Krakatoa, 1883

20 May 1883 – 22 Dec 201833 items

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Krakatau in eruption, May 1883: Plate I of the Royal Society’s 1888 report, a lithograph by Parker & Coward after a photograph taken from the excursion steamer, cropped. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Krakatau in eruption, May 1883: Plate I of the Royal Society’s 1888 report, a lithograph by Parker & Coward after a photograph taken from the excursion steamer, cropped. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The day the world heard, and the year the sky turned red

On the morning of Monday 27 August 1883 the volcanic island of Krakatau, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, tore itself apart in four great explosions. The third was heard 4,800 kilometres away on the island of Rodrigues, its air wave went round the world three and a half times, and the sea waves it raised drowned the towns along the Strait. For months afterwards its haze turned the sky strange colours from Honolulu to London.

The timeline opens with the first eruption in May, slows to the hour for 26 and 27 August, then follows the effects around the globe: the air wave, the sea waves on distant tide gauges, the blue suns and red afterglows, the cooler year, and the Royal Society’s 1888 report. An epilogue follows Krakatau’s child, Anak Krakatau, from 1927 to its own collapse in 2018.

The dead

The official count of the Dutch colonial government was 36,417 dead, almost all of them in the towns and villages of the Java and Sumatra coasts, and most of them drowned by the sea waves; about a tenth were killed by hot ash. The count is usually taken as a minimum, since whole villages left no records. Totals as high as 120,000 appear in some later popular accounts, with no documented basis.

Reading it

Bands frame the months of warning, the climactic eruption, the air wave and the afterglows. Filter by volcanoes for the mountain itself, tsunami for the sea waves, pressure wave for the sound and the air wave, sunsets for the sky, eyewitness for the people who wrote it down, and science for how it was studied.

All times are UTC. The Strait kept Batavia time, 7 hours 7 minutes ahead of Greenwich, so the great explosion at 10:02 local time shows as 02:55; the notes give the local time. The island is Krakatau in Dutch and Indonesian, and Krakatoa in the English of 1883.

Several times during the night (26th–27th) reports were heard coming from the eastward, like the distant roars of heavy guns. — James Wallis, Chief Officer of Police, Rodrigues

Items

  1. Months of warning

    ≈ 3 months, 7 days · Krakatau, before its collapse

  2. Perboewatan erupts

    Perboewatan, the northern peak of Krakatau (gone since 1883)

  3. Sightseers land on the volcano

    Perboewatan, the northern peak of Krakatau (gone since 1883)

  4. The last survey before the climax

    Krakatau, before its collapse

  5. The paroxysm

    ≈ 2 days, 6 hours · Krakatau, before its collapse

  6. The climax begins

    Krakatau, before its collapse

  7. The Charles Bal off the volcano

    Sunda Strait, about 16 kilometres south of Krakatau

  8. The first great explosion

    Krakatau, before its collapse

  9. Anjer swept away

    Anjer (now Anyer), Java

  10. The Loudon rides out the wave

    Teluk Betung (now in Bandar Lampung), Sumatra

  11. The second great explosion

    Krakatau, before its collapse

  12. Hot ash crosses the sea

    Ketimbang, near today’s Kalianda, Sumatra

  13. The great wave

    Merak, Java

  14. The blast reaches Batavia

    Batavia (now Jakarta)

  15. The air wave circles the Earth

    ≈ 5 days, 9 hours

  16. The great explosion

    Krakatau, before its collapse

  17. The fourth great explosion

    Krakatau, before its collapse

  18. The sea reaches Batavia’s tide gauge

    Tanjung Priok, the port of Batavia

  19. Heard on Rodrigues

    Rodrigues, Indian Ocean

  20. The Norham Castle in the dark

  21. A year of strange skies

    ≈ 1 year, 3 months

  22. Bishop’s ring

    Honolulu, Hawaiʻi

  23. Blue and green suns

    Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)

  24. Ascroft sketches the London sky

    The Thames at Chelsea, London

  25. Fire engines for a glowing sky

    Poughkeepsie, New York

  26. The Royal Society forms a Krakatoa Committee

    Burlington House, London, then home of the Royal Society

  27. Pumice washes up in Africa

  28. A cooler year

  29. Verbeek’s report

  30. The Royal Society’s report

  31. “The Scream”: a Krakatoa sky?

  32. ≈ 34 years

  33. Anak Krakatau breaks the surface

    Anak Krakatau

  34. ≈ 90 years

  35. Anak Krakatau collapses

    Anak Krakatau