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49 free Famous Ships trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Some ships outlive their voyages. The Titanic is still the most famous wreck on Earth, HMS Victory has been in commission for over 240 years, and a container ship called Ever Given stopped 12 percent of world trade for six days by getting stuck sideways. These ship trivia questions and answers cover the liners, warships, explorers' vessels and infamous wrecks of maritime history: Columbus's Santa María, Drake's Golden Hind, Darwin's Beagle, the Bounty and the Mary Celeste, Bismarck and USS Missouri, Vasa, Endurance, Kon-Tiki and the modern giants. Every answer is sourced and explained.
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Q 01From which English port did the Titanic depart on her maiden voyage in April 1912?
Southampton
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.
Q 02Who led the Franco-American expedition that found the Titanic wreck on 1 September 1985?
Robert Ballard
Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel found the ship had split in two near the surface. Ballard went on to locate the Bismarck in 1989.
Q 03Which company employed Titanic's two wireless operators?
Marconi
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.
Q 04Which Cunard liner reached the Titanic's lifeboats two hours after she sank and rescued over 700 survivors?
Carpathia
Captain Arthur Rostron raced through the ice fields at full speed. Carpathia was herself sunk by a German U-boat in July 1918.
Q 05How long did the Lusitania take to sink after a German torpedo struck her off Ireland in May 1915?
About 18 minutes
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.
Q 06HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, holds what distinction today?
Oldest naval vessel still in commission
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.
Q 07USS Constitution, launched in 1797, is the oldest naval vessel still doing what?
Afloat
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.
Q 08How many passengers did the Mayflower carry to America in 1620?
102
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.
Q 09What agreement did the Pilgrims and 'strangers' sign aboard ship before going ashore in 1620?
The Mayflower Compact
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.
Q 10Which naturalist sailed around the world on HMS Beagle's second voyage?
Charles Darwin
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.
Q 11HMS Endeavour carried James Cook to Tahiti to observe which event in 1769?
The transit of Venus
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.
Q 12What cargo was HMS Bounty sent to the Pacific to collect before the 1789 mutiny?
Breadfruit plants
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.
Q 13Where did the Bounty mutineers burn the ship in 1790?
Pitcairn Island
Q 21The Cutty Sark is named after a character in which poet's work?
Robert Burns
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.
Q 22Since 1954 the Cutty Sark has been displayed in dry dock in which part of London?
Greenwich
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.
Q 23Brunel's SS Great Britain of 1843 was the first big ocean-going ship to pair an iron hull with what?
A screw propeller
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.
Q 14Which British warship did the Bismarck destroy in May 1941, triggering a massive Royal Navy pursuit?
HMS Hood
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.
Q 15What kind of aircraft crippled the Bismarck's steering?
Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers
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.
Q 16Columbus's flagship Santa María met what fate in 1492?
Ran aground off Hispaniola
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.
Q 17What was the original name of Francis Drake's ship the Golden Hind?
Pelican
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.
Q 18How far into her maiden voyage did the Swedish warship Vasa sail before sinking in 1628?
Roughly 1,300 metres
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.
Q 19Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose sank in 1545 in which strait?
The Solent
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.
Q 20In what year was the Mary Rose raised from the seabed?
1982
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.
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.
Q 24How many passengers could Brunel's Great Eastern carry to Australia without refuelling?
4,000
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.
Q 25Shackleton's Endurance was crushed by pack ice and sank in which sea in November 1915?
Weddell Sea
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.
Q 26In which year was the wreck of Endurance finally discovered?
2022
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.
Q 27Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 raft Kon-Tiki was built mainly from what?
Balsa logs
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.
Q 28How many days did the Kon-Tiki voyage across the Pacific last?
101
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.
Q 29The Japanese surrender ending World War II was signed on the deck of which US battleship?
USS Missouri
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.
Q 30How many officers and crew died when USS Arizona's magazine exploded at Pearl Harbor?
1,177
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.