On this day in 1889, one of the Royal Navy’s major warships, HMS Sultan, ran aground on an uncharted rock off the south eastern coast of Comino, in the channel between Malta and Gozo. In this context “uncharted” means that the rock was not marked on the nautical maps sailors would be using. Sultan was not some small patrol craft or forgotten transport. It was a large Victorian ironclad, part of the British Mediterranean presence at a time when Malta was one of the empire’s mo