Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
By Simon Winchester
HarperCollins, 416 Pages, $25.95
I felt a little cheated to learn that the monstrous 1883 cataclysm that all but destroyed the Indonesian island of Krakatoa and was so loud that it was heard as far away as 3,000 miles ranks only fifth on the list of most-powerful volcanic eruptions in history. Fifth! But it’s true, says Simon Winchester, author of “Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded.” For example, scientists calculate that another Indonesian volcano, Tambora, erupted in 1815 with twice the fury of Krakatoa.
Nonetheless, it’s the latter eruption that, perhaps more than any other natural disaster, has firmly lodged itself in the modern psyche, “a monstrous thing that still attracts an endless procession of superlatives,” including the author’s. In this packed, meandering chronicle, the prolific Winchester, who has written about everything from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Yugoslavian wars of the early ’90s, tries to explain why.
The prospective reader of “Krakatoa” should be warned, though: You’re getting a lot more than a book about a volcano exploding. Winchester includes learned (and often overlong) passages on the 17th Century voyages of Dutch traders to what were then the Spice Islands, the subsequent founding of Batavia (now Jakarta, the Indonesian capital) by Dutch colonists, the theory of plate tectonics, the theory of evolution, geophysics, the political unrest that rippled through Java after the eruption, and, of course, the very long geologic history of Krakatoa itself. All of these aspects, fascinating as they are, have a place in a narrative about the event, but Winchester’s editor seems to have been reluctant to pare down and better hone this sometimes bloated narrative.
Still, this reader often found himself impressed with Winchester’s explanatory skills: The geophysics of volcanic activity can be fiendishly difficult to understand, and Winchester, who studied geology as an Oxford University undergraduate in the ’60s, is an able guide and a lucid, enthusiastic explainer. Indeed, one of the most interesting things we learn from “Krakatoa” is how 20th Century advances in the earth sciences have allowed for a much better understanding of why and how Krakatoa, as Winchester puts it, went “totally berserk” just a little after 10 a.m. on Aug. 27, 1883.
Crucial to understanding what caused the eruption is the set of theorems about the movement of the Earth’s surface known as plate tectonics–“the key to it all,” Winchester notes. Plate tectonics is a very new science, only some 30 years old, that holds that the Earth’s outer crust is comprised of a series of oceanic and continental plates that are slowly moving and colliding with each other. Indeed, it was only as recently as 1980 that some of the final details about what factors contributed to the Krakatoa eruption were published in Nature magazine. Though the eruption engaged the rapt interest of the 19th Century scientific community–which monitored its effects, drafted reports, and bickered over its causes–there was little understanding of the intense continental plate shiftings and collisions of the Earth’s surface. Geologically speaking, much of Indonesia sits astride some of the most fraught territory in the world, where two vast plates, the Australian and the Asian, bump up against each other.
While Winchester skillfully relates the scientific side of the story, the way he organizes his narrative leaves something to be desired. Like the volcano, “Krakatoa” shoots off in many directions simultaneously. Admittedly, Winchester has set himself an ambitious task in this book, which combines history, geology, natural history and anthropology, and carefully orchestrating all the parts is no easy task. But I found myself impatient for him to get on with the business of describing the eruption itself.
When he finally does, Winchester provides a thoroughly detailed–and terrifying–account of what happened. For much of the first half of 1883, Krakatoa had been giving off ominous signs, which the native Javanese and Sumatran islanders interpreted as bad omens; ships plying the busy Sunda Strait (where Krakatoa lies) between Java and Sumatra in the spring and early summer months reported threatening signs such as white plumes of smoke unfurling far into the skies. By the last week of August, things were very threatening.
And then it blew, in a series of titanic explosions on the 27th, culminating in one final, deafening burst just after 10 a.m.: “Six cubic miles of rock had been blasted out of existence, had been turned into pumice and ash and unaccountable billions of particles of dust.” It also emitted “almost certainly the greatest sound ever experienced by man on the face of the earth” (those superlatives again), one heard by the residents of the tiny Indian Ocean island of Rodriguez. They awoke to what they thought were guns booming; what they actually heard was a volcano blowing up 3,000 miles to the east.
One hundred and sixty-five villages were destroyed, killing some 36,000 people. Remarkably, only 1,000 of those died from the effects of gas and heat; the rest drowned, submerged beneath a series of gigantic waves, one of them 135 feet high. This is what “still sets Krakatoa apart,” Winchester writes; most of Krakatoa’s eruptive force “went into the enormously difficult task of moving the ocean.” Krakatoa dramatically roiled the world’s seas; indeed, noticeable tidal fluctuations were recorded as far away as France.
But Krakatoa’s potent legend also owes a great deal to technology and the spread of scientific knowledge. Unlike previous great eruptions in history, Krakatoa was a highly documented event, “the first true catastrophe in the world to take place after the establishment of a worldwide network of telegraph cables–a network that allowed news of disasters to be flashed around the planet in double-quick time,” Winchester writes.
There was no such network in place in 1815–if there had been, Tambora might be the name that conveys such a powerful shudder of dread. The late 19th Century was also the age of amateur scientists and middle-class meteorological enthusiasm: Cheap barometers were all the rage with Victorian society in Europe, and thousands of these instruments were abuzz that day, recording the formidable shock wave from the final explosion, which traveled around the globe seven times.
Krakatoa’s eruption proved a bonanza for the scientifically minded. Britain’s Royal Society established a Krakatoa Committee, which solicited observations from the general public; they received “wagonloads of material” documenting the most minute phenomena. Indeed, two-thirds of the committee’s final report described the most subtle atmospheric changes and optic effects–hazy skies, blue moons, green suns–that occurred after the explosion. Temperatures cooled for decades afterward. Krakatoa’s dust was also a boon for artists: Sunsets were extra-spectacular, prompting a torrent of landscape painting in Europe and North America. But it was not until well into the 20th Century that the mysterious forces that welled beneath the volcano could get a full accounting.
The effects of the eruption are still being studied. A new volcano, dubbed Anak Krakatoa (“son of Krakatoa”), emerged in 1928, next to the remnant of the exploded island, both providing an ideal laboratory for biologists to study how life recovers from near-total devastation (in the case of Krakatoa), and how it begins to establish itself (in the case of Anak Krakatoa). Winchester ominously reminds us that there probably will be another Krakatoa-like eruption in the Indonesian archipelago, which might be more devastating than the 1883 event. Still, as frightening as this prospect is, he rightly urges that we take the eons-long perspective of geologic time when considering volcanoes, for they are vital factories and recyclers of the very elements that make life on Earth possible.
