Ship Trivia Quiz

Alan,

Despite being published by Guinness, the authors of the book in question have (or had) a pretty good pedigree. Gervis Freere-Cook was (he is dead) the curator of the Submarine Museum here in the UK. K J Macksey was Deputy editor of Purnell's History of the First World War and History of the Second World War and is the author of over 45 books, both fiction and non-fiction. None of this, of course, makes them correct.

Anyway, given your tag-line, you ought to be in  favour of anything brewery-related 

Rick

OK, Which ship was nicknamed,

"The Can Opener" ?. or just " Can Opener".

You're right runkel ,

I was hoping to catch a few of you out with this one .

Over to you again.

Which four funnel  Destroyer was the last built for the U.S. Navy?

Would that have been the USS Decatur completed in 1922?

Mike T.

Thanks Jim;

 The vessel, Alert, on which Richard Henry Dana sailed and wrote about in "Two Years Before the Mast" was sunk during the American Civil War.

What business was the Alert engaged in?

What date and where was she sunk?

What or whom was the cause of her sinking?

MIke T.

I believe that the Alert was a whaler, burned by Captain Raphael Semmes, of the CSS Alabama, near the Azores on September 9, 1862.

Like most sailors of the time, Dana considered whalers the lot of desperate sailors. There's an old shanty, The Sailor's Prayer that sums it up...

"This dirty town has been my home, since last time I was sailing.

But I won't stay another day, I'd sooner be a whalin'...

chorus: (the sailor's prayer) 

Oh, Lord above, send down a dove, with a beak as sharp as razors,

To slit the throats of them there blokes, what sells bad beer to sailors."

schoonerbumm

You got it. I didn't think it was that hard a question. Thanks for the the lyrics as well. The CSS Alabama and the other Confederate raiders hurt the New England whaling fleet a hard blow.

I believe the Alert was burnt as Semmes couldn't afford to place a prize crew on her as well as two other whalers he captured at theat time.

Mike T.

OK...

What is the connection between HMS Surprize and baseball?

Visit  San Diego and see both 

"the Padres" San Diego's major league baseball team.

I believe "The Star-Spangled Banner" is always sung at baseball games? It was written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, who watched the attack on Fort McHenry from the deck of HMS Surprize, where he was being held prisoner.

Rick

Rick has it.

Key had been sent to negotiate the release of a prisoner, a prominent doctor, held by the British. A small "flag of truce" sloop that he was transported on, was towed by Surprize to the Baltimore area, while Key was a "guest", aboard Surprize, Cochran's temporary flagship.

During the actual bombardment of Fort McHenry Key was placed back on the sloop, and it was anchored with the British transports, out of harms way, eight miles away from the action.

The next morning, Key scribbled a "few random lines" out of the emotions he felt seeing the American flag still flying and watching the British ships withdraw and the amphibious troops reboarding their boats. On the sloop's slow voyage home, the lines "gelled into a poem", which he set to the tune from To Anacreon in Heaven, which had already been used for several American patriotic songs.

It's fitting to have American sporting events open to the melody of an 18th century drinking song.

http://www.contemplator.com/america/anacreon.html 

Cochran's Surprize was the 8th to carry the name and one of the many sister ships to Shannon.

What was unique about a naval action early in World War One off the coast of Brazil?

Rick

I suppose one candidate would be the seizure of allied shipping by a sailing vessel, Von Luckner's Seeadler.

Alan,

Not sure I'd call that a "naval action". The one I'm looking for involved vessels firing on each other.

Rick

The Carmania had a much more eventful wartime experience. On September 14, 1914 she fought a fierce battle with the Cap Trafalgar  (a German ship of Hamburg Amerika Line which was also converted for use as an Armed Merchant Cruiser) off the Brazilian island of Trinidad. The Carmania managed to sink the German ship but suffered extensive damage with her bridge being blown away in the battle.

