Lost At Sea: Famous Maritime Disasters Quiz

Answer: Kronan

Designed by English shipwright Francis Sheldon, The Kronan (Crown) was launched in 1668. She was a three decked ship of the line 197 feet in length, with a 43 and a half foot beam, a height of over 200 feet from the keel to masts, and a displacement of approximately 2,200 tons. Whereas the ill fated Vasa was fitted with 64 cannon, the much bigger Kronan had somewhere between 110 to 126 cannon arranged along three gun decks. Since she was to be the epitome of Sweden's naval strength, the Kronan was fitted with arguably some the finest gilding and carvings yet seen on ship of her design.

On June 1, 1676, in the waters of the Swedish island of Öland, the Kronan led a fleet of Swedish warships into battle against a combined Dutch-Norwegian-Danish fleet during the Scanian War. In the opening moments of battle, the massive Kronan was turned to port in order to bring her cannon on that side to bear. However, the turn was executed badly, causing the massive ship to roll over onto her port beam ends and flood through her open gun ports. Suddenly, a massive explosion originating in the forward powder magazines tore the once proud Kronan apart. (To this day, what ignited the magazines is still debated). The shattered hull swiftly sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Of the over 800 officers, sailors, and soldiers aboard Kronan, only 40 survived the disaster. The wreck of the Kronan was found in 1980 by Anders Franzén (he found and helped salvage the Vasa in the 1950's and 60's). And has since become an important archaeological site over the past three decades.

Answer: Essex

A whaling ship home ported on Nantucket Island, the 238 ton Essex set off from that island in August 1819, with a crew of 20 and laden with all the tools and provisions necessary for a whaling voyage expected to last anywhere between two-to two and a half years. On November 20, 1820, while most of her crew were away hunting whales or repairing damaged boats, the Essex was rammed twice by a 85 foot long sperm whale.

The whale's second strike mortally wounded the ship, causing her to keel over. The crew all abandoned ship, and, after refitting two of their boats with masts and sails, left the dying Essex and headed south where it was hoped that they would pick up the westerly winds which would carry them to the shores of South America.

The Marquesas Islands were closer, but were discounted by the whalers based on rumors of cannibalism.

By the time other whaling ship stumbled upon the boats after 89 and 94 days at sea respectively with little food or water to sustain them, only eight of the Essex's twenty-strong crew were still alive.

In a gruesomely ironic twist, several of the surviving crewmen were found devouring the flesh of dead shipmates.

Answer: Empress of Ireland

Built by Scotland's Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering, the 14,191 ton Empress of Ireland, departed Quebec City on May 28, 1914 bound for Liverpool with 1,477 passengers and crew, including 170 members of the Salvation Army heading to an annual congress in London. Nine hours after leaving Quebec, just before 2 a.m. on May 29, while stopped in a dense fog bank near Pointe-au-Pčre lighthouse, the Empress was rammed in her starboard midships by the Norwegian collier Storstad. The collier, built with a re-enforced steel bow for icebreaking, sliced a gaping hole in the liner estimated to be about 14 feet wide and 25 feet deep. Despite the best efforts of her captain and crew, only a handful of lifeboats were launched from the Empress before she capsized and plunged under the frigid surface of the Saint Lawrence River in a mere 14 minutes. Rescue was quick to arrive in the form of boats from the Storstad, but by dawn on May 29, only 465 survivors were counted and brought to Rimouski. 1,012 were lost, among them 840 passengers, slightly more than the total passenger fatalities on either the Titanic (832) or Lusitania (788). Although shocking in its own right, and despite getting a fair share of the media spotlight, the Empress of Ireland disaster was quickly overshadowed by the outbreak of the First World War.

The wreck was re-discovered in 1964, and remains a popular technical dive spot to this day.

Answer: Tubantia

The Tubantia was a 14,053 ton, 560 foot long, liner built in Scotland for the Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd's service between The Netherlands and South America. On March 15, 1916, the Tubantia, carrying 87 passengers and 294 crew on a voyage to Buenos Aires, was 50 miles from the Dutch coast when she was rocked by a large explosion, and sank quickly. Amazingly, all souls aboard her escaped and were soon rescued.

