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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  called 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
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