Debris littered a property badly damaged by a tsunami in Carita, Indonesia. Photo / AP
The sky was clear and the moon had risen high, but Captain W.J. Watson of the British ship Charles Bal noticed that the Java Sea had "suddenly assumed a milky-white appearance".
Watson commented that the sky that night - August 22, 1883 - took on a pinkish hue, "as when
the Aurora is showing faintly". Then, four days later, the volcanic island of Krakatoa was "enveloped in heavy blackness".
"At 3.30 we heard above us and about the island a strange sound, as of a mighty crackling fire," Watson wrote, "or the discharge of heavy artillery at one or two seconds' interval ... To us it looked like blinding rain, and had the appearance of a furious squall, of ashen hue".
The volcano's eruption was one of the most catastrophic disasters of modern times. It began in May 1883 and lasted nine months, killing more than 36,000 people.
Most of Krakatoa was destroyed in the cataclysm, but another island - Anak Krakatoa, or "child of Krakatoa" - began forming in 1927 and has erupted several times. The latest was yesterday and potentially caused the tsunami that hit coastlines along Indonesia's Sunda Strait and killed more than 200 people.