Just as it seemed that the fires on Carmania would burn out of control, Cap Trafalgar veered away, lowering lifeboats as she heeled over to port. A shell below the waterline had ruptured several compartments, and the ship was rapidly sinking, although the colliers were able to pull 279 sailors from the wreck before she sank. 51 were killed in the fighting or the sinking (other reports say 16 or 17 lives were lost), including Captain Wirth. Carmania was equally shattered, listing severely, heavily flooded and burning, with nine men dead and many more wounded. It was at this point that Cap Trafalgar's contemporary, the armed merchant cruiser SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm arrived, seemingly to provide the coup de grace for the shattered ship. However, the Kronprinz Wilhelm's captain feared a trap, since many ships both German and Allied in the area had doubtless been listening to the SOS calls of the Cap Trafalgar, which, though in German code, had been supplemented by messages from the Carmania with the British code. Since multiple warships were on their way to the location, and the Cap Trafalgar had presumably already sunk, the captain of the Kronprinz Wilhelm turned his ship about and sailed away without firing a shot.

You've got it, Jim. The first time Armed Merchant Cruisers (AMCs) fired on each other - a rare occurence. There was also a similar famous incident in WW2 when the US Liberty ship Stephen Hopkins fought the German AMC Stier. Both ships sank.

Rick

Wasn't the German Cap Trafalgar, "the ship that hunted itself ?" Years ago I read the story that the Cap Trafalgar had sunk some allied transports. The British in an attempt to intercept this menace had disguised the Carmania to look like the Cap Trafalgar, so as to fool other German raiders. Perhaps you can clarify to me this story. During WW ll, a simular insident occurred when the German raider, Penguin, disguised as a merchant ship to sink unsuspecting allied shipping, was hunted down and sunk in the Indian Ocean.

          Happy modeling to all and every one of you.

                            Crackers, Jerome, Idaho

Jerome,

You are correct in that The Ship That Hunted Itself, by Colin Simpson, is about the battle between Carmania and Cap Trafalgar. I have not read it, so cannot comment on its accuracy or how much of the story is fact or fiction. However, the battle took place on 14 September 1914, less than six weeks after the outbreak of WW1 and before Cap Trafalgar had the chance to sink any British shipping. It has been suggested that Cap Trafalgar was disguised as a Union Castle liner (not a Cunarder) , but I don't have any details.

The Carmania spotted Cap Trafalgar's smoke early in the morning and some hours later was able to surprise the German ship with two colliers in the island of Trinidade's only harbour.

Both captains realised that to fight a successful action they required plenty of room, and so separately steamed several miles from the island in order to gain the space required.

The two ships turned towards each other and began to fight, the Carmania (eight 4.7" guns)  firing too early and thus allowing the Cap Trafalgar (two 4.1" guns) the first blow. Carmania suffered much the worse of the engagement in the ensuing two hours, being hit 79 times, was holed below the waterline, and had her bridge totally destroyed by shellfire. However, as the range closed her own guns began to tell, and fires broke out on both ships, sailors lining the rails and firing machine guns at their opposite numbers as the ships came within a few hundred yards of one another.

Just as it seemed that the fires on Carmania would burn out of control, Cap Trafalgar veered away, lowering lifeboats as she heeled over to port. A shell below the waterline had ruptured several compartments, and the ship was rapidly sinking, although the colliers were able to pull 279 sailors from the wreck before she sank. 51 were killed in the fighting or the sinking (other reports say 16 or 17 lives were lost), including Captain Wirth. Carmania was equally shattered, listing severely, heavily flooded and burning, with nine men dead and many more wounded. It was at this point that Cap Trafalgar's contemporary, the armed merchant cruiser SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm arrived, seemingly to provide the coup de grace for the shattered ship. However, the Kronprinz Wilhelm's captain feared a trap, since many ships both German and Allied in the area had doubtless been listening to the SOS calls of the Cap Trafalgar, which, though in German code, had been supplemented by messages from the Carmania with the British code. Since multiple warships were on their way to the location, and the Cap Trafalgar had presumably already sunk, the captain of the Kronprinz Wilhelm turned his ship about and sailed away without firing a shot.

The following day the Carmania was rescued and brought into Pernambuco.

Rick

Nobody else wants to play, so here goes...

HMS Nubian had her bow blown off on 27th October 1916 when she tried to ram a German destroyer. HMS Zulu had her stern blown off by a mine on 8th November 1916. The two ends were joined to form HMS Zubian. She served until the end of the war, sinking the mine-laying U-Boat UC-50 in 1918 off the SE coast of England by ramming followed by depth charges. She was scrapped in 1919.

Rick

Yes, interest is wanning. Still, let's try and keep it going with this one, which is a little cryptic:

               What connects the City of Oxford, Michigan and Perthshire?

Rick