Let's Talk About Wrecks Trivia Quiz

This shipwreck had a significant impact on English history as it claimed the life of the heir to the throne, William Ętheling, the only legitimate son of Henry I. The lack of an heir led to a period of unrest called the Anarchy.

The ship foundered off the coast of Normandy when it hit a rock under the water. William had supplied copious amounts of wine to those on board, believed to number around 300, and most of the passengers and crew were inebriated by the time the ship sailed. A few wise souls disembarked and saved their lives. Among the other victims were two of King Henry's other (illegitimate) children and many nobles. The sinking took place on 25th November 1120.

Mary Rose was a warship in Tudor times and saw action in many battles against England's enemies of the time, including France, over a period of more than thirty years. On 19th July 1545 the French ships were attacking during the Battle of the Solent (between the Isle of Wight and Southampton) when the Mary Rose suddenly turned onto the starboard side and sank. The most likely explanation given is that gun ports had been left open, allowing an inrush of water. Of an estimated crew of 400 or so fewer than 35 survivors were rescued. Escape was hindered by narrow gangways and ropes covering the decks to prevent boarders, but also prevented escape from below them.

In October 1982 the wreck was lifted from the sea bed and has been on display as a museum since 1984 along with many relics which were salvaged.

The Vasa sank, on her maiden voyage, on 10 August 1628 in Stockholm harbour. The ship was an armoured warship, and the weight of the armaments made her top heavy. The first gust of wind to catch her nearly capsized her, and the second one did, with the voyage covering only around 1,400 yards (1,300 metres). Around thirty people are believed to have died although many were rescued since the ship was still in the harbour. The cannons were salvaged soon after the sinking but the ship itself was left undisturbed until 1961 when the remains were raised.

The Vasa is now housed in a museum in Stockholm and is one of the city's main tourist attractions.

HMS Birkenhead was built at John Laird's shipyard and was originally intended to bear the name HMS Vulcan before being renamed for the town where she was built, in the north west of England. The ship was being used to carry troops on 26 February 1852, with some of the officers having brought along their wives and children, when she hit a submerged rock off the coast of South Africa. Around one hundred soldiers were drowned immediately, with survivors assembling on the deck. The senior officers ordered the men to remain while women and children were placed in the lifeboats, and many of the soldiers were lost when the ship sank.

The event is noteworthy for establishing the principle of 'women and children first' when disaster strikes, sometimes known as the "Birkenhead Drill". Around 450 people lost their lives in the wreck.

The Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner which was carrying nearly 1,500 passengers and crew on 29 May 1914. She was near the mouth of Canada's Saint Lawrence river when a coal carrying ship, called the Storstad, rammed into her starboard side in foggy conditions. With the Titanic disaster having taken place only two years earlier, the ship had sufficient lifeboats and watertight sections, but the damage was so severe that the liner sank in under fourteen minutes. Many of the lifeboats could not be launched due to the angle of the ship, and the death toll was over 1,000.

The inquiry into the disaster blamed the captain of the Storstad, but this was strongly disputed by him and Norway, the home country of the ship.

Unlike the other ships in the quiz, lost to accident, misfortune or negligence, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was due to an act of aggression during the Second World War. The former cruise ship had been used as a hospital ship but in January 1945 she was being used to evacuate civilians and military personnel from the Baltic area. Soviet forces were advancing on the region and the ship was carrying over 10,500 passengers and crew. The ship was hit by three torpedoes from a Soviet submarine, sinking less than an hour later.

Although some survivors were picked up by other vessels in the Baltic Sea, the estimated death toll has been placed in the region of 9,400 to 9,500, an unhappy record of the biggest loss of life following the sinking of one ship which still holds in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.

The Torrey Canyon was one of the world's first super tankers, adapted to carry a huge load of crude oil. On 18 March 1967 she hit rocks off the coast of Cornwall while en route to the oil refinery in Milford Haven, Wales. This event was the biggest environmental disaster of the time, and some of the efforts made to contain and disperse the oil actually made matters worse. Oil affected the coasts of Britain, France, the Channel Islands and Spain with some of the chemicals used also causing huge damage to the environment and killing many sea birds and other marine life.

Sadly, it has become just one in a long list of marine disasters involving oil spills, with the Amoco Cadiz (1978), and the Exxon Valdez (1989) just two of the more memorable.

The Herald of Free Enterprise was a ferry operating between the continent of Europe and Britain. On 6th March 1987 it left the harbour in Zeebrugge, Belgium en route to Dover, with its bow doors (through which vehicles were loaded onto the ferry) still open. The man responsible for closing them had fallen asleep and there were no safety procedures in place to warn the captain that it was unsafe to leave port. The ship turned on its side within half an hour of departure landing, by sheer chance, on a sandbar which meant it was not completely submerged. Despite this, nearly two hundred people died.

Following an inquiry, several changes to ferry operations were brought in.

The sinking of the Estonia, on 28 September 1994, was another ferry disaster, this time in the Baltic Sea on a crossing from Tallinn, in Estonia, to Stockholm in Sweden. The ship was fully loaded with 989 passengers and crew. Reports say that the ship had been poorly loaded with vehicles and was already listing to the right (starboard) before heavy seas damaged the bow visor - this is the part that lifts up to give vehicles access to the decks. Although the crew heard unusual noises, they detected nothing amiss until the visor was torn away completely leaving the vessel open to the seas.

According to the official report, even then the ship's officers were slow to respond and delayed their distress signal by which time the ship was beyond help. In all, 852 people died, the majority of them Swedish, with only 137 survivors.

Unlike some of the wrecks covered in the quiz, this one, on 13th January 2012, was totally avoidable and led to criminal charges. The Costa Concordia was a cruise liner captained by Francesco Schettino, who decided to steer the vessel close to an island off the coast of Tuscany, Italy, apparently to give his girlfriend a better view. In doing so, he hit underwater rocks, which were charted, causing the ship to turn on its side. Fortunately, relatively few people died - 27 passengers and 5 crew out of more than 4,000 on board. To add to his culpability, the captain was one of the first to leave the ship, leaving many passengers to fend for themselves as many (not all) of the crew quickly followed his poor example.

Schettino was subsequently imprisoned for fifteen years for manslaughter and abandonment.