49 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.