Captains Courageous
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40 free Captains Courageous trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Rudyard Kipling wrote only one novel set entirely in North America, and it is a sea story. A spoiled millionaire's son goes overboard in the North Atlantic, is hauled aboard a working fishing schooner, and has to earn his keep for a whole season before he sees land again. Captains Courageous has been turning idle boys into sailors on the page since 1897. This quiz follows the book from its opening scene to its last page: Harvey Cheyne and his family, the captain and his mismatched crew, the superstitions and daily routine of the fishing fleet, and how Kipling came to write it. It also covers the screen versions, from the Oscar-winning 1937 MGM film to the 1977 and 1996 television adaptations, and a few surprising places the story has turned up since. It suits students reading the novel for class, book clubs, and classic film fans who remember the ending of the 1937 picture a little too well. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play on screen or print the questions for a group.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor won the Best Actor Oscar as the fisherman Manuel in the 1937 film Captains Courageous?
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy disliked faking the accent and having his hair curled for the part, yet it won him the first of two Best Actor Oscars in a row.
Q 02In Captains Courageous, spoiled Harvey Cheyne is swept into the Atlantic from what kind of vessel?
An ocean liner
An ocean liner was carrying Harvey to Europe, and the novel opens with it rolling through fog, whistling to warn the fishing fleet.
Q 03In Captains Courageous, what gift from a fellow passenger leaves Harvey Cheyne sick at the rail?
A strong cigar
A strong cigar, a rank Wheeling stogie offered by a German passenger, made Harvey faint just as a roll of the ship tipped him over the rail.
Q 04Manuel, Harvey's rescuer in Captains Courageous, comes from an island ruled by which country?
Portugal
Portugal rules Madeira, the island Manuel calls home, and he tells the crew gentle stories of girls washing clothes there by moonlight.
Q 05The schooner that rescues Harvey in Captains Courageous spends its season catching which fish?
Cod
Cod was the whole point of the trip, and Kipling says the skipper found the shoals by thinking the way the fish did.
Q 06Who directed Captains Courageous two years before both The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind?
Victor Fleming
Victor Fleming won the Best Director Oscar for Gone with the Wind, and both of his 1939 films sit in the American Film Institute's top ten.
Q 07Unlike the novel, what happens to Manuel in the 1937 film Captains Courageous during the race home?
He drowns
He drowns, tangled in the rigging of a snapped mast, a tear-jerking twist the screenwriters added; in the book Manuel is alive to be rewarded at the end.
Q 08What Biblical name do the crew in Captains Courageous give anyone or anything that spoils the luck?
A Jonah
A Jonah can be a man, a boy or even a bucket, the crew explain, and one hand swears a jinxed splitting-knife dogged him for two trips.
Q 09Which novel's hero is likened to the boy who falls off a boat in what must be Captains Courageous?
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye never names the picture, but Holden Caulfield is told he resembles the boy in a film with Melvyn Douglas, who played Harvey's father.
Q 10Which stern but fair schooner captain puts Harvey Cheyne to work in Captains Courageous?
Disko Troop
Disko Troop gives Harvey a bloody nose for calling him a thief, then signs him on as second boy at ten and a half dollars a month.
Q 11Which port, self-styled America's oldest seaport, is home to the schooner in Captains Courageous?
Gloucester
Gloucester honours its lost fishermen with the Man at the Wheel statue, a bronze helmsman in oilskins raised beside the harbour in 1925.
Q 12Which foggy Atlantic fishing grounds give Captains Courageous its subtitle and most of its setting?
The Grand Banks
The Grand Banks are foggy for a reason: the cold Labrador Current meets the warm Gulf Stream there, over some of the world's richest fishing grounds.
Q 13Which fishing schooner picks Harvey Cheyne out of the sea in Captains Courageous?
We're Here
We're Here had a fine catch the day after hauling Harvey aboard, which Dan took as proof that the newcomer brought no bad luck.
