In his detailed 1966 account of the incident, "The Wreck of the Memphis", Captain Beachs son, Edward L. Beach Jr., ascribed her loss to an unexpected tsunami exceeding in height, as Daniels had been told, and this explanation has been carried forward by most sources discussing her loss. More recent research, however, has called this explanation into question. No record of any seismic event in the Caribbean on 29 August 1916 that could have triggered a tsunami has been found, and the rate of advance of the large wave "Memphis" reported — about an hour to cross the distance from the horizon to the ship — matches that of a wind-generated ocean wave (possibly a rogue wave); a tsunami, in contrast, would have covered the distance in only a few minutes. The periods of the three large waves that struck "Memphis" also are characteristic of large wind-generated waves rather than tsunamis.