KRAKATAU

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At some point in prehistory, an earlier caldera-forming eruption occurred, leaving as remnants Verlaten, Lang, Poolsche Hoed, and the base of Rakata. Later, at least two more cones (Perboewatan and Danan) formed and eventually joined with Rakata, forming the main island of Krakatoa . The dating of these events is currently unknown; the Sunda Strait was first mentioned by Arab sailors around 1100 AD.

The Javanese Book of Kings (Pustaka Raja) records that in the year 338 Saka (416 AD):

A thundering sound was heard from the mountain Batuwara [now badul islandcalled Pulosari, an extinct volcano in Bantam, the nearest to the Sunda Strait which was answered by a similar noise from Kapi, lying westward of the modern Bantam [Bantam is the westernmost province in Java, so this seems to indicate that Krakatoa is meant]. A great glowing fire, which reached the sky, came out of the last-named mountain; the whole world was greatly shaken and violent thundering, accompanied by heavy rain and storms took place, but not only did not this heavy rain extinguish the eruption of the fire of the mountain Kapi, but augmented the fire; the noise was fearful, at last the mountain Kapi with a tremendous roar burst into pieces and sank into the deepest of the earth. The water of the sea rose and inundated the land, the country to the east of the mountain Batuwara [now called Mount Gede, a volcano in Western Java], to the mountain Rajabasa [the most southerly volcano in Sumatra], was inundated by the sea; the inhabitants of the northern part of the Sunda country to the mountain Rajabasa were drowned and swept away with all property ... The water subsided but the land on which Kapi stood became sea, and Java and Sumatra were divided into two parts.

There is no geological evidence of a Krakatoa eruption of this size around that time; it may describe loss of land which previously joined Java to Sumatra across what is now the narrow east end of the Sunda Strait; or it may be a mistaken date, referring to an eruption in 535 AD, for which there is some corroborating historical evidence.

535 AD event

David Keys, Ken Wohletz, and others have postulated that a violent volcanic eruption, possibly of Krakatoa, in 535 may have been responsible for the global climate changes of 535-536. Keys explores what he believes to be the radical and far-ranging global effects of just such a putative 6th-century eruption in his book Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World. Additionally, in recent times, it has been argued that it was this eruption which created the islands of Verlaten, Lang, and the beginnings of Rakata—all indicators of early Krakatoa's caldera's size. However, to date, little, if any, datable charcoal from that eruption has been found.

Thornton mentions that Krakatoa was known as "The Fire Mountain" during Java's Cailendra dynasty, with records of seven eruptive events between the 9th and 16th centuries. These have been tentatively dated as 850, 950, 1050, 1150, 1320, and 1530 (all AD/CE).

1680

In February 1681, Johann Wilheim Vogel, a Dutch mining engineer at Salida, Sumatra (near Padang), on his way to Batavia (modern Jakarta) passed through the Sunda Strait. In his diary he wrote:

...I saw with amazement that the island of Cracketovv, on my first trip to Sumatra [June 1679] completely green and healthy with trees, lay completely burnt and barren in front of our eyes and that at four locations was throwing up large chunks of fire. And when I asked the ship's Captain when the aforementioned island had erupted, he told me that this had happened in May 1680 ... He showed me a piece of pumice as big as his fist.

Vogel spent several months in Batavia, returning to Sumatra in November 1681. On the same ship were several other Dutch travelers, including Elias Hesse, who would be called a travel writer nowadays. Hesse 's journal reports that on

the 19th [of November 1681] we again lifted anchor and proceeded first to the north of us to the island of Sleepzie [ Sebesi ], uninhabited, ...[here he tells of a legend about crying ghosts, which actually were orangutangs ], and then still north of the island of Cracatou, which erupted about a year ago and also is uninhabited. The rising smoke column of this island can be seen from miles away; we were with our ship very close to shore and we could see the trees sticking out high on the mountain, and which looked completely burned, but we could not see the fire itself.

Vogel returned to Amsterdam in 1688 and published the first edition of his journal in 1690.

These reports of an eruption in 1680-81 pose somewhat of a puzzle. These are the only two reports of an eruption that have been found to date, yet at the time, the Sunda Strait was one of the heaviest-traveled waterways in the world. Records for this time period are particularly detailed, because there was an intense effort to wipe out pirates that were preying on vessels in the Strait. Neither Vogel nor Hesse mention Krakatoa in any real detail in their other passings, and no other travelers at the time mention an eruption or evidence of one. (In November 1681, a pepper crop was being offered for sale.) Both Van den Berg and Verbeek conclude from this that Vogel must have exaggerated the extent of the eruption he saw. Even so, there must have been an eruption around this time, since in 1880, Verbeek investigated a fresh unweathered lava flow at the northern coast of Perboewatan, which could not have been more than a couple of centuries old.

Visit by HMS Discovery

In February 1780, the crews of HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, on the way home after Captain James Cook's death in Hawaiʻi, stopped for a few days on Krakatoa. They found two springs on the island, one fresh water and the other hot. They described the natives who then lived on the island as "friendly" and made several sketches. (In his journal, John Ledyard calls the island "Cocoterra".)

Dutch activity

In 1620, the Dutch set up a naval station on the islands, and somewhat later, a shipyard was built. Sometime in the late 1600s, an attempt was made to establish a pepper plantation on Krakatoa, but generally, the islands were ignored by Dutch colonial authorities. In 1809, a penal colony was established at an unspecified location which was in operation for about a decade. By the 1880s, the islands were without permanent inhabitants; the nearest settlement was the nearby island of Sebesi (about 12 km away), with a population of about 3000.

Several surveys and charts were made, but mainly for the purpose of mariners, and the islands were little explored or studied. An 1854 map of the islands was used in an English chart, which shows some difference to a Dutch chart made in 1874. In July 1880, Rogier Verbeek made an official survey of the islands, but he was only allowed to spend a few hours there. He was able to collect samples from several places, and his investigation proved important in judging the geological impact of the 1883 eruption. wikipedia.org