Atlantic Ocean Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
54 free Atlantic Ocean trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Atlantic is the ocean that made the modern world. Norse sailors crossed it first, Columbus crossed it most consequentially, and for three centuries after 1492 it carried the silver, sugar, slaves and settlers that reshaped four continents. This quiz starts with the basics an eight-year-old can get (which ocean is bigger, what 'the pond' means) and works up to the ridge that splits it in two, the trench that holds its deepest point, the gyres and the Gulf Stream, the shoreless Sargasso Sea and the eels that spawn there. It then turns to the people who crossed it: Leif Erikson and Vasco da Gama, Cyrus Field's telegraph cable, Alcock and Brown, Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, the Blue Riband liners and the Titanic, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Bermuda Triangle legend and Napoleon's island prison. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Atlantic and its features, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. When you are done, try our Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and Arctic Ocean quizzes, or the general ocean quiz for the whole blue planet.
30 of 54 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Atlantic ranks where among the world's five oceans by size?
Second largest
Second largest behind the Pacific, the Atlantic still drains the most land of any ocean, because the continents on both sides slope toward it.
Q 02The Atlantic takes its name from which figure in Greek mythology?
Atlas
Atlas gave the ocean its name: myth placed the Titan at the western edge of the world, holding up the sky, and the Greeks called the waters there the 'Sea of Atlas'.
Q 03British and American speakers jokingly call the North Atlantic what?
The pond
The pond has been a joking understatement since the 1600s, when sailing across the Atlantic could take months.
Q 04Which US president set out the Atlantic Charter with Winston Churchill?
Roosevelt
Roosevelt set out war aims with Churchill months before the US entered the war, which only happened after Pearl Harbor.
Q 05Which bay on North America's Atlantic coast has the highest tides in the world?
Bay of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy's water rocks back and forth at nearly the same rhythm as the Atlantic tide, so each tide pushes it higher, like a swing.
Q 06Which narrow passage links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea?
Gibraltar
Gibraltar's strait keeps the Mediterranean a sea: Atlantic water pours in at the surface, and without it evaporation would shrink the sea into a salt lake.
Q 07The Atlantic–Indian Ocean dividing line runs south to Antarctica from which African headland?
Cape Agulhas
Cape Agulhas, not the more famous Cape of Good Hope, is Africa's southernmost point, and its rocky coast has wrecked many ships.
Q 08Who became the first person to reach the deepest point of the Atlantic, in December 2018?
Victor Vescovo
Victor Vescovo piloted the submersible himself, on the opening leg of his bid to reach the deepest point of all five oceans.
Q 09Which explorer sailed from Morocco across the Atlantic in papyrus reed boats modelled on ancient Egyptian designs?
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl made the voyages to show that ancient Egyptian-style reed boats could have crossed the ocean long before Columbus.
Q 10Which country sits directly on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
Iceland
Iceland sits on the ridge and over a hotspot, and in 2010 one of its volcanoes, Eyjafjallajökull, shut much of Europe's airspace.
Q 11The Atlantic Ocean began to open when which supercontinent broke apart?
Pangaea
Pangaea's break-up left a rift that is still growing: new seafloor at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge widens the Atlantic by a few centimetres a year.
Q 12Which British liner was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland in 1915?
RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania's sinking killed Americans aboard, yet President Wilson worked to keep the US out of the war for two more years.
Q 13Which way does water in the North Atlantic gyre turn?
Clockwise
The Coriolis effect flips it: the South Atlantic gyre turns counter-clockwise.
Q 21Which Norse explorer is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America?
Leif Erikson
Leif Erikson's Vinland comes from the sagas, and a Norse camp found in Newfoundland in 1960 proved Europeans had reached North America around the year 1000.
Q 22Which explorer rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India by sea in 1498?
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama followed the route Bartolomeu Dias had opened in 1488, and Dias later died in a storm off that same cape in 1500.
Q 23Which country was the last in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888?
Brazil
Brazil's Golden Law ended slavery in two short articles, with no payment to slave owners and no support for the people it freed.
Q 14Off which point on the US coast does the Gulf Stream veer north-east into open ocean?
Cape Hatteras
Cape Hatteras is where the current leaves the coast, and from there its path starts to twist as huge swirls of warm water break away.
Q 15Which American statesman had the Gulf Stream charted and printed in the 18th century?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin made the chart with Timothy Folger's help, to show mail ships how to stop sailing against the current.
Q 16Which Spanish explorer's 1513 expedition led to the European discovery of the Gulf Stream?
Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León met the current on the voyage that reached Florida, which he took for an island rather than part of a continent.
Q 17The Sargasso Sea is unique among named seas for what reason?
It has no land boundaries
It has no land boundaries: four currents enclose it, and in the calm water inside, floating seaweed shelters shrimp, crabs and fish.
Q 18Which creatures travel thousands of kilometres to spawn in the Sargasso Sea?
European and American eels
European and American eels spawn there and die, and their larvae drift on ocean currents back to rivers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Q 19Why are tropical cyclones rare in the South Atlantic?
Strong wind shear
Strong wind shear tears storms apart and few weather systems exist to seed them, yet in March 2004 a hurricane did form there and made landfall in South America.
Q 20Which cold current carries icebergs south past the Grand Banks of Newfoundland?
Labrador Current
The Labrador Current brings the icebergs, and after the Titanic sank in 1912, US Navy cruisers were sent to patrol the Grand Banks for ice.
Q 24Which fish drew European fishing fleets to Newfoundland for almost five centuries?
Cod
Cod stocks crashed from overfishing, and in 1992 Canada shut the fishery, putting tens of thousands of people out of work.
Q 25In 1901, which inventor reported receiving the first radio signal sent across the Atlantic?
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi listened at Signal Hill in Newfoundland through an antenna held up by a kite, and heard the Morse letter S sent from Cornwall.
Q 26The Battle of the Atlantic holds what distinction in World War II?
Longest continuous campaign
Longest continuous campaign of the war, it saw German U-boats hunt in wolf packs, converging on Allied convoys to attack together at night.
Q 27Which American businessman drove the effort to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable?
Cyrus West Field
Cyrus West Field's 1858 cable soon failed, but he refused to give up, and a lasting cable finally went into service in 1866.
Q 28Which giant ship laid the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable, in 1866?
SS Great Eastern
SS Great Eastern was the world's largest ship but lost money carrying passengers, so its owners put it to work laying cable instead.
Q 29Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic by air in 1919 in which aircraft?
Vickers Vimy
Their Vickers Vimy came down in a bog near Clifden, Ireland, and within months Alcock was killed while delivering a new plane to Paris.
Q 30What was the name of the plane Charles Lindbergh flew solo from America to Paris in 1927?
Spirit of St. Louis
Built to carry extra fuel, the Spirit of St. Louis had no front windshield, so Lindbergh could see directly out only through its side windows.