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What have Stamford
Raffles, Lord Byron, the island of Sumbawa and Frankenstein got in
common? On the surface not a great deal so let's dig a little.
In the brief
interregnum of British rule in the East Indies, Raffles found time to
study extensively the archipelago, bury his wife Olivia and set in train
an early relief operation on a distant island. Not a whole lot was known
about Sumbawa but the April of 1815 would change that. Tambora dominated
the peninsula of the north central part of the island, approximately
4000 metres high, but being distant from Java lacked the symbolism or
mysticism of a Bromo or Merapi. Sumbawa at that time, like many of the
islands in the region, was a patchwork collection of statelets and was
of little interest to anyone beyond the people who lived there. When
Tambora blew it was the largest recorded explosion ever heard by man.
Larger than Krakatoa which was soon to follow. Well, in geological terms
63 years is the blink of an eye. The explosion that created Donau Toba
in North Sumatra is reckoned to be louder but no one survived to tell
the tale.
Some 12,000 people
were thought to have populated the broad peninsula and further east was
the colonial base of Bima. A succession of shocks on the 5th April was
the first warning something was happening. 200 miles across the Flores
Sea in Macassar, a warship, Benares heard what they thought was
the sounds of heavy artillery. They put to sea but found nothing which
may have been fortunate for them.
On the morning of
6th April ash fell on distant Batavia and clouds of fog obscured the
suns rays. The rumblings continued, worrying the Europeans but
delighting the traditionally minded Javanese who predicted gleefully the
departure of the foreign rulers. Saner counsel steered thoughts to
volcanic activity, possibly Bromo or Merapi and people, inured, worried
less.
The 10th brought
back the worried faces as the roar and detonations intensified with more
ash and dust filling the skies to the east. Solo and Rembang reported
small but regular tremors. The worst was still to come.
Krakatoa was well
reported thanks to not just the noise and after effects but the impact
of the telegraph. That we know anything about Tambora is due to Raffles'
aid shipment and the Rajah of Sangir who had probably the best seat in
the house for nature's pyrotechnics.
Sangir is just 25
miles from Tambora, on the north east shore of the peninsula and it was
from this vantage point the good Rajah had a perfect view of what was to
transpire. He described three distinct columns burst forth from close to
the peak, at about 7 pm, ascending at a great speed. The whole mountain
appeared to be a body of liquid fire with flames ever spreading
outwards. The summit soon disappeared as the ash fell back to earth. The
people of Sangir dodged stone and rock that rained on their village to
be followed by a violent whirlwind which carried away just about every
flimsy structure in the village. Trees were uprooted, people and
livestock picked up and tossed around. It sounds like the tornado at the
start of the Wizard of Oz, testimony to the adage truth is stranger than
fiction. The sea rose and swallowed the tiny rice fields, destroying
anything in its path.
While the winds and
seas did their damage, the volcano lay relatively quiet. No explosions
were noticed till the whirlwind died down. Starting an hour before
midnight and continuing on into the evening of the 11th, impossibly
large explosions filled the air. Streams of lava flowed the the
mountainside to the sea. Where land subsided, water took its place. The
villages on the foothills were history.
In Bima, buildings
collapsed under the weight of 18 inches of ash. At Sangir the depth was
double. On Bali, a foot of ash was recorded . Seas rose and fell in
quick succession around the nearby islands, almost as though mother
earth was settling herself after her violent paroxysms. But there was no
respite as the volano spewed forth with no less intensity. The islands
of the East Indies shook under the forces released. Ash and dust reached
28 miles up into the atmosphere before returning to earth while
lightning danced manically between the opaque canopy that filed the
heavens.
Late on the 12th,
the volcano finally appeared spent. The rumblings became less constant,
the detonations less loud. The results were to hang around for a while
to come. Pumice settled on the surface of the sea, two feet thick,
several miles wide. Ash continued to fall on Java until the 17th.
Unseasonably heavy rains came to clear the air, the skies, the land,
almost as if mother nature was apologising. These rains prevented crops
being choked and gave some semblance of a harvest. By 15th July the
explosions had stopped.
The 4000 metre high
Tambora was now just 2850 metres. A 6 kilometre caldera had been formed,
1110 metres deep. The 12000 people had gone, perhaps less than a hundred
somehow survived. In some places, where once was land was now 18 foot of
water. Around the islands trees floated. Famine took thousands more
lives as ash and sea wiped out that years harvest.
On 18th April
Raffles had sent Lt. Philips with a ship load of rice and supplies to
find out what had happened. In early August, from Bima, he reported a
'misery shocking to behold.' He went on to describe empty villages,
destroyed buildings, corpses everywhere.
Ash covered nearby
Lombok, wiping out the plants and crops, killing an estimated 37,000
people in the ensuing famine. Tsunamis rippled out from the epicentre, 5
metre waves adding to the death toll as more coastal communities were
swept away. It is thought some 90,000 people died in the immediate
aftermath.
Millions of tons of
sulpher had been ejaculated into the stratosphere, limiting the sunlight
that could touch the earth. A year later temperatures fell across the
northern hemisphere, the monsoon failed in India leading to famine and
disease. Ireland had failed crops, floods tore apart areas in China
while in the new world, snow fell in June, the year without summer.
Some friends were
vacationing on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. The incessant
rain kept them within their house and in their gloom turned to writing.
One, Lord Byron, penned 'Darkness,' which begins
I had a dream which
was not at all a dream
The bright sun was
extinguish'd and the stars
Did wander darkling
in the eternal space
Rayless, and
pathless, and the icy earth
All suitably
depressing stuff, we can be fortunate Byron's was not a generation of
Mtv, SMS and computer games. Having laid down the gauntlet his friends
responded. John Polidori wrote The Vampyre while Mary
Wollstoncraft penned Frankenstein.
It was not until
1847 that a Swiss scientist named Zollinger came to study the still
smoking mountain. He became the first person known to have reached the
peak so he boiled a pan of water. From this he guestimated the height to
be about 2800 metres, not the widely accepted 4000 metres. Nearly one
third of solid mountain had been blown away.
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