Q 21In Captains Courageous, Harvey Cheyne's multimillionaire father built his fortune chiefly on what?
Railroads
Railroads came first, half a dozen of them, though the gossips aboard add mines, lumber and shipping to a fortune of thirty million dollars.
Q 22In Captains Courageous, Harvey's parents race to Boston by private train from which California city?
San Diego
San Diego to Boston takes them 87 hours 35 minutes in their private car Constance, which is given right of way over 177 other trains.
Q 23How does Harvey tell his parents he is alive once the schooner reaches port in Captains Courageous?
By telegram
By telegram, but only once the telegraph office opened; until then, Kipling writes, Harvey was perhaps the loneliest boy in all America.
Q 14Which future Andy Hardy star played the captain's son Dan in the 1937 film Captains Courageous?
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney first played Andy Hardy that same year, and by 1939 he was Hollywood's top box-office attraction.
Q 15Freddie Bartholomew, Harvey in the 1937 Captains Courageous, first found fame in which Dickens role?
David Copperfield
David Copperfield brought the London-born Bartholomew to America at ten, and two years later he was billed above every adult in this cast.
Q 16Which future Mr. Potter of It's a Wonderful Life played the captain in 1937's Captains Courageous?
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore already had a Best Actor Oscar of his own, for A Free Soul, when he took the wheel as the gruff skipper.
Q 17Which Streetcar Named Desire Oscar winner played the captain in 1977's TV film Captains Courageous?
Karl Malden
Karl Malden led a version shot off the coast of Maine on a budget of $1.5 million, with the Kipling estate paid $25,000 for the rights.
Q 18Which future Fantasy Island host played Manuel in the 1977 TV film Captains Courageous?
Ricardo Montalbán
Ricardo Montalbán made it the year he first welcomed guests as Mr. Roarke, five years before returning to Star Trek as Khan.
Q 19Which star of Spenser: For Hire played the captain in the 1996 TV film Captains Courageous?
Robert Urich
Robert Urich said he wanted a film he could watch with his own children, and this version renamed his skipper Matthew.
Q 20Which Around the World in 80 Days director made the 1996 TV film Captains Courageous?
Michael Anderson
Michael Anderson made it more than forty years after The Dam Busters, his 1955 war film about the bouncing-bomb raid.
Q 24What does the cook, credited with second sight, keep predicting about Harvey in Captains Courageous?
He will be Dan's master
He will be Dan's master, the cook insists, and the last page bears him out: Dan is second mate on a ship of the Cheyne line.
Q 25In Captains Courageous, crewman Penn lost his memory after his family died in which real disaster?
The Johnstown Flood
The Johnstown Flood of 1889 killed more than 2,200 people when a dam burst, and Kipling made Penn a preacher who saw his wife and four children swept away.
Q 26In Captains Courageous, the crew tease the captain's brother Uncle Salters for really being what?
A farmer
A farmer is what Dan calls him: there isn't water enough between there and Hatteras, he says, to wash the furrow-mould off his uncle's boots.
Q 27The cook from Cape Breton in Captains Courageous speaks which language as his mother tongue?
Gaelic
Gaelic is his natural tongue, the speech of inland Cape Breton, though the crew take it for homemade Scotch until Penn sets them right.
Q 28The captain in Captains Courageous was named after his icy birthplace, an island off which land?
Greenland
Greenland is where his father's boat was iced in for a winter with his mother aboard, and the couple named their newborn after the place.
Q 29In Captains Courageous, the crew row out from the schooner each day in which flat-bottomed boats?
Dories
Dories nest one inside another on deck, like puzzle boxes as Dan puts it, which let a schooner carry a whole flock of them.
Q 30Which university is Harvey attending as Captains Courageous ends, before he joins the family firm?
Stanford
Stanford gets a ribbing in the final scene, where Harvey tells Dan the college is nothing next to their old schooner.