The 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa

The recently invented telegram turned the eruption of Krakatoa quickly into a global news event.

The London China Telegraph reported that the eruption was heard hundreds of miles away.

In response to the call for observations, letters and postcards were sent from across the world.

Reports were sent from ships.

On board the 'Hope' moored near present-day Jakarta, the captain reported that it became 'dark as night' and 'rained down ashes as fine as dust or sulphur powder'.

Debris from Krakatoa travelled across the Indian Ocean. In this account from July 1884, medical missionary Annie Allen describes how pumice and human skulls washed up on the beach in Zanzibar.

Many sketches were sent, such as this sketch of volcanic ash particles viewed under a microscope. These tiny 'bubble plates' of glass were collected on the ship 'Arabella', 1100 miles from Krakatoa.

Many correspondents commented on the lurid twilight colours. This sketch of a sunset by meteorologist Rollo Russell (1849-1914) shows the sky colour grading from an 'opalescent green' near the horizon, to pink.

These watercolours show the typical features of the afterglow, as seen from Guildford, England, between November 1883 and January 1884.

German physicist Karl Johan Kiessling (1839-1905) sent this watercolour of a sunset to the Krakatoa Committee. Kiessling was the first to explain these twilight phenomena in terms of scattering of sunlight by particles.

After-glows sparked a lot of interest, with this letter to the editor of The Standard proclaiming that "the rich, lurid glare of the 'after-glow' had all the appearance of an immense illumination".

Artist Sydney Hodges commented wryly in the St James's Gazette on the excitement sparked by the 'audacious' sunsets of late 1883. 'And the people went quite crazy .. as if .. sunsets had been only now invented'.

This lithograph from the Royal Society Report shows the mineralogy and texture of some older volcanic rocks from Krakatoa, as seen under a microscope. These images give valuable clues to the nature of the Krakatoa magmas.

The explosions on August 27th were heard as far away as Alice Springs (3500 km) and Rodrigues island (4800 km), where they sounded like distant cannons or artillery fire.

In January 1888, the President of the Royal Society, Sir George Stokes (1819-1903), wrote to congratulate George Symons on his 'long labour' on the report, but couldn't resist critiquing the typeface of the title page.

The Krakatoa memoir was completed in late 1887, but the printing of the coloured plates proved to be a challenge. In July 1888, Douglas Archibald wrote to George Symons, asking "Is Krakatoa a myth?".