About This Quiz
The U.S. Navy is the part of a nation's armed forces that floats on the 70% of our planetary home's surface that is covered by water. A navy can also be non-military, as a merchant navy is the sum total of a nation's traveling fleets - the ones that carry trade goods from port to port and make our modern way of life possible. It can also include fishing vessels, which keep our people fed. Sometimes a ship may belong to one country but register itself elsewhere in order to get around certain tax or legal regulations - but the people who built it it will know that really, it always belongs to the place it came from.
Much has been written about the seafaring life. After all, many a man and woman has run away to join the navy. Some of them head out to the sea to make their fortune. Others do it in order to serve their country and protect it against enemies foreign and domestic. Still more go simply to get the heck out from whatever little town they would happily never see again. The good news is that many of them had something interesting to say about it. Let's see how well you remember the things they said!
John Paul Jones spoke these words on September 23, 1779, during his engagement with the HMS Serapis.
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Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz made this slightly droll remark at a time there wasn't much in the way of diverse hiring in the Navy.
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Farragut gave this famous order in 1864 during the Battle of Mobile Bay in the Civil War. Farragut was the son of one of the Revolutionary War's greatest admirals.
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Born in Rhode Island in 1785, shortly after the birth of his nation, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry was an American war hero of the Second Barbary War.
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Burke commanded the Atlantic Fleet in World War Two and was one of the most significant US military leaders of the war.
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Teddy Roosevelt's military background was very important in his vision of how American power should be used globally.
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Hopper is one of the most significant figures in the creation of computer programming, as well as being a woman of color who made it to the highest rank after the Navy initially rejected her repeatedly.
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Patton was so good with a sword that he represented the US in the 1912 Olympics. The quote can easily relate to Navy service!
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Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by Neal Stephenson with two timelines, one of which takes place in World War Two.
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Hull fought in the Revolutionary War and commanded "Old Ironsides" itself, the USS Constitution.
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Sara Jane Stone is a popular writer of military romance!
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William F. Halsey fought in the Pacific and later commanded the Third Fleet during World War Two.
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This is the opening to "My Father's Son" and is only attributed to Orwell, but is likely his work.
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Captain John Paul Jones' ship Ranger was the first American vessel to be formally saluted by the French navy.
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Gilmore said these heroic words after his sub was shot by the Japanese vessel Hayasaki in 1943. He knew that he did not have time, with his injuries, to get below, and made the supreme sacrifice to save his men.
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Washington made the case that America needed a navy despite its protective massive oceans. He was later proven right when the U.S. Navy secured the borders against various incursions.
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Dewey was a great military commander who spoke these words at the pivotal Battle of Manila Bay in World War Two.
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This MLB pitcher had strong opinions about professional vs military games! World War Two put a four-year dent into his career, but he didn't stop playing.
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Drake sailed as a privateer for Queen Elizabeth I and introduced the potato and tobacco to Britain. The former is still very popular, the latter now less so.
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Teddy Roosevelt was a military man before he was a president. He wasn't meant to be president, getting the VP position to shut him up so he wouldn't use his popularity against his own party - but McKinley's death put him into the top seat.
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Dr. Johnson did not like being on the sea and he didn't mind who knew it.
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Nelson said this during the vital sea battle that secured Britain against the imperial navy of Napoleonic France, setting the stage for Wellington to ultimately defeat Napoleon.
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Churchill said this about Dunkirk, when the British army was evacuated just in time to escape being massacred by Nazi forces. They regrouped, came back on D-Day, and kicked the Nazis' tails.
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Nye made this comment in talking about celestial navigation, a skill that naturally is not lost in the Navy no matter the technical advances they enjoy.
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Arleigh Burke is a major deal in US naval history, hence having a fancy ship named for him in 1991 during his lifetime.
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Kipling was a British writer who grew up in colonized India and is noted for his "Just So" stories.
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Chris Kyle is one of the best snipers in history. He was sadly killed on the way to a shooting range after he came home, by a friend of a friend who had a mental break.
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Admiral Leighton W. Smith Jr. commanded during the Balkan War, when the US military was part of a NATO intervention that stopped the genocide against Muslims in Yugoslavia.
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Bligh was a notoriously sadistic captain whose crew eventually rebelled and put him in a boat. By an amazing bit of seamanship, he made it home but was court-martialed for his barbarous ways.
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Nimitz commanded the Pacific leet during the Second World War.
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Admiral Hyman George Rickover was a nuclear propulsion specialist who made the nuclear submarines much safer.
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Admiral Yi Sun Shin was a Korean war hero during the Joseon Dynasty of the 1500s who held the Japanese navy at bay.
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Burke served under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations and has an AEGIS destroyer class named for him.
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King was the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, during the Second World War, and as such is one of America's great military leaders.
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Churchill made this famous speech in response to a catastrophic military defeat at Dunkirk. It stiffened the spine of Britain and empowered the nation to fight back and eventually destroy the Nazi menace.
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