Under The Volcano

Theresa Thompson investigates the history of a very hot subject, which can have cataclysmic results, at a new exhibition in Oxford.

- Theresa Thompson

Seven years ago the eruption beneath the Eyjafjallajökull ice-cap in Iceland was a forceful reminder of the potency of volcanoes. The resulting plume of volcanic ash that was ejected many kilometres into the atmosphere caused huge hazards for air traffic across Europe, and in the days that followed its steam columns and fire fountains were witnessed by many in real time on news reports. Yet this was a relatively small volcanic eruption. The huge eruption of Mount Asama in Japan in 1783 (1), recorded by Dutch doctor Isaac Titsingh, killed around 1500 people and lasted three months, while the eruption of the volcanic island of Krakatoa in Indonesia on 26 August 1883 was larger still, and one of the most violent eruptions of recent times. Not only did it cause an ear-splitting noise heard thousands of miles away and catastrophic tsunamis killing thousands of people, but it also triggered extraordinarily vivid sunsets around the world for months to come. So spectacular were they that the painter William Ascroft (1832– 1914) recorded them in pastel on Chelsea Embankment in London that autumn. He published a series of paintings (2) that not only made his name, but also served as a detailed record of the meteorological effects of the eruption in the days before colour photography was in regular use.

A century earlier, in July 1783, the Worcestershire schoolteacher William Dunn (1731–95) noted in his weather diary that ‘putrid air’ had spewed across England following the eruption of Laki, a volcano in Iceland, on 8 June. He observed that the sun was ‘red as blood with Thunder and Lightning’ and a farmer was ‘kill’d with his horse by lightning with a number of other beasts kill’d’ during that hot summer.