Question

    All 75 people on board the vessel had evacuated safely

    as the boat foundered about a mile off the coast of the city. Read the sentence to find out whether there is any grammatical or idiomatic error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the sentence. The letter of that part is the answer. If there is ‘No error’, the answer is (5). (Ignore errors of punctuation, if any).
    A All 75 people on board the vessel Correct Answer Incorrect Answer
    B had evacuated safely as the Correct Answer Incorrect Answer
    C boat foundered about a Correct Answer Incorrect Answer
    D mile off the coast of the city Correct Answer Incorrect Answer
    E No error Correct Answer Incorrect Answer

    Solution

    The issue lies in the use of "had evacuated" . The phrase "had evacuated" is in the past perfect tense, which suggests that the evacuation happened before another past event. However, since the sentence describes two actions happening around the same time (evacuation and the boat foundering), the simple past tense should be used instead of the past perfect.

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