3.

2 Krakatau, 1883
Between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra is the Sunda Strait, one of
the great sea-lanes of the world. Even in the nineteenth century, hundreds of
ships passed through the Strait each year, many of them large vessels trading
between Europe and the prosperous Dutch colonies of the East Indies. Only 24
km across at its narrowest point, the Strait averages about 200 m deep. Nearly
32 km west of the narrowest point of the Strait there lay a small group of rather
oddly named islands: Krakatau, Verlaten, Lang, andoddest of allPolish Flat.
Although coastal details of these islands were known to the hydrographers of
both the British and Dutch navies, little was known of their inland topography.
British Admiralty charts showed that the largest, Krakatau, about 9 km from
north to south, consisted of several volcanic cones arranged roughly in line. At
the south-ern end of the line was a prominent cone, 800-m high, known by its
Javanese name of Rakata (Fig. 3.11). At the northern end was a much lower
cone, Per-buwatan, whose crater wall had been breached at some time in the
past by a large lava flow.. None of the islands were inhabited, and neither were
they often visited, except by woodcutters from both shores of the Strait who
landed periodically to fell timber in the luxuriant forests that clothed the
islands. From time to time, fishermen would anchor in the sheltered bays to
take on water, or ride out storms. Naval survey parties may also have landed
briefly on Krakatau, because a hot spring is marked on some maps. Apart from
this, we know remark-ably little about the islands prior to 1883. There are
vague reports of an eruption taking place between May 1680 and November
1681, which stripped bare the vegetation and ejected vast quantities of pumice
that covered the surrounding sea, but it is not even known where on Krakatau
the eruption was centred.
It may have been Perbuwatan, since lava flows in the crater there seemed fresh
when examine. the nineteenth century. Apart from this, the islands had been
tranquil. Their beauty was well known to the passengers of steamships passing
through the Strait. On many a sultry tropical evening, travellers must have
leaned contentedly on the warm mahogany of their ships' rails, enjoying the
moonlight glittering off the water around the islands. None of them could have
conceived that they were looking at the future site of one of the greatest
volcanic catastrophes.
3.2.1 Prelude
In the late 1870s, frequent minor earthquakes began to shake the area around
the Strait. They may have been the first intimations of disaster. A powerful
shock on 1 September 1880 demolished the top of an important lighthouse on
the Java coast, and was felt as far away as northern Australia. Like Vesuvius
and all destructive plate margin volcanoes, however, Krakatau is located in an
area of frequent seismicity, so local people did not attach special significance
to the tremors. After a period of increasing seismic activity, Krakatau came
abruptly to life on 20 May 1883, with a series of explosions audible over 150
km distant. Very long wavelength atmospheric pressure waves from the
explosions were energetic enough to stop clocks, rattle windows, and dislodge
hanging lamps. Since these pressure waves were inaudible, their effects were
often mistaken for those of earthquakes. On the following day, a sprinkling of
ash fell over a wide area, and a great column of steam rose above Krakatau,
leaving no doubt that an eruption was under way. Vigorous activity continued
for a few days, yielding a column of steam and ash climbing I I km high above
the volcano, which showered ash over points nearly SOO km away. By 27 Mai
things had quietened down sufficiently for a parry of 86 hardy souls to charter
a steamboat from Batavia (now Jakarta) to see what was going on. Their boat
was the Governeur Generaal London, later to be involved in the thick of the
eruption. While the parry was approaching Krakatau, the noise was deafening.
In the words of one of them (obviously a sophisticated, party-going individual),
the back-ground din was so loud that a rifle shot sounded like `the popping of a
champagne cork amid the hubbub of a banquet'. From their boat, the party saw
that the island was covered with fine white dust, like snow, and that trees on
the northern part of the island had been stripped bare of their foliage by falling
ash. Scrambling ashore and scuffing their way through ankle-deep ash, the
party found that the centre of all the excitement was the Perbuwatan crater.
