Simon Winchester - Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

PENGUIN BOOKS

KRAKATOA

Simon Winchester was born and educated in England, has lived in Africa, Ireland, India and China, and now lives in the Berkshire hil s of western Massachusetts. Having reported from almost everywhere during more than thirty years as a foreign correspondent, he now contributes to a variety of American and British magazines and newspapers, and is the author of many highly acclaimed works of non-fiction. His most recent books have been the two international bestsel ers The Surgeon of Crowthorne and The Map That Changed the World.

KRAKATOA

THE DAY THE WORLD EXPLODED

27 AUGUST 1883

SIMON WINCHESTER

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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Published by Viking 2003

Published in Penguin 2004

Copyright Simon Winchester, 2003

Chapter heading and other hand-drawn il ustrations Soun Vannithone, 2003

Al rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted The publisher is grateful for permission to reproduce the fol owing extracts:

For the Time Being by W. H. Auden, courtesy of Faber and Faber Ltd;

Jakarta 1 from the album Camellia 1 by Ebiet G. Ade, copyright

Jackson Records, 1979

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shal not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192623-0

I dedicate this book,

with pleasure and with thanks,

to my mother and father

At any given instant

Al solids dissolve, no wheels revolve,

And facts have no endurance

And who knows if it is by design or pure inadvertence That the Present destroys its inherited self-importance?

from For the Time Being, W. H. Auden

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations and Maps

Maps

Prelude

1 An Island with a Pointed Mountain

2 The Crocodile in the Canal

3 Close Encounters on the Wal ace Line

4 The Moments When the Mountain Moved

5 The Unchaining of the Gates of Hel

6 A League from the Last of the Sun

7 The Curious Case of the Terrified Elephant

8 The Paroxysm, the Flood and the Crack of Doom 9 Rebel ion of a Ruined People

10 The Rising of the Son

Epilogue: The Place the World Exploded

Recommendations for (and in One Case, against) Further Reading and Viewing

Acknowledgements, Erkenningen, Terima Kasih

Il ustration Acknowledgements

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Endpapers: Frederic Edwin Church's Sunset over the Ice on Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario

(p. xiv) Map of South-East Asia

(p. xv) Map of South-East Asia, with the western islands of the immense archipelago of what is now Indonesia

(p. xvi) Map of the islands of the Krakatoa group before the 1883

eruption

(p. 11) Syzygium aromaticum, the clove

(p. 11) Nutmeg and mace

(p. 12) Piper nigrum, pepper

(p. 14) The Tordesil as Line

(p. 26) Jan Huyghen van Linschoten's 1595 map of the Far East (p. 33) Jan Pieterszoon Coen

(p. 38) Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie logo (p. 43) A mil iner weaving topis and bonnets from alang-alang grass (p. 56) Alfred Russel Wal ace

(p. 61) Charles Darwin

(p. 65) The Wal ace Line

(p. 71) Alfred Lothar Wegener

(p. 74) Pangaea beginning its division into Laurasia and Gondwanaland

(p. 81) Greenland

(p. 85) A crystal of magnetite

(p. 91) The process of convection inside the earth's mantle (p. 94) The magnetic zebra stripes discovered on the seabed of the northwestern Pacific in 1955

(p. 106) J. Tuzo Wilson's famous transform fault structure (p. 111) A subduction zone

(p. 120) The presumed geological evolution of the Krakatoa islands (p. 122) John Webber's drawing of the jungle of the Krakatoa island (p. 140) Jan van Schley's etching Het Brandende Eiland, showing two caravels passing Krakatoa in ful eruption in 1680

(p. 145) A Jakarta city scene, around 1865

(p. 149) Frederik s Jacob, governor-general of the East Indies in 1880

(p. 170) Rogier Verbeek

(p. 177) Captain H. J. G. Ferzenaar's map of Krakatoa, the last map ever made

(p. 188) The Agamemnon laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable (p. 192) Map of the worldwide network of telegraph connections used by Reuter's agency

(p. 193) Samuel Morse

(p. 201) Advertisement for Anna Wilson's Circus (p. 203) The grand bal room of Jakarta's Concordia Military Club (p. 218) Pressure wave from Krakatoa's final explosion, measured at the Jakarta Gasworks

(p. 225) Hevea brasiliensis, Brazilian rubber

(p. 231) The Royal Dutch Navy's armed paddle-steamer Berouw (p. 236) Consul Cameron's Krakatoa dispatch to Lord Granvil e (p. 240) Admiralty charts showing the islands of Krakatoa before and after the 1883 disaster

(p. 246) A tsunami generated by only the most moderate of earthquakes on Krakatoa

(p. 252) The tide-meter at Jakarta registers a sudden swel at 12.36

p.m.

(p. 256) The Berouw, stranded a mile and a half up the Koeripan River (p. 274) Map showing where the sound of the explosion could be heard

(p. 280) Tide-gauge trace from Socoa, France

(p. 299) Rafts of pumice, with the remains of victims (pp. 31011) The world and its pattern of tectonic plates (p. 318) The subduction process

(p. 320) The basic tectonic structure of the Krakatoa region (p. 330) The title page of Max Havelaar, published in 1860

(p. 336) A Javanese imam

(p. 349) A current official Royal Navy depiction of Anakrakata (p. 351) Anak Krakatoa shown in 1979

(p. 357) Nephila maculata, a bal ooning spider

(p. 358) Life returns to the Krakatoa beaches

(p. 370) A thick coastal casuarina forest on Sertung island (p. 385) Aerial photographs of Anak Krakatoa and Surtsey, off Iceland (p. 390) Varanus salvator, the five-banded swimming monitor lizard

South-East Asia, with the western islands of the immense archipelago of what is now Indonesia, formerly the Dutch East Indies.

The islands of the Krakatoa group, as known before the 1883 eruption.