They Came to Grief Trivia Quiz

The White Ship sank in sight of Barfleur Harbour, Normandy, from where it had set sail for England in November 1120. Among the 300 passengers lost was William Adelin, only legitimate son of King Henry I of England. The lack of a male successor ultimately led to a period of civil war known as the Anarchy, fought between supporters of Henry's daughter, the Empress Matilda, and his nephew, Stephen of Blois.

Flagship of Henry VIII's navy, the Mary Rose sank during action against the French fleet in the Battle of the Solent in July 1545. About 500 lives were lost. The ship was raised in 1982 and after major conservation work was put on display in a dedicated museum in Portsmouth which opened in 2013.

The Swedish warship Vasa sank during her maiden voyage in 1628 and lay undiscovered in Stockholm harbour until the 1950s. She was raised in 1961 and eventually moved to the specially built Vasa Museum in Stockholm.

An American-registered brigantine, the Mary Celeste was discovered drifting and deserted off the coast of the Azores in December 1872. The lifeboat was missing, but the ship, though showing signs of damage, was in a seaworthy condition. The captain, Benjamin Briggs, his wife and daughter, and seven crew members had been aboard.

A salvage court hearing found no evidence of foul play. The Mary Celeste continued in service but was deliberately wrecked off the coast of Haiti in 1885 in an attempted insurance fraud.

A battleship, the USS Maine sank following an explosion in Havana Harbour, where she had been sent by President McKinley to safeguard US interests during the Cuban war of independence. More than 260 American seamen were killed. The disaster could possibly have been caused by a fire in a coal bunker, but a US Navy board of inquiry ruled that the ship had been sunk by a mine.

The ensuing Spanish-American War led to the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which transferred ownership of Spanish colonies Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the USA and granted her temporary control of Cuba.

The White Star liner RMS Titanic sank on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. She was on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York and over 1,500 lives were lost. There were far too few lifeboats to accommodate the passengers and crew and those that launched were not full.

A number of enquiries followed the loss of a ship that had been considered unsinkable, and resulting recommendations were incorporated into the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea passed in 1914.

The wreck of the Titanic was located in 1985, and a full-size digital scan of the wreckage was carried out in 2022.

A Cunard liner, the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat off the Irish coast on 7 May 1915, six days after leaving New York for Liverpool. No warning was given and the ship sank in 20 minutes at the cost of over 1,100 lives, including those of 128 Americans.

The sinking fuelled anti-German sentiment in the USA and ultimately contributed to the American declaration of war on Germany in 1917.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by a Soviet submarine on 30th January 1945 after setting sail for Kiel from Gotenhafen, East Prussia (now Gdynia, Poland). As part of the Nazis' Operation Hannibal, she was transporting civilian evacuees as well as military personnel fleeing the advancing Red Army.

The ship was hit by three torpedoes and sank within an hour. It is not known how many people were on board, but the number of deaths is widely estimated to have been more than 9,000.

Luxury transatlantic liner the Andrea Doria sank off the coast of Nantucket in July 1956 after colliding in thick fog with the Swedish cruise liner MS Stockholm. She had been sailing from Genoa to New York. The Andrea Doria remained afloat for 11 hours after the collision, allowing all but 46 of the 1,700 people aboard her to be saved. Five people aboard the Stockholm also lost their lives.

The Estonia, a roll-on roll-off ferry, sank in the Baltic in the early hours of 28 September 1994. She was en route from Tallinn to Stockholm. With 852 deaths this was the deadliest peacetime shipwreck ever to occur in European waters and the second deadliest peacetime sinking of a European ship after the Titanic.

A 1997 investigation found that the Estonia's bow door locks had failed during a storm.