On Aug 13,1868, the warship U.S.S. Wateree, anchored in the harbor of Arica, off the coast of what is now northern Chile, rode on the crest of a tsunami (seismic sea wave) and coming to rest in the Atacama Desert, it was some three miles up the coast and almost two miles inland from its initial anchorage.

A) rode on the crest of a tsunami (seismic sea wave) and coming to rest in the Atacama Desert, it was
B) rode on the crest of a tsunami (seismic sea wave), while it came to rest in the Atacama Desert,
C) rode on the crest of a tsunami (seismic sea wave) and came to rest in the Atacama Desert,
D) riding on the crest of a tsunami (seismic sea wave), to come to rest in the Atacama Desert
E) riding on the crest of a tsunami (seismic sea wave), it had come to rest in the Atacama Desert, which is

Answer should be "C"
Explanations are next to choices

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rode ...come to rest parallel.
C is correct.
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Answered E. Agree that C should be the correct answer.

Dear venmic

First of all, the word "and" is not an absolute guarantee of complete simultaneity. If you are listing events with "and", it's true these events should be close in time and sequentially connected ----
"he walked up the stairs and opened the door"
"the engine sped to the spot and promptly put the fire out"
"she wrote him a nasty letter and mailed it to him that same afternoon"
In all of these example, the actions are close in time, but not strictly simultaneous. Granted, it would be incorrect to use a simple "and" connection for events that were quite distant in time or completely unrelated, but you are reading far too much into this vvord. "Close in time" is not the same as "100% exactly at the same time."

To say
"the warship U.S.S. Wateree ... rode on the crest of a tsunami and came to rest in the Atacama Desert ..."
is a perfectly correct: clear, logical, and unambiguous. The two events --- riding the wave and then coming to rest --- are near in time (they both happened within 5-10 minutes of each other) and they are definitely sequentially & causally connected. That's 100% correct, which is one of the reasons that (C) is correct.

Let's look at (B)
On Aug 13,1868, the warship U.S.S. Wateree, anchored in the harbor of Arica, off the coast of what is now northern Chile, rode on the crest of a tsunami (seismic sea wave), while it came to rest in the Atacama Desert, some three miles up the coast and almost two miles inland from its initial anchorage.
One way to express the problem --- there's a failure of parallelism. The two actions --- riding the crest and coming to rest --- should be in parallel, because they are sequentially & causally connected. Actions that have a clear logical connection should have a clear grammatical connection.
Another way to express the problem --- this choice actually has the problem that you imputed to (C) ----- by using "while' (which means "at the same time"), it implies that the riding of the crest and the coming to rest in the desert were simultaneous, which is illogical and not what the sentence means.
Also, it's just awkward and unnatural --- it "sounds funny", probably because of these reasons.

BTW, the story in this sentence ---this is all true --- this actually happened to the USS Wateree in 1868.

Does all this make sense?

Mike
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Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test Prep