This was in a state of semi-continuous activity, with minor explosions taking
place every S or 10 min, showering ash 200 m into the air, and occasionally
revealing the cherry-red glow of lava in the crater. A great banner of steam
rose continuously 3000 m into the air. The visiting parry, who were the first and
last ever to get a good look ar the crater of Perbuwaran, found it to be about 1
km in diameter and 50 m deep, with a small pit about 50 m deep in the centre
of the crater floor. It was from this pit that the steam column was escaping with
a great roar fig. (3.12)
After this remarkable visit, the volcano continued to be active for a week or so,
but the explosive activity died down somewhat, suggesting that the eruption
would fade away and be forgotten. On 9 June, how-ever, things began to re-
ignite, and the column of steam and ash began to rise higher and higher as
more and more powerful explosions rent the air. By the end of June, observers
on Sumatra reported that the higher parts of Perbuwatan had been blown
away, and that a second eruption column was now rising from the Centre of the
island. During July, many areas of Java and Sumatra were rocked by explosions
of exceptional violence, and by many minor earthquakes. Even this severe
shaking, however, failed to alarm the local people, who had by that time been
living with the eruption for many weeks. It is remarkable the extent to which
familiarity with even something as exceptional as a violent eruption can breed
contempt. On 11 August, a Dutch government surveyor, Captain Ferzenaar,
made another examination of the island, landing briefly on a beach to collect
ash samples. He reported that all the formerly rampant vegetation on Krakatau
had been destroyed with only a few of the thicker tree trunks still protruding
above the heavy mantle of tephra, and that There were three active eruption
columns carrying clouds of dust and ash high into the air. One of these was the
original vent at Perbuwatan; the other two seemed to be nearer the centre of
the island. From the north-east of the island, Ferzenaar reported that he could
see no less than eleven other sires of minor activity, which were either emitting
steam columns or occasionally ejecting ash in small explosive bursts. There
may well have been other active vents, but the heavy curtain of ash and fumes
prevented the captain from sailing all-round the island. His observations,
therefore, were made only from the upwind side, but they remain valuable
because they provide the last account of the situation before the culminating
events, which ensued 15 days later.
3.2.2 Crescendo
Wagner's exhilarating 'Ride of the Valkyries' has been used effectively as the
background to films of lurid lava eruptions. But Wagner's operas are
remarkable for their length and extreme tedium, as well as the magnificence of
their occasional cli-maxes. In this respect the Krakatau eruption has some
Wagnerian parallels, because after an impressive overture, Incidental activity
dragged on for a full 3 months before the climax on 26 and 27 August 1883.
That climax, however, was truly worthy of Gotterdammerting. So extensive was
the havoc wrought in those 2 days that it was not until many months
afterwards that a picture began to emerge of what had happened. A fact-
finding Scientific Com-mission was appointed by the Dutch government in
October 1883. It was led by Rogier D. M. Verbeek, a mining engineer and
geologist, who visited the scene for the first time on 15 October 1883 and
repeatedly thereafter. A preliminary report was published some 6 months later
[91. In Britain, the Royal Society also set up an investigative committee, which
published a weighty tome in 1888 [101. These two reports remain the prime
sources of almost all information about the eruption. The Dutch report
concentrated on the local effects of the eruption, whereas the Royal Society
report emphasized the more distant effects. The Society went to great lengths
to amass every possible scrap of information, and even inserted a notice in the
London Times requesting am one who had seen or heard anything to come
forward. Copies of the original Dutch and British reports are difficult to obtain,
but fortunately, the Smithsonian Institution has published a superb compilation
of the contemporary reports and modern interpretations 1111. Parr of the
difficulty for the investigators was that there were so few survivors from the
coastal towns along the Sunda Strait. Dutch officials living in Batavia and
Buitenzorg (Bogor) were able to provide useful eyewitness reports, while the
instruments at the Batavia gasworks provided a unique chronological record of
the pressure waves from the major explosions. Officers on board the various
vessels on passage through the Strait also provided vital observations, which
were more valuable because of the nautical practice of logging the time of
observations. Three ships were right in the thick of things. A British ship, the
Charles Bal, heading for Hong Kong, was sailing eastwards through the Strait
on 26 August, passing about 16 km south of Krakatau. The Couveneur-Generaal
Loudon was plying back and forth across the Strait between Anjer in Java and
Telok Betong in Sumatra. She passed about 48 km north of Krakatau on the
evening of the 26th, spent the night of the 26th/27th anchored in Telok Belong,
and tried to sail again for Anjer in the morning but was prevented from doing so
by the violence of the eruption. Another British vessel, the Sir Robert Sale was
at the eastern, narrower end of the Strait, 64 km from Krakatau, on the 26th
and attempted to sail westwards (towards Krakatau) on the 27th, but was
unable to do so. Apart from these three, reports came in to the Royal Society
from more than fifty other vessels at various distances from Krakatau (Fig.
