Ship Trivia Quiz

Thanks Alan. A good question which led me down several strange byways!

Here's another "connection"- and an easy one, I think. Which ship connects Jarrow-on-Tyne and Half Moon Bay?

Rick

Rick,

You got me excited about this one, I live almost within sight of Half Moon Bay, except it turned out to be the wrong Half Moon Bay... on the central California coast.

 I think that the Half Moon Bay you are referring to is in Black Rock, Victoria, Australia; which in 1926 was the home of the Black Rock Yacht Club and became the new home of the world's most celebrated breakwater, HMS Cerberus.

You've got it, Alan.

I'm currently building - very intermitently - a 1:48 scale RC model of HMVS (Her Majesty's Victorian Ship) Cerberus.  Launched in 1868, Cerberus was the first of the modern battleships and the first British warship to dispense completely with sail power. The design for the Cerberus was the first in the world to incorporate the combination of a central superstructure with fore and aft gun turrets - and she had the superior "Coles" turret, as opposed to the inefficient Ericsson design used on your side of the pond!

For anyone interested in more info, visit  www.cerberus.com.au/  In the meantime, back to you for the next question.

Rick

RickF,

Super-duper question!  I tried to work it from the Jarrow end and drew a complete blank.  The Cerberus, very nice piece of history to model. 

Tom S. 

To all our American compadres ...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!!

And to everyone else ... have some turkey anyway! 

Thanks alumni, I hope everyone has a safe, happy holiday.

I'm off to visit family until next week, so...

           ...since alumni72 has shown such class, the floor is his in my absence.

Alumni, you are up for the next question.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Let this be a lesson to me - I have a biiiig mouth!

I have an hour or so before I have to leave as well - I'll see if I can come up with a decent question (or not so decent) and put it up here for your consideration.

OK, here is a quickie - I don't know how well-known the incident is, but I hope it is not too obscure.

World War 2 had just ended in Europe a month before, when a single hand grenade sank one ship, damaged 4 others so severely that they later had to be scrapped; and killed at least 88 people, both British and German.

How did this happen, and where?

You'd think so, wouldn't you?  A small hint, perhaps?

As the question indicates, the event happened in Europe.  Someplace where both British and Germans were co-located. 

And it was an accident.

I clear forgot - the key to the answer is knowing the nationality of the ships that were sunk and damaged.

alumni72 wrote:

OK, here is a quickie - I don't know how well-known the incident is, but I hope it is not too obscure. World War 2 had just ended in Europe a month before, when a single hand grenade sank one ship, damaged 4 others so severely that they later had to be scrapped; and killed at least 88 people, both British and German. How did this happen, and where?

ddp59 wrote:

dan, the berlin airlift started in june 1948.

The Berlin Airlift is indeed not the answer, but you can't fault a guy for trying.  Hey - if I didn't already know the answer, I'd never be able to guess it.

Wow - I came across this item in a state of desperation, thanks to the magnanimity of our friend schoonerbumm, who left me holding the trivia pursestrings.   I had no idea it would prove a poser, but I won't give in and spill the beans yet.  Maybe another hint tomorrow.

I believe the question refers to four former Danish torpedo boats destroyed in an explosion in Flensburg in 1945.  A detailed description of the incident can be found here:

http://www.navalhistory.dk/english/history/1945_1989/explosioninflensburg(1945).htm

The investigation determined the explosion to be an accident in the "murphy's law" category.  I had never heard of this incident before tackling this question.  Very good piece of history and interesting account of immediate post-war conditions.

Tom S.

This will probably be easier than it looks:

New Question:

All seven of the ironclad gunboats of this very successful class were accepted into service before either the USS Monitor or CSS Virginia was launched.  The seven were so identical that different color bands were painted on the stacks to tell them apart.  What were these ships collectively nicknamed.  You get extra credit for the name of the man who built them and tell what else he was famous for.

Tom S.

Whoops - annoying old work gets in the way again!

Yes, eaglecentral gets it indeed, and with the same article I stumbled across.

The article is very interesting and thorough - and I am very glad that someone found it. I was at a loss as to what my next hint would be.

alumni72,

I sincerely apologize for jumping the gun with a new question without your OK.  Please forgive this monstrous blunder and break of protocol.  

Tom S.

Think nothing of it - we're here for the fun of it, after all.  Besides, what's the worst that could happen - two questions instead of one? 

Besides, I didn't even realize I had missed an entire day!

Tom,

I think that you are referring to "Pook's Turtles", seven ironclad river gunboats built in 1861, officialy refered to as the City Class, sometimes the Cairo Class.

I believe that the Cairo was the first vessel to be sunk by a mine.

I can still remember a model of the Cairo that I saw in St. Louis, Missouri, in about 1968 when I was still an impressionable adolescent. I thought to myself, I can do better than that... it was really an ugly model!

That, among other things, led to my first 1/96th Cutty Sark, the next Christmas.

schoonerbumm,

Bull's eye!!  Right on every count.  And right about the mine too.  How did the Cutty Sark turn out?  When I was a kid, all models turned out great! 

The Cairo class or city class river gunboats.  Designed by Samuel Pook and known as Pook's Turtles.  The ships were built on speculation by James Eads, who in 1874, built a bridge across the Mississippi River at St Louis that was at the time the worlds longest arch bridge.  He was the first engineer to use hydraulic caissons to sink the bridge piers and as a by-product, discovered what came to be known as caissons disease, or the bends.  The bridge is still in use.

You can see the St Louis arch in the background of this picture taken from the East St Louis side of the Mississippi river.  When Ead's drove one of the piers down through the mud, his men had to dig through a sunken riverboat to find bedrock.

schoonerbumm, the next question is yours.

Since we are coming up on Pearl Harbor Day, here is another Hawaiian naval history question (remember Mad Jack Percival Day!).

Long before the raid on Pearl Harbor, another American vessel was involved in a sneak attack in the Hawaiian Islands and was involved in active island warfare, not just self defense, using cannon.

Name the vessel and summarize her unusual story.

Looks like nobody wants to play, Alan - or maybe nobody wants to remember one of your less glorious episodes?

Rick

But, it was a most glorious episode...  

...unlike that episode at Trafalgar where, even though a lot of press and a tremendous amount of tradition were created, it took another seven years to settle matters, a kingdom was built from this episode.  ;-)

I still prefer to think of them as the Sandwich Islands!

Rick

Rick,

And the Sandwich Islanders probably would still prefer to think of Europeans as something to put in a sandwich...

Subfixer,

The question refers to events well before the end of the monarchy, but as usual, someone may find other valid answers. After I posted the question, it occurred to me that there is a second answer, that I know of.