THE POMPEII OF THE EAST - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 6

English officer awarded him several tons of rice to feed his people and quoted him at length
in dispatches. The raja thanked the Englishman with emotion but left quickly, no doubt with
a mind still focused on survival and little recognizing his service to history.
THE GOLDEN KINGDOM OF TAMBORA
Amazingly, Tambora's twin plinian explosions accounted for only about 4% of the volcano's
eruptive production. While the skyward eruptions lasted only about three hours each, the
boiling cascade of pyroclastic streams down Tambora's slopes continued a full day. Hot
magma gushed from Tambora's collapsing chamber down to the peninsula, while columns
of ash, gas, and rock rose and fell, feeding the flow. The fiery flood that consumed the
Sanggar peninsula, traveling up to thirty kilometers at great speeds, ultimately extended over
a 560-kilometer area, one of the greatest pyroclastic events in the historical record. Within a
few short hours, it buried human civilization in northeast Sumbawa under a smoking meter-
high layer of ignimbrite.
The rivers of volcanic matter that plowed into the sea redrew the map of Sanggar. Forests
were incinerated along with villages, and kilometers of coastline added to the peninsula, like
a giant volcanic landfill. Once Tambora had disgorged itself of its subterranean sea of magma,
its mountain shell imploded. With so vast a volume of interior matter expelled, catastrophic
subsidence was inevitable, and sometime on April 11 or 12 Tambora sank into itself, forming
a six-kilometer-wide caldera where once its lofty peak had been. This giant volcanic sinkhole
is among the largest to have formed on Earth since the retreat of the last glacial period around
twelve thousand years ago and is comparable in size to the volcanic Crater Lake in Oregon,
formed seven thousand years ago. In all, Tambora lost a kilometer and a half in height during
its week-long rage of self-destruction. Where once it rose to a classical conical peak, it now
rested from its labors like a long, recumbent giant on an expanded lava bed, denuded of life.
Tambora's cacophony of explosions on April 10, 1815, could be heard hundreds of miles
away. All across the region, government ships put to sea in search of imaginary pirates and
invading navies. 16 In the seas to the north of Macassar, the captain of the East India Company
vessel Benares gave a vivid account of conditions in the region on April 11:
The ashes now began to fall in showers, and the appearance altogether was truly awful and
alarming. By noon, the light that had remained in the eastern part of the horizon disap-
peared, and complete darkness had covered the face of day…. The darkness was so profound
throughout the remainder of the day, that I never saw anything equal to it in the darkest
night; it was impossible to see your hand when held up close to the eye…. The appearance
of the ship, when daylight returned, was most extraordinary; the masts, rigging, decks, and
every part being covered with falling matter; it had the appearance of a calcined pumice
stone, nearly the colour of wood ashes; it lay in heaps of a foot in depth in many parts of the
deck, and I am convinced several tons weight were thrown overboard. 17