Abstract
In 1899, one of the most powerful cyclones recorded struck Cape York, killing about 300 people and devastating several Thursday Island pearling fleets. Today, Australia’s deadliest known cyclone and its world record storm surge are barely remembered, but they have become hot topics internationally for scientists studying past cyclones to predict future ones. The 1899 pearling fleet disaster, referred to today as cyclone Mahina, has not been the subject of historical inquiry by historians, leaving scientists to mine documents for data. This chapter looks at the impact the lack of historical inquiry is having on cyclone science.
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CITATION STYLE
Townsend, I. (2020). A Perfect Storm. In Disasters in Australia and New Zealand: Historical Approaches to Understanding Catastrophe (pp. 119–136). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4382-1_7
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