Sailing - over the briny and not so briny... Quiz

Answer: Colorado River

John Wesley Powell, born in March 1834 in New York state, was not only a soldier and a geologist, but was also an explorer of the western areas of the US. He later was the second director of the US Geological Survey and then the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institute.

Powell sailed from the Green River in Wyoming to the Colorado (which was then sometimes still known as the Grand) and on through the Grand Canyon, which was the first known expedition through the Canyon. He named Glen Canyon and Lake Powell, a man-made lake of the Colorado, was named after him. Lake Powell is the second largest reservoir in the US, next to Lake Mead in Nevada.

For a man with only one arm, most of his right arm having been shot off during the Civil War, he did a lot of traveling and exploration of the West.

Answer: Carthaginian

The gentlemen is called the "Navigator" because Hanno was such a common name in that era. Hanno the Navigator was the king of Carthage from 480-440 BC, although he was more of a figurehead since the country was already starting to become a republic.

He set out with 60 ships and approximately 30,000 people to explore and perhaps colonize the northwestern and Atlantic coasts of Africa. He started, or re-populated, seven colonies along the Moroccan coast and then sailed further along the Atlantic coast. They visited Mogador where the Phoenicians had a dye manufacturing plant and met with many types of indigenous peoples, receiving varying types of welcome.

At the island where they turned back due to being low on provisions, they found a hairy people that they named "gorillae". They couldn't capture any of the men who ran, hid on precipices and threw rocks down on them, but they did acquire three of the women. Unfortunately, the women were so savage that Hanno's men killed them, carrying only their skin back home. (Hence the reason later European explorers, when they came upon the large, hairy, apes called them "gorillas".)

Scholars are unable to agree on how far along the coast of Africa Hanno and his sailors went, but the general view is that he at least reached Senegal. There is no mention in any of the Carthaginian writings of the main reason for the voyage: consolidation of the route to the gold market. Of course, the Carthaginians did not want others to know what they were doing, so wrote nothing about it. That makes the process of finding out much harder for later historians.

Answer: Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle

Otherwise known as Robert de la Salle, he was born in November, 1643, in Normandy, France. As a young man he studied with the Jesuit Order, of which he became a member after taking his initial vows. However, after his arrival in Canada he requested to be released from those initial vows. He not only left the order but later became hostile towards it.

He learned from the Mohawks, whose language he studied, that the Ohio River ran into the Mississippi. He thought that perhaps the Mississippi might just run into the Gulf of Mexico from where he could find a way to China. On his first try, in 1669, he allegedly was stopped by the Falls of the Ohio.

In 1682 he named the Mississippi basin "La Louisiane" and claimed it for France. At what became the site of Memphis, Tennessee, he built a small fort, named Prudhomme. When he reached the mouth of the Mississippi River he buried a plate and a cross, as well as claimed that area for France.

After going back to France and returning with settlers with an idea to build a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, the one ship out of the four to make it founded a colony in what is now Victoria county, Texas, not where he wanted to be. In 1687 during one of the at least four expeditions he undertook to find the Mississippi from Texas, his people mutinied and killed him. There are questions regarding the exact area in which he was killed but the usual place spoken of is Navasota, Texas.

Answer: Niger

Richard Lemon Lander was born the son of a Truro innkeeper in February, 1804. Lander's explorations of Africa began in 1825 with Clapperton, who died in 1827, leaving Lander the only European member of the expedition. He continued on for a while and then returned to England.

He, along with his brother, returned to West Africa in 1830 and followed the Niger River from Bussa to the sea. Then they explored about 100 miles upstream of the Niger, as well as the Benue River and the Niger Delta before returning to England in 1831.

In 1832 a group of merchants from Liverpool organized an expedition, with Lander as its leader, with an eye to building a trading post at the confluence of the Niger and Benue Rivers. The expedition met with many unexpected difficulties, including deaths from fever and Lander being shot by a native. They never did reach Bussa but returned to the coast where, unfortunately, Richard Lander died of his wound.

In 1832 he became the first recipient of the Royal Geographic Society Founder's Medal "for important services in determining the course and termination of the Niger". There is a school named for him in Truro as well as a monument at the top of Lemon Street in his honor.

To mark the bicentennial of Lander's birth, and to celebrate the brothers achievements in Africa, in November, 2004, an "Expedition of Good Will" was sent to Africa. They started at Bussa and sailed 500 miles of the river, ending at Asaba.

Answer: Tristan da Cunha

Tristao da Cunha, a navigator, explorer, and in 1514 an ambassador to the Pope, was born in 1460. In 1506 he commanded a fleet of ships that were sent to the east coast of Africa and to India, with the idea of building a fort at Socotra, after they conquered it. On the return journey, da Cunha came upon the remote islands almost 1,800 miles from the coast of South Africa and named them after himself even though, due to the weather, they could not land on them.

Answer: Dutch

Dirk Hartog, was born in 1580 in Amsterdam, Holland. He was also known as Dirck Hartog, Dierich Hartochsz, and even Theordoric Hertoge. As you will see later, he spelled his named even differently.

He was born into a seafaring family and at the age of 30 got his first command. He spent a number of years engaged in trading in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas.