3.13). After sifting through scores of reports from observers at sea and on dry
land, Verbeek was able to piece together a perceptive account of the events I
of the two fateful days, Sunday 26 and Monday 27 August. All the reports
agreed that there had been a gradual but marked increase in the intensity of
activity on Krakatoa during the three days preceding the 26th. At 13:00 on the
26th, explosions loud enough to be heard over 150 km away were taking place
at intervals of about 10 min. At about 14:00. A British ship 120 km from the
scene sighted a black cloud rising to an altitude estimated to be no less than
25 km above the volcano. By 15:00 the explosions were so loud they were
audible 240 km away; by 17:00 they were so stupendous that the sound was
curying all over Java. In Batavia, 160 km. from Krakatau, the din was terrific,
the noise being compared with 'the discharge of artillery close at
hand...causing rattling of windows. And shaking of pictures, chandeliers and
other hanging objects'. Similar activity continued throughout Sunday evening
and most of the night. The Charles Bal, which was at its closest to the volcano
at this time, reported:
...sounds like discharges of artillery at intervals of a second of time, and a
cracking noise, probably due to the impact of fragments in the atmosphere ...
the whole commotion increasing towards 5 p.m. when it became so intense
that the captain feared to continue his voyage, and began to shorten sail. From
5 to 6 p.m. a rain of pumice in large pieces, quire warm, fell upon the ship.
Captain Woolridge on the Sir Robert Sale, rather further away, reported seeing
the eruption column rising above the volcano: '... a most terrible appearance,
the dense mass of clouds being covered with a murky tinge, with fierce flashes
of lightning'. A little later, at 19:00, the whole scene was lit up from time to
time by electrical discharges. At one time the cloud above Krakatau presented
'the appearance of an immense pine tree, with the stem and branches formed
with volcanic lightning', a description which echoes Pliny's description of the
Vesuvius eruption column 1800 years earlier. Things became so bad for the
Charles Bal later on in the evening that she had to spend the entire night
tacking back and forth south-east of Krakatau, probably remaining within 20
km of the volcano. Captain Watson could not see well enough through the murk
to steer away to safety, but ironically the glare from the volcano provided a
terrifying light-house with which to check his bearings. A less pleasant night
can scarcely be imagined, with a rain of hot ash falling on the ship, and the air
laden with choking fumes of sulfurous gases. As Captain Watson was to write
atter the eruption: The night was a fearful one: the blinding fall of sand and
stone, the intense blackness above and around us, broken only by the
incessant glare of various kinds of lightning and the continued explosive roars
of Krakatau, made our situation a truly awful one'. He did not exaggerate. To
make matters worse, peculiar pinkish glows of static electricity lit up the mast-
heads and rigging of the ship with an unearthly light, known to mariners as St
Elmo's Fire. On the Governeur Generaal Loudon this phenomenon was even
more extensive, and the terrified native crew: 'engaged themselves busily in
putting out this fluorescent light with their hands ... and pleaded that if this
light ... made its way below, a hole would burst in the ship; not that they feared
the ship taking fire, but they thought the light was the work of evil spirits'.
