They Went Down With the Ship Trivia Quiz

Answer: It was revamped and put back into service.

The Kiangya was a Chinese passenger ship that was blown in half in the Huangpu River in the middle of the night. Rescue did not arrive until the morning and the death toll varies between 2,700-3,900 people even though her capacity was listed at a little over 1,100 people. Between 700 and 1,000 people survived and were found in the morning. Amazingly the ship sat there for eight years and was then removed, welded back together and re-entered service until 1983.

The renovations were major and the ship was renamed.

In her second life she was used as a ferry, with most passengers unaware that they were passengers on a ship that had already sunk. It is speculated that the sinking was caused by a left-over mine but it is not known for sure.

Answer: The Saint Lawrence River

A collision with the Norwegian collier Storstad caused the Empress of Ireland to sink in less than half an hour with only three lifeboats deployed. Both captains testified that both ships were at a standstill because of heavy fog when they collided although some of the surviving crew disagreed with this testimony. Contributing to the loss of life was the fact that the portholes were all open to help with ventilation, the watertight doors were open and a possible design flaw which caused the ship to list to one side almost immediately.

The windows and doors would have probably been closed had they been at sea, but mistakenly thinking they were safe from storms because they were in the river, these safety measures were overlooked. The Storstad limped into Montreal with heavy damage but no loss of life. Who was at fault for one of Canada's worst maritime disasters will probably never be known. Today, the RMS Empress of Ireland sits at the bottom of the frigid St. Lawrence River in about 130 ft. (40m) of water.

Answer: False

All the information is correct except that the ship sank in the Baltic Sea, not the Dead Sea. The MS Estonia sank during a storm, in weather that was normal for the area. Numerous other ships were in the area, but there was a problem with numerous languages being spoken between radio operators.

The ship started flooding when the ship's bow door opened during the storm. By the time help arrived 1/2 an hour later, the ship had gone down. The total loss of life is usually quoted as 852, of which 650 are believed to still be inside the ship.

As with many shipwrecks in cold water, many of the deaths were caused by hypothermia as opposed to other causes such as injuries or sharks. Like many other shipwrecks in this quiz, this maritime accident caused major changes in the safety regulations in the maritime industry.

Answer: Typhoon

Princess of the Stars was a Filipino ferry that sank during a typhoon in 2008 with a death toll of at least 800 people. According to the Philippine Coast Guard, only 56 people survived and only 350 bodies were recovered. As other boats sank in this typhoon, it was not known for sure which boat each person had been a passenger on.

When they went in to recover the hundreds of bodies still inside the ferry it was discovered that the ship had been illegally carrying the pesticide endosulfan. It took over two years of steady work to safely remove the ship and its contents without causing further loss of life.

It is not thought that the illegal cargo had anything to do with the ship sinking.

Answer: Hokkaido and Honshu

The sinking of the Toya Maru in a 1954 typhoon became one of Japan's deadliest maritime accidents ever. At least 1,100 people died, but the exact number will probably never be known. While sailing between the Japanese islands of Hokkaido and Honshu the ship went down in a typhoon.

In 1988 an underwater tunnel was built between the two islands to provide safer passage for people during the typhoon season.

Answer: Steamship

The sinking of the Sultana has never garnered much recognition by either the media at the time, nor in modern history books. This is mainly because John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, had been killed the day before. Over 1,700 people died when three of the boat's four boilers exploded.

This photograph was taken the day before the ship went down and shows that the steamship was well over its capacity of 376 people. Most of the 1,800 lives that were lost when this steamship sank which were newly released prisoners of war from the recently-ended American Civil War.

This disaster occurred because the captain decided to take this lucrative cargo of prisoners even though he knew his ship needed repairs. He went down with his ship.

Answer: Explosives

The horrific explosion caught in this 1917 photograph is of the explosive-laden SS Mont-Blanc exploding after a collision with the Norwegian steamship SS Imo in the Halifax Harbor. This explosion was so powerful that it devastated large areas of Halifax, killing over 2,000 people on land and in the water. Over 9,000 people had severe injuries and both ships were ruined.

The crew abandoned ship quickly after the collision knowing they had inadequate firefighting equipment. This massive explosion is estimated to have been equal to an explosion using 2.9 kilotons of dynamite and was thought to have been the biggest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear/atomic weapons.

It even caused a tsunami!

Answer: True

The General Slocum was a side-wheeler passenger ship that caught fire in the East River of New York City and sank with a loss of life of over a thousand people. It was raised from the bottom of the river, salvaged, and converted into a barge. This barge sank in a storm in 1911.

Many felt the ship was cursed after it ran aground three times in the first year of service followed by two collisions the next year.

Answer: Emigrants

Around 400 emigrants, voluntary and otherwise, were being shipped from Liverpool, England to Victoria, Australia. As the voyage was nearing the end a heavy storm caused the ship to run into sharp rocks off the coast of Fitzmaurice Bay on the northwestern coast of Tasmania. Less than ten of the passengers and crew survived the sinking, and most of those were stranded on a small island for over a month until they were discovered, near death.

It should be noted that there are at least three different spellings for the name of this boat.

Answer: Lake Superior

The Great Lakes, especially Lake Superior, have notoriously bad weather. Estimates of the number of ships to have gone down in the last 200 years varies from 6,000 to 25,000. One of the most famous was the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald. One of the largest ships to work the lakes, she was also one of the fastest ships of her kind. She sank in a bad storm in 1975, and became one of the most famous American shipwrecks when Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot composed and recorded a song in her memory.

In spite of her size, this ship only had a crew of 29, and the actual cause of the shipwreck is hotly debated among maritime scholars. In most countries, when attempting to make recoveries from an underwater shipwreck, it is the bell that is the main point of interest. The bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald is a primary exhibit in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.