In 1616 he signed on with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and was given the ship, the Eendracht, to sail with a fleet from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies. The Eendracht became separated from the other ships in a storm and arrived separately at the Cape of Good Hope. After leaving there, he set off for Batavia (now known as Jakarta) in the hope of finding the other ships. While enroute he came across various islands and, upon making landfall, found them uninhabited. One now bears his name. His was the first European expedition to land on Western Australia.

Hartog and his crew spent three days examining the islands and nearby coast. When they left they attached a pewter plate, etched with a record of their visit, to a post. On the plate his name is spelled "Dirch Hatichs". (The plate is now in the Rijksmuseum in The Netherlands having been brought back by the explorer de Vlamingh who found it half hidden in the sand and replaced it with one of his own.) The Eendract continued up the western coast of Australia, mapping as they went, arriving in Batavia, only five months late.

He left the employ of the VOC when he returned to Amsterdam in 1617.

Answer: Gavriil Pribylov

Gavriil Loginovich Pribylov, birthdate unknown, who in 1786 discovered the island of St. George and 1787 discovered the island of St. Paul, as well as the islets surrounding them. He was commanding the sloop, the Saint Georgii, and followed the barking of fur seals. Since he had been actively searching for the breeding grounds of the northern fur seals for three years, his search was ended. In 1786 he left 20 of his crew on St. George to hunt the seals which began the international hunting of the northern fur seal, a very lucrative business that went on until 1911 when banned by an international treaty, the Northern Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911, when the seals were almost extinct.

In actuality, Pribylov did not discover the islands by simply stumbling in their direction. He was told of their approximate location by the son of an Aleut chief since the Aleuts knew the Pribilofs to be great hunting grounds. However, he got the credit for it, anyway, and in 1789 the islands were named the Pribilof Islands by G. I. Shelikhov.

Answer: Juan Elcano

Juan Sebastian Elcano, a sailor of both Basque and Spanish descent, who was born in 1476, is the sailor who became Captain-General when Magellan was killed on Mactan, in the Phillippines. He sailed the Victoria back to Spain with only 17 other survivors of the voyage.

Elcano had originally signed on to a Magellan expedition to the East Indies because he was asking a pardon from King Charles I because he had broken Spanish law by releasing a ship to bankers from Genoa in repayment of his debt. In Patagonia, however, he got in trouble again by taking part in a failed mutiny. He spent five months of hard labor in chains, but then was released by an obviously kind-hearted Magellan and became captain of the galleon.

The expedition to the Philippines left Spain in 1519 with five ships and 241 men. The voyage was not a happy one from the beginning with terrible weather as well as hard feelings between the Spanish and the Portuguese crewmen, which led to another mutiny. Then the Santiago was destroyed by a storm. When they finally arrived at Brazil they learned about a strait (now called the Strait of Magellan) at the southern tip of South American. They sailed through it and then the crew of San Antonio mutinied and returned to Spain. At the end of November, 1520, the three remaining ships set sail on the Pacific. 19 of those men died before the expedition reached Guam. After gathering enough supplies to continue, they eventually landed in the Philippines where they became close to the Islanders and spent several weeks there. Unfortunately, they become involved in an inter-tribal war and on April 27, 1521, Magellan was killed and the Spanish defeated. Joao Carvalho took command and wandered all over the archipelago. Finally they reached the Maluccas where they rested, resupplied, and filled the two ships with cloves and other spices. Then the Trinidad sprung an irreparable leak. Carvalho stayed with the Trinidad and 52 others while Elcano, as commander, took the Victoria and the others back to Spain, arriving on September 6, 1522. A scholar on the expedition, Antonio Pigafetta, has written about the voyage and calculated they sailed about 81,449 kilometers.

Juan Elcano was given a coat of arms by Charles I, which showed a globe with the Latin words for "You went around me first". The King also gave him a annual pension. On the 50th anniversary of the voyage, King Philip II awarded the male heirs of the Elcanos the hereditary title of Marques de Buglas. Although Elcano had never married he did have a son whom he legitimized in his will. Although the entire expedition was hard, it was a profitable one for Juan Elcano.

Answer: John Moresby

John Moresby was born in March, 1830, in Somerset, England, a son of a seafaring family.

He was the captain of the paddle steamer cruiser, HMS Basilisk, which was making hydrological surveys around eastern New Guinea. While surveying the southern coast, he found a harbor that he named Fairfax, in honor of his father, Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby. A town was built, on the native villages that were already there, and was named Port Moresby, rather than Fairfax. It is now the country's capital.

Moresby was also hoping to find a shorter route between China and Australia and on the eastern tip of New Guinea he found the China Straits. The exploration continued along the northwest coast, ending at the Gulf of Huon.

He was later promoted to Rear Admiral, upholding the family's naval history.

Answer: Jessica Watson

Jessica Watson, born in May 1993, in Queensland, Australia, sailed alone and non-stop across the globe beginning at Sydney in October 2009. She headed east and returned to Sydney in May of 2010 just a few days before her 17th birthday. For her feat she was awarded the Medal of Order of Australia.

A very pretty young lady made a goal when she was 12 years old, and lived up to that goal before she was 17. May she live up to all other goals she makes in the future in the same way.