The Tsunami

The collapse shoved the sea aside and launched tsunamis up to 120 feet tall across the Sunda Strait. Wherever they hit, the water did not just flood the coast — it erased it.

The town of Merak was wiped flat. A steamship, the Berouw, was torn from its anchorage and carried nearly two miles inland, then left sitting 30 feet above sea level like a toy dropped on a hill.

The official death toll was 36,417, and many historians believe the true number was higher. Whole villages along the Java and Sumatra coasts simply vanished, leaving no one to be counted.

The tsunami's energy was so vast that gauges detected its faint ripples as far away as the English Channel, half a world from the volcano that made them.