she wedged diagonally across the canal on 23 March 2021, en route from Malaysia to Rotterdam, and was refloated on 29 March; Egypt then impounded her over a reported $916 million claim.

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, built by Meyer Turku in Finland at 250,800 gross tons, began sailing from Miami on 27 January 2024.

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

She was a supertanker, a 458-metre ultra large crude carrier; renamed Happy Giant, Jahre Viking, Knock Nevis and finally Mont, she was beached at Alang, India, and scrapped in 2010.

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

France's DGSE planted two limpet mines on 10 July 1985, sinking the ship and killing photographer Fernando Pereira; the Rainbow Warrior had just evacuated Rongelap Atoll and was bound for the Moruroa test site.

Jacques Cousteau's research ship Calypso began life as what?

She was a Royal Navy minesweeper, launched in 1942 as BYMS-26 and later numbered HMS J-826, that swept mines in the Mediterranean before Cousteau converted her in 1950; she sank after a collision in Singapore in 1996.

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

She has been moored at Long Beach, California, since December 1967, after sailing the North Atlantic for Cunard from 1936 and holding the Blue Riband from 1938 to 1952.

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

She docked at Tilbury on 22 June 1948 carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways, many from the Caribbean, becoming a symbol of post-war migration; she had been launched in Germany in 1930 as the Monte Rosa.

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?

She hit rocks off Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, on 13 January 2012; 32 of the 4,252 people aboard died, and Captain Francesco Schettino was jailed for 16 years for manslaughter and abandoning ship.

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

Blowering Dam, a reservoir in New South Wales: there on 8 October 1978 Warby's backyard-built wooden jet boat Spirit of Australia averaged 511 km/h (317.6 mph) over the measured kilometre, a world water speed record.

Before naming, Harland and Wolff called Titanic's sister Olympic by what yard designation?

Olympic was Harland and Wolff yard number 400 and Titanic 401; the third Olympic-class sister, Britannic, yard number 433, was sunk by a mine in the Aegean in November 1916 while serving as a hospital ship.