Abstract
On a quiet moonlight night in the year 1890, the British-Indian liner Quetta was traveling through the Torres Strait near Thursday Island in northern Australia. This strait is located at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef complex. Suddenly the ship hit a reef pinnacle that ripped through two-thirds of its bottom and sank within three minutes. Nearly half of the ship's 293 passengers perished as a result of this unexpected encounter. The strait had been carefully charted between 1802 and 1860, and no reef was expected where the ship foundered. Some have wondered (e.g., Ladd 1961) if possibly a reef could have grown fast enough between the time of sounding and 1890 to cause this tragedy.