As The Netherlands was neutral at the time, the loss of the Tubantia chagrined many Dutch. The British government leveled accusations that a German U-Boat had flagrantly ignored the Tubantia's neutrality and sunk her with a torpedo. German representatives claimed that the ship went down due to a mine. German press even went so far as to say the British sank her for reasons unknown, and that a torpedo had indeed been fired at the vessel, but it was intended for a British warship.

Through dives to the Tubantia's wreck as well as examination of bronze chunks found embedded in one of the liner's lifeboats, Dutch authorities concluded that the Tubantia had been indeed sunk by a U-Boat torpedo (now proven to be the coastal submarine UB-13). Divers would also search the wreck in the 1920's for an estimated two million pounds worth of gold bullion supposedly transported aboard the ship. No gold was found.

Answer: I-52

A long range cargo carrying submarine intended to ferry supplies to outlying Japanese island garrisons, the I-52 sailed from Kure, Japan in March, 1944 on a, clandestine mission (code name: Yanagi) to exchange military hardware and supplies with Japan's German Allies. Aboard the I-52 were 93 officers and men, 14 engineers and technicians eager to share their know-how of various systems with their German counterparts, and a cargo which would eventually consist of the following: 11 tons of tungsten, 3.3 tons of quinine, nearly 60 tons of rubber, 120 tons of tin, over nine tons of molybdenum, three tons of opium, a shipment of caffeine and, as a last minute addition before leaving port: 146 tons of gold weighing 2.2 tons. The gold was intended to be the payment for German technology the submarine was supposed to bring back on her return trip.

After making a final stop in Singapore, the I-52 sailed for Lorient on April 23. Two months later, on the evening of June 22, 1944, the I-52 rendezvoused with the German type IX submarine U-530 in an area of ocean listed on the charts as 15 degrees North, 40 degrees West. After transferring a radar set and three of the U-boats crew aboard to assist the Japanese, both I-52 and U-530 went their separate ways.

The next night, I-52 was detected on the surface by radar equipped US Navy TBF Avenger torpedo bombers launched from the escort carrier USS Bogue (CVE-9). One of the Avengers dropped a homing torpedo that struck the submarine, damaging, but not sinking it. The second Avenger finished the job with another homing torpedo. The crippled submarine plunged to the bottom of the South Atlantic, three miles below. There were no survivors.

Beginning in 1995, expeditions utilizing the Russian research ship Keldysh and the MIR submersibles (you may remember them from the movie Titanic) were launched with the the intention of finding I-52 and salvaging her cargo of gold. In 1998, after a previous expedition failed to find the submarine, American businessman Paul Tidwell and the crew of the Keldysh finally found I-52. However, aside from some tin ingots, some opium (which was quickly disposed of) and the sole of a Japanese sailor's shoe, no gold was found. While there is no doubt that the bullion is aboard I-52, it has so far remained out of reach.

Answer: Centaur

Leaving Sydney Harbor on May 12, 1943, the Centaur was sailing off the coast of Queensland en route to Cairns, Queensland, before making another voyage to take on wounded in New Guinea. While off Queensland, the 3,322 ton liner was struck by a single torpedo fired from a then unknown Japanese submarine (later identified through postwar Japanese naval records as the I-177, commanded by Hajime Nakagawa).

The Centaur exploded and sank in just three minutes. Aboard her at that time were 332 crew, nurses and members of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Field Ambulance. Only 64 escaped with their lives.

The remaining 268 died with the ship. On December 20, 2009, the battered wreck of the Centaur was discovered resting over a mile down in the Pacific Ocean. She is now a protected war grave.

Answer: Wahine

Known officially as a Turbine Electric Vessel (TEV) the Wahine steamed out of her berth in Lyttleton on April 9, 1968 for her normal overnight voyage to New Zealand's capital of Wellington. In the early morning hours of April 10, the Wahine was entering Wellington Harbor head, when a massive storm packing well over 100 mile per hour winds descended on the ferry from the south. Almost capsized by a rogue wave, the Wahine was driven to the southern tip of Barret Reef, onto a rocky shoal known as pinnacle rock.

The ferry's bottom was torn open and her starboard screw and shaft were ripped off. The Wahine's lower compartments flooded, yet despite this, the ship drifted on through Wellington Harbor for most of the morning and into the afternoon of April 10, battered relentlessly by screaming winds and high seas. By 2:30, the Wahine was completely over onto her starboard side and slipped to the shallow floor of Wellington Harbor. Over seven hundred passengers, crew, and a single stowaway were aboard the Wahine on her final voyage. Fifty-one were lost in the disaster, either through drowning, violent impact with rocks, or hypothermia.

