Ship Trivia Quiz

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ddp59 wrote:

dan, the berlin airlift started in june 1948.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

To all our American compadres ...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!!

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

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. 

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

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.

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 has found the correct connections.

Though Nelson only knew Riou by his reputation before the Copenhagen operation, Riou greatly impressed the Admiral during their short association. He performed flawlessly in marking the channels approaching the city and Nelson included the frigate captain in his planning sessions, along with Admirals and Commodores.

Riou became the victim of other officer's screwups during the battle, ending up facing shore batteries in a frigate. When Hyde Parker lost his nerve and ordered a withdrawal, Riou had no choice to comply, unlike Nelson, who could afford to turn a "blind eye". In order to withdraw, Riou's vessels had to cease fire, which lifted their protective cloak of smoke, and turn their sterns to batteries that had not been suppressed. Riou was cut in half by a cannon ball and Amazon's crew suffered horrendous casualties.

If events at Copenhagen had gone to plan, it might have been "kiss me Riou"....

For those interested in more, check out:

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/guardian/ 

and an excellent book by Dudley Pope, The Great Gamble, Nelson at Copenhagen.

The dog story, and undertones, can be found in Anne Salmond's book, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Encounters in the South Seas"

Rick, the floor is yours.

Well, my first thought was William Bligh, who sailed with Cook and commanded HMS Glatton at Copenhagen but, as I said above, I couldn't connect the dog.

Looking deeper I came up with Edward Riou, who served on both Resolution and Discovery during Cook's last expedition, ending up as a midshipman

During the voyage Riou acquired a native dog at Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand. The dog apparently bit several of Riou's colleagues so when Riou was ashore one day the dog was given a mock trial, found guilty, killed and cooked. This was referred to as the "Trial of the Cannibal Dog".

In 1799, he was given command of HMS Amazon, a new 5th rate of 38 guns. The Amazon joined the Baltic Fleet in 1801 and took part in the Battle of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801.  During the battle, Riou was severely wounded in the head by a splinter and then killed when a cannon-ball cut him in two.

Rick

sounds like you are barking up the right tree...

Alan,

I've a famous name that connects Captain Cook and the Battle of Copenhagen (1801), but can't make the New Zealand culinary connection.  Am I on the right lines?

Rick

Ok, for you Royal Navy aficionados....

What is the connection between a New Zealand dog dinner (yes, a tasty, canine main course), Captain Cook (the main course at another dinner?) and Copenhagen (no, not the smokeless tobacco)?

I found myself thinking I was having great ideas - I moved out from the Tora Tora Tora/Pearl Harbor core to In Harm's Way and even 1941.  And I tried replacing Titanic with Poseidon Adventure.  I didn't find any matches, but I did find that David Warner was in 2 different Titanic movies - Titanic and SOS Titanic; I found a link between the movies Titanic and Tombstone; and ultimately that whoever lists the all the bit players on IMDB.com has WAY too much time on their hands.

I've wanted to watch Here Comes the Navy for years, but when it was on last, we did have TiVo but also had a new TV that didn't get along with TiVo, so I missed out yet again.   It's not available on DVD, but you can go to TCM.com and cast a vote for it - they track the votes by email address, so if you have more than one you can vote more than once.

Guess it's time to spill the beans.

The 1934 movie "Here Comes the Navy," starring the 34-year-old James Cagney, was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but apparently faded from most movie enthusiasts' memories pretty quickly.  It doesn't even get listed in most "TV movies" books; so far as I know it hasn't been released on either VHS or DVD.  But it has shown up a couple of times in recent years on the Turner Classic Movies cable network - usually late at night or very early in the morning. 

Much of the movie was shot on board the U.S.S. Arizona.  There are quite a few interesting on board scenes - including one in which, with all the officers wearing their dress uniforms, swords, and fore-and-aft hats, Cagney gets presented with a medal.  There's also a memorable explosion inside a 14" turret.  (Paul Stillwell, in his book about the Arizona, suggests that those scenes may have been shot inside a studio mockup of the turret interior - but if so the moviemakers were mighty careful to get it right.) 

The plot (such as it is) revolves around a rivalry between Cagney, a young, swaggering sailor, and Pat O'Brian, who plays an older, relatively straight-laced chief petty officer.  In the grand finale, the two of them jump out of the airship Macon (which crashed a year after the movie was released), and are saved by one parachute.

The two male leads are also involved in a love triangle, the hypotenuse of which is the 24-year-old Gloria Stuart.  Sixty-three years later, she played the old lady with the diamond in "Titanic."

Here's the Wikipedia entry for "Here Comes the Navy":  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_the_Navy

Definitely worth staying up late the next time TCM shows it.

Schoonerbum's answer wasn't the one I had in mind, but I guess it meets the criteria.  I therefore suggest that we award Schoonerbum the next question.