from: www.lombokmarine.com
The Raffles Report
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, later founder of Singapore, was at the time of the eruption serving as Lt. Governor of Java, based at his capital in Batavia. He had occupied this post since September 1911, a month after the British had wrested Batavia from control of Napoleon's France. Having heard of the great human distress and disastrous phenomena accompanying the outbreak, he gave orders that British residents gather information and report if possible to him on the effects of the eruption on April 1815, Lt. Owen Philips was dispatched with a shipload of rice for relief to the disaster zone. It is from Philips findings, and Raffles subsequent submission of his report to the Natural Historycal Society of Batavia in September 1815 that we learn after the-fact of the details of the eruption. It is important to note that no native accounts save one are known to survive, and the character and form of the eruption must be reconstructed "retroactively" working backwards from the Raflles report and the physical aftermath on the island.
Label: mountaineering