TRAVELING upriver along the Koeripan in eastern Sumatra you see rice paddies, water buffalo, shacks made of tin and bamboo, and a great many Indonesians scrounging a living in a nation that is no better off than its people. The heat is stifling and the intense humidity makes it difficult to breathe, unless you are from here and are accustomed to it.
A few miles back from the beach you will come across items that defy explanation. Lying among the jungle growth are pieces of rusted iron, red and flaky with age, barely resembling anything useful. Then there is the buoy, much too far from the shore to have been placed there purposefully. You may walk past it without any more thought, or maybe you wonder what it is doing there. These items are the tombstone of the Berouw, a doomed ship that sat too close to Krakatoa when it erupted in 1883.
When Krakatoa burst forth, it exploded at sea level, annihilating the island and setting off a monstrous tsunami which killed more people than the explosion, hot gases, lava flows, and raining mud combined.
The Berouw, a medium-sized gunship of the Dutch navy, sat tied to a buoy only a few miles away. The first wave did not break her. That one picked up the ship, carried it about a quarter mile, and slammed it on the beach with such violence that the entire crew was killed that moment, which meant no one was alive to experience what came next for the stricken vessel.
A second wave, the really big one, picked up the ship again and drove it up the valley of the Koeripan river a good two miles, then set it down as gently as if a giant benevolent hand had scooped up a toy in a sandbox and moved it.
The ship rested exactly sideways to the river, which was not very large at this point. In fact, had the Berouw landed the right way in the channel it still would not have floated, only clogged it up. As it was, the hull sat many feet above the water, high and dry. From a distance it looked as if someone built a bridge across the river in the shape of a ship. A person with two ladders could ascend the bow of the Berouw, walk across its deck, and descend on the other side in perfect, dry safety. Except that on board were over twenty bodies of the dead crew.
Surveying the ship afterwards, authorities concluded that there was very little damage. The vessel probably still floated and all the machinery seemed to be in order, so that if they could transport the ship down to the bay she should be fully functional. Only no one ever did. The Berouw sat in the jungle and wasted away.
Locals picked it apart, carrying away anything of value: rope, panels, doors, food, weapons and left the massive iron hull to the elements. A hundred years later the Berouw was still there, savaged by nature but still recognizable as a former maiden of the sea. Today, visitors only find the occasional rusted iron mentioned at the beginning, and a strange tale of a doomed ship that recorded an amazing final voyage.
Dr. BC Cook taught history for 30 years and is a director and Pacific historian at Sealark Exploration (sealarkexploration.org). He currently lives in Hawaii.