The hulk of the Wahine later broke up in another storm and was scrapped where she lay. Her recovered foremast is now the centerpiece of a memorial.

Answer: Wilhelm Gustloff

The former flagship of Germany's "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength Through Joy) program, the 600 foot long Wilhelm Gustloff languished in the port of Gotenhafen for most of World War II serving as a barracks for the men of the 2nd U-Boat Training Division. On January 30, 1945, the Gustloff departed Gotenhafen after hasty preparation to take part in Operation Hannibal, a massive seaborne evacuation of East Prussia, Poland, Pomerania in the face of massive offensive undertaken by the Red Army that winter.

Although still debated, an estimated 9,400 people--soldiers, sailors, female naval auxiliaries, wounded troops, and refugees--crammed aboard the ship, which only had enough space for total of 1,880. That night, just hours after leaving port, and fighting through the midst of bad weather, the Gustloff was hit three times by torpedoes fired from the Soviet Submarine S-13.

In just 70 minutes, the Gustloff plunged to the bottom of the Baltic sea. Rescue ships saved well over 1,200 people. But an estimated 9,400 perished.

The sinking of the Gustloff was, and remains to this day the greatest loss of life at sea in recorded history.

Answer: Waratah

On the evening of July 26, 1909, the Blue Anchor Line's Waratah (9,339 tons-465 feet in length) left Durban for a voyage to Cape Town before heading on to London. She never arrived. The last confirmed sighting of the Waratah was made off Cape Hermes on July 27 by the captain of the freighter Clan MacIntyre, who would go on to say that that the faster Waratah drew ahead and was last seen passing near the Bashee River estuary. This is unconfirmed as are further reports made by both observers on land as well as by another ship, the Guelph, whose crew reportedly made contact with a vessel. The men on the Guelph exchanged signals with this ship, whose name they could not make out except for the last three letters of her name: "T-A-H." No further sign of the Waratah was found until August of 1909 when ship crews began reporting pieces of debris and bodies of several people in various stages of dress. Additionally, more flotsam was found in March, 1910, and February, 1912. In the 1920's a South African Air Force Pilot reported seeing a submerged shape resembling a wreck near the mouth of the Xora River.

Aside from these encounters, the fate of the Waratah, and the 211 passengers and crew that sailed with her into oblivion remains unsolved.

Answer: MV Derbyshire

An OBO (Ore-Bulk-Oil) freighter, the Derbyshire, was over 1,000 feet in length with a 150 foot beam, and was capable of hauling over 160,000 tons of cargo. On July 11, 1980, the Derbyshire, with a crew of 43 men and one woman, left Sept Iles, Quebec, laden with 173,544 tons of iron ore. Her destination was Japan. On September 9, the Derbyshire was sailing directly into the teeth of a tropical typhoon known as "Orchid", when a message describing the storm's ferocity was sent from her. Nothing else was heard following that. The search for the ship and any possible survivors began six days later, but little was found save for an oil slick and an empty lifeboat. On September 21, the Derbyshire and her 44 crew were declared missing and presumed lost.

Fourteen years later, in May 1994, a expedition undertaken by Oceaneering Technology and funded by the International Transport Federation found the Derbyshire's crushed and twisted remains resting some two and a half miles below the surface of the Pacific using side scan sonar and an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle). A second expedition which took place between 1997 and 1998 further examined the wreckage and debris field in better detail, revealing that the colossal Derbyshire had broken up into hundreds of pieces as she sank to the Pacific floor. Photographs taken of the wreck numbered in hundreds of thousands while over 200 hours of video footage was shot. Using these as evidence, an inquiry concluded that instead of a stress fracture in on of the ship's frames being the cause a hatch in the Derbyshire's bow was left unsecured and permitted flooding, a conclusion that irked my relatives of the lost crew. A second inquiry was convened in 2000 which ultimately ruled that the Derbyshire sank due to flooding through damaged air vents in the forecastle. The vents were believed to have been torn open by constant wave action, allowing water to fill up the bow and gradually drag the ship lower and lower until her cargo hatches one by one became submerged and collapsed, resulting in the ship's rapid--and no doubt violent-- end.