I Saw Three Ships Trivia Quiz

Answer: Santa Maria ran aground on a reef

Having made landfall in the Caribbean in October, by Christmas 1492 the Spanish-backed expedition was exploring the shore of the island of Hispaniola. Santa Maria struck a reef or sandbar and was written off. A fort built ashore using timbers salvaged from the ship was named La Navidad (Christmas).

Answer: Vasco da Gama

The name he gave the coastline was Natal, in honour of the Christmas season, a name which has continued to be used for that part of South Africa in various forms throughout the centuries. His ships on that occasion were the Sao Gabriel, under his own command; the Sao Rafael, commanded by his brother Paulo and the smaller Berrio.

The fourth ship, whose name is not known, was a storage ship.

Answer: Guanabara Bay (Rio de Janeiro)

After sailing down the coast of Africa and crossing the Atlantic, the fleet reached the site where the city of Rio would be founded a few decades later, in the early part of December 1519. They sheltered there until just after Christmas, and reached the Rio de la Plata in February 1520.

Some of the ships made the passage around the southern tip of South America into the Pacific in November 1520, after some mutinous members of the expedition had been dealt with. Magellan himself was killed in battle in the Philippines in April 1521, and only the Victoria with a crew of 18 men was left to complete the circumnavigation of the globe in September 1522.

Answer: They did not celebrate Christmas

The Puritans looked on Christmas as either a holdover from the Catholic church, or a continuation of a pagan celebration. Either way, it was not something they condoned and December 25th, 1620 was spent by building the first structure in the new colony.

Answer: Botany Bay

Having left Portsmouth, England in May 1787, and calling at Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro and Table Bay along the way, the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in New South Wales. Later in January they moved on to Port Jackson, which was seen as a more desirable spot to found their settlement.

They had spent Christmas Day 1787 somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The entire fleet of ships survived the journey, with under 50 deaths amongst the 1400+ souls who began the journey.

Answer: Sir John Franklin

HMS Erebus and HMS Terror set out on their quest in 1845, became stuck in the ice in the winter of 1846 and were finally abandoned by their crews in 1848. Searches were undertaken at the time, but the fate of Franklin's expedition remained murky. The wreck of one of the ships (confirmed as HMS Erebus) was found in Victoria Strait by a Canadian expedition in 2014. (Though several Christmas seasons passed whilst the crews were stranded, it is unlikely that much celebration occurred.)

Answer: RMS Olympic

Titanic can be eliminated from the debate immediately, having sunk on her maiden voyage in 1912. His Majesty's Hospital Ship Britannic hit a mine and sank in under an hour in November 1916, only a year after being launched. Royal Mail Ship Olympic, launched in 1911, plied the UK-USA route as a passenger ship until being scrapped in 1935, with a stint carrying troops during World War I. Christmas Dinner 1920 for a Second Class passenger aboard Olympic included ox tail soup, sirloin of beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast gosling and applesauce, a selection of vegetables, plum pudding and coffee.

Answer: Dunkirk

The German blitzkrieg of May 1940 rapidly pushed the British forces back across France until a large number of them were penned in a small area near the town of Dunkirk. Rather than allow the bulk of Britain's regular army (over 300,000 men) to be killed or captured, a plan was devised whereby all the small vessels in the south of England would be engaged in assisting in the evacuation of those troops from the beaches.

The 'little ships' pulled it off and the 'miracle of Dunkirk' entered the history books.

Answer: Thor Heyerdahl

Norwegian Heyerdahl set out to prove his theory that Polynesia might have been populated by people sailing in craft similar to his Kon-Tiki who had set out from South America. Heyerdahl and his crew covered nearly 7000 km (over 4000 miles) and they made a successful landfall in the Tuamotu Islands just over three months later. Books and movies about the voyage have all proved popular. Knut Haugland, the last surviving crew member (and a WWII hero) died on Christmas Day 2009, aged 92.

Answer: Sail around the world against the prevailing winds

Blyth, along with John Ridgway, had already rowed across the Atlantic in 1966, when both were serving members of the British army. On this occasion Blyth was attempting to sail around the world not only alone, but in what was considered the 'wrong' direction, and oh yes, non-stop. Christmas Day 1970 was celebrated by opening a surprise package that his wife had prepared for him to take along.

Not so festive was the loss on the same day of the self-steering mechanism that he used when he needed to sleep, eat or otherwise leave the helm.

Despite this and other difficulties, he arrived back in Southampton Water after 292 days, on 6th August 1971.