Atlas of Cursed Places by Olivier Le Carrer

Author:Olivier Le Carrer [Carrer, Olivier Le]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History / Reference, History / Historical Geography, Travel / Museums, Tours, Points Of Interest
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2015-10-05T23:00:00+00:00

SUNDA STRAIT

THE MONSTER OF KRAKATOA

The sinister strait separating the islands of Java and Sumatra strikes fear into all who approach it, travelers as well as Indonesians born on its shores. Foreign sailors are never particularly keen to risk their lives in this channel dotted with shallows and oil install­ations, to say nothing of illegal immigrant trafficking and piracy (about twenty attacks are recorded here every year).

The locals do not spend a lot of time worrying about pirates. By contrast they care very much about the mood swings of the volcano Krakatoa, which has caused a catastrophe or two in the past and continues to display an impressive level of activity. The first officially recorded eruption goes back to A.D. 416 (or A.D. 535 according to some interpret­ations of the local chronicles). This cataclysm split the original volcano into three separate islands and devastated the entire region, with most of the coastal dwellers drowning in a tsunami generated by the explosion.

In 1883 there was another upheaval. After three months of eruptions and tremors, during which ships passing through the strait were forced to navigate by guesswork in a thick cloud of ash, the volcano exploded between August 26 and 27, producing a detonation that could be heard three thousand miles away and a shockwave that could be felt in Europe. Ash and pumice were spewed over more than three hundred thousand square miles, an area bigger than France. Waves one hundred feet high crashed onto the coast and the tsunami wave lapped the planet three times. The official death toll was put at forty thousand in a region that was then relatively sparsely populated.

Captain W. J Watson of the British ship Charles Bal was within the Sundra Straits when Krakatoa became an active volcano:

“The blinding fall of sand and stones, the intense blackness above and around us, broken only by the incessant glare of varied kinds of lightning and the continued explosive roars of Krakatoa, made our situation a truly awful one. At 11 P.M., having stood off from the Java shore, wind strong from the south-west, the island, west-north-west, eleven miles distant, became more visible, chains of fire appearing to ascend and descend between the sky and it, while on the south-west end there seemed to be a continued roll of balls of white fire; the wind, though strong, was hot and choking, sulfurous, with a smell as of burning cinders.”

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