St Elmo's fire is a peculiar fluorescent glow, caused by the atmosphere around
the ship becoming highly positively charged with static electricity, which is
generated by the rush of steam and ash through the volcanic vent, and by
interactions between the myriads of fragmentary particles being swept around
within the eruption cloud by powerful convective forces.
3.2.3 Climax
After 04:00 on the 27th, the eruption appeared to die down a little, but the
grandest moments were yet to come. They arrived in the form of a series of
explosions on a far greater scale even than any of the preceding ones, and far
greater than any physically recorded. According to Verbeek's analysis of the
pressure gauge at the Batavia gasworks (which was sensitive to the transient
atmospheric pressure changes caused by the huge explosions) the largest
explosions took place at 05:30, 06:44, 10:02, and 10:52 (Krakatau time) on the
morning of Sunday 27 August. Of these, the third was much more powerful (Fig.
3.14). Reverberations from these great explosions rumbled over a large part of
the Earth's surface: at Else)/ Creek in South Australia, 3224 km from Krakatau,
the noise was loud enough to wake sleeping people, who described it as being
similar to the sound of rock being blasted. At Diego Garcia, 3647 km distant in
the Indian Ocean, the explosions were at first thought to be from a ship in
distress, firing its guns to attract attention, so people ran to cliff-top vantage
points to try to see it. Rodriguez Island, near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean was
the furthest point at which the sounds were audible, 4811 km distant. Here
again the rumbles were at first taken for gunfire. Althoith inaudible, lower-
frequency atmospheric pressure waves from the explosions were detectable on
sensitive barographs all over the world. Tokyo, 5863 km distant registered a
transient pressure increase of 1.45 millibars.
Nearer Krakatau, the effects were of course much more serious. At Batavia and
Buitenzorg, the blast blew in dozens of windows, and even cracked walls. At the
Batavia gasworks, the blast was so great that the gas-holder leapt out of its
well, causing the gas to escape. Much the most destructive effects of the
eruption, however, were a series of tsunami that ravaged the shores of the
Sunda Strait. It was these giant sea waves, rather than the awesome
explosions, that caused almost all of the 36 000 fatalities during the eruption.
Low-lying areas all along the coast were devastated, and complete towns and
villages were overwhelmed. The Dort of Anjer simply ceased to exist as great
waves washed over it, carrying away the flimsy wooden buildings that made up
the town. One of the tsunamis, which arrived in Batavia's harbour, Tanjung
Priok, at 12:36 on the 27th was far larger than any of the others, and indicated
that some extraordinary event had occurred. The precise nature of this event is
still debated.
A huge eruption column was generated by the climactic explosions of 27
August. Tephra raining down from it added to the misery of the people in the
areathe Sir Robert Sale reported lumps the size of pumpkins falling on her
decks, and she was at least 40 km distant. Ash fall was reported as far away as
the Cocos Islands, 1850 km distant. At Batavia, the pall of ash took a long while
to manifest itself fully. In the early morning of the 27th, the sky was clear, but
by 10:15 it had become lurid and yellowish as ash spread overhead; by 10:30
the first fine ash was sifting softly down on to the streets; at 11:00 ash was
falling heavily; by 11:20 the ash fall was so dense that the Sun was blotted out.
Total darkness fell on the city, remaining until 13:00. Ash ceased falling about 2
h later. Since Batavia was more than 160 km from Krakatau, it escaped lightly.
Nearer the volcano, unrelieved darkness continued for nearly 2 days in some
places. Such stygian conditions naturally made it impossible to determine what
was actually happening on Krakatau, but it is thought that some milder
explosive activity was continuing. The Charles Bal and Sir Robert Sale were
beating about in darkness for the whole of the 27th. Ash rained down on them
so steadily that the crews had to continually shovel it off the decks and shake it
clear of sails and rigging. On the Governeur Generaal Loudon, it was reported
that are one time dust and water were falling together, as mud, and that a
thickness of 15 cm accumulated in only 10 min. fortunately, this soon declined
to a more tolerable rate. At 19:00 on the 27th, another outbreak of minor
explosive activity occurred, getting progressively more vigorous until 23:00
when it started to decline. These outbursts marked the end of the entire
eruption, for at 14:30 on the 2Sth, after 100 days of activity, the last mild
explosion rumbled out over Krakatau, and silence returned.
