Krakatoa East of Java
In August of
1883 an event occurred that would have lasting effects and change the course of
world history. That event was the
eruption of Krakatoa, an island in the archipelago of “Krakatau” in
Indonesia.
Second, only to the eruption
of Tambora on April 10, 1815, the main eruptions of Krakatoa on the 27th
of August 1883 ejected eleven cubic miles of ash into the atmosphere that caused
a drop in average worldwide temperatures of 1.2° C (2.2 °F) for 5
years.
Lithograph of the Eruption, 1885
The dramatic
skyline in Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893) is claimed by some
historians to be based on the global atmospheric effects as seen by him over Oslofjord,
Norway, shortly after the eruptions.
The Scream
The shock
wave from the explosion ruptured the eardrums of sailors on their ships ten
miles out on the ocean. The sound of the
explosion was heard as far as 2,800 miles away in Perth Australia, and
concussive air waves traveled seven times around the world! The official death toll recorded by the Dutch
authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at 120,000 or
more. Bodies of victims were found
floating in the ocean for months after the event and flotillas of volcanic
pumice washed ashore on the beaches of Brazil a year after the event; many with
animal and human skeletons embedded in them.
Some scholars
theorize that it was the worldwide drop in temperature that caused the “Great
Blizzard of 1888” (March 11 – March 14, 1888) which paralyzed the Eastern
seaboard of the United States. The Great Blizzard of 1888 was one of the
most severe recorded blizzards in the history of the United States of
America. Snowfalls of 20–60 inches fell
in parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and sustained
winds of more than 45 miles per hour produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 feet.
Manhattan, 1886
The worldwide
temperature drop is also blamed for what has been termed “The Children’s
Blizzard” which caused the “Great Die-Up” of 1886-1887 on the Western Great
Plains. The “Great Die-Up” decimated the
cattle industry when 90% of the Northern herds were frozen to death, some while
they were still standing. It was also
called “The Children’s Blizzard” because so many children perished in the
blinding snowstorms while trying to reach the safety of their homes after being
released from school. Some reports at
the time claimed a temperature drop of 100 degrees in a 24 hour period!
A side
effect of the “Great Die-Up” was the loss of employment by all the cowboys,
whose job it was to take care of all the cattle before they froze to death. They suddenly found themselves out of work,
and many of the large cattle ranches were bankrupted by the calamity. One of those cattle ranches was the Bar U
Ranch, one of the largest commercial ranches of the time, and one of the
cowboys at the Bar U was none other than Harry A. Longabaugh, alias the
Sundance Kid. Sundance had been in
trouble before. In 1887, Longabaugh
stole a gun, horse and saddle from a ranch in Sundance, Wyoming. While attempting to flee, he was captured by
authorities and convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail. During this jail time, he adopted the nickname
of the Sundance Kid.
Suddenly
finding himself without a means of support, Sundance (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh)
and his wife Etta Place, teamed up with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and
his lifelong criminal career was launched.
Sundance and Etta Place
Front row
left to right: Harry A. Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, Ben Kilpatrick,
alias the Tall Texan, Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy; Standing: Will
Carver & Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Fort Worth, Texas, 1900.
Strange how a volcanic explosion on the other side of the world affected the lives of people on the Great Plains of America. The disaster at Krakatoa was also the first worldwide event to be reported on the newly laid Trans-Atlantic undersea telegraph cable.
Strange how a volcanic explosion on the other side of the world affected the lives of people on the Great Plains of America. The disaster at Krakatoa was also the first worldwide event to be reported on the newly laid Trans-Atlantic undersea telegraph cable.
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