KRAKATOA

On 27 August 1883 the most terrifying volcanic eruption occurred on the island of Krakatoa, five miles off the western tip of Java. The island was destroyed and almost 40,000 people were killed. The impact was truly global: ships sailing in the Red Sea were covered in ash, seas were disturbed in Devon and barometers went haywire in Washington. The world shifted geologically, politically and socially. The recent completion of the global telegraph cable meant that, for the first time in history, an event on one side of the world could be communicated to the other within just a few hours. And there would be further, and even more far reaching effects: the destruction wrought by this volcano would become the catalyst to a dramatic and bloody uprising of the region's Muslim community against their Western colonial masters.

At any given instant

All 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   CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT ABOUT KRAKATOA, VIEWED IN A TABLE                                            HOME                               NEXT PAGE