3.2.4 Aftermath
Slowly, life returned to something like normal around the Strait. Bewildered
survivors were able to bury their dead, and salvage what remained of their
homes in coastal towns and villages. Initially, great masses of floating pumice
made it difficult for ships to push their way through the water. Rafts of pumice
a metre thick were reported in places. Eventually, scientific parties were able to
reach the islands and determine what changes had taken place. A detailed
survey immediately after the eruption by the Royal Dutch Navy revealed some
startling contrasts. They found that the northern part of the island of Krakatau
had disappeared, with the exception of a bank of pumice and a small isolated
rock. Not a vestige remained of the Perbuwatan cone, and the whole of the
northern part of the Rakata cone had vanished, leaving a soaring semi-vertical
cliff. A great crater (caldera) had been formed below sea levelsoundings
showed that where land had once stood 300 m above sea level, the water was
now 300 m deep (Fig. 3.15). In all, about two-thirds of Krakatau had
disappeared. Most of the island foundered into the sea when the roof of the
underlying magma chamber collapsed, but the cone of Rakata was apparently
left perched on the southern rim of the caldera, its northern face virtually
unsupported. This side of the volcano then slumped into the sea, leaving
behind a spectacularly bisected volcanic cone, which is all that remains today
of the island of Krakatau (Fig. 3.16). Verbeek estimated that about 15 km3 of
matter had been ejected by the eruption, close to the modern estimate of
about 12 km3 of dense rock (3 x 10's kg). Some of this fell out as tephra. Over
an area of nearly 4 x 106 km2, but most was emplaced in the immediate
vicinity of Krakatau. So while the island of Krakatau ended up considerably
smaller, Verlaten and Lang Islands ended up much bigger, buried and
surrounded by enormous volumes of pyroclastic deposits, which formed
extensive 'sand' banks all around Krakatau. These deposits formed two brand-
new islands, Steers and Calmeyer. But Polish Hat Not a trace remained. Since
Verbeek published his meticulous study, it has been difficult to improve on his
work. Wave action rapidly eroded away much of the newly deposited ash, and
tropical vegetation quickly recolonized the dry land [ 121, so that it is now
difficult for volcanologists to find accessible outcrops of the 1353 ash to study.
A new volcano, Anak Krakatau, has also been built up. Some new insights into
the eruption have been gained, however, from fieldwork and comparative
studies of other great eruptions [13,14]. It now seems likely, for example, that
the massive tsunami of 27 August was triggered by the collapse of half of the
Rakata cone into the sea, in a giant avalanche similar to that at Mt St Helens,
described later in this chapter. And while Verbeek had no knowledge of
pyroclastic currents, it is now plain that most of the eject from Krakatau was
emplaced in density currents (Section 7.3), rather than as tephra fallout from
the eruption cloud. Evidence that some of these pyroclastic currents travelled
remarkably lo.ng distances over water is hinted at in the contemporary reports.
There are accounts of people being burned by hot ash from the area around
Kalimbang in southern Sumatra, 40 km north-east of Krakatau. These burns
must have been due to horizontally travelling currents, rather than vertical ash
fall, because in one instance the survivors described hot gases and ash blowing
upwards through the floorboards of a house.
Krakatau, then, was a complex eruption, notable for its magnitude and
consequences. It has become almost a caricature of volcanic violence, and it
deserves its reputation. As the remaining examples in this chapter show, more
recent eruptions have killed many thousands of people and have been
impressively destructive, but none comes close to Krakatau. We have not even
touched yet on the worldwide atmospheric and climatic effects caused by the
eruption. That must wait until Chapter 16.