In February 1780, the crews of HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, on the way home after Captain James Cook's death in Hawaiʻi, stopped for a few days on Krakatoa. They found two springs on the island, one fresh water and the other hot. They described the natives who then lived on the island as "friendly" and made several sketches. (In his journal, John Ledyard calls the island "Cocoterra".)
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Dutch activityIn 1620 the Dutch set up a naval station on the islands and somewhat later a shipyard was built. Sometime in the late 17th century an attempt was made to establish a pepper plantation on Krakatoa but the islands were generally ignored by Dutch colonial authorities. In 1809 a penal colony was established at an unspecified location which was in operation for about a decade. By the 1880s the islands were without permanent inhabitants; the nearest settlement was the nearby island of Sebesi (about 12 km away) with a population of about
