Lambton Quay in Wellington, 1865. A four-metre tsunami had swept into the harbour and washed up along this road eight years earlier. Whanganui Regional Museum Collection Ref: NZ/NI/375
Lambton Quay in Wellington, 1865. A four-metre tsunami had swept into the harbour and washed up along this road eight years earlier. Whanganui Regional Museum Collection Ref: NZ/NI/375
Today, people in this region are celebrating Wellington Anniversary Day, which occurs on the Monday closest to January 22.
This was the date in 1840 when the first shipload of European settlers landed in Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington area).
A scouting ship had arrived in September 1839, and officials decided the area was ideal for a new colonial town. They sent back to Britain for settlers, who arrived on January 22, 1840, and in November that year named the site Wellington in honour of the Duke of Wellington, the hero of the Battle of Waterloo that effectively ended the Napoleonic Wars.
Whanganui celebrates this anniversary day because the region is included in the original Wellington Province, which covered the area between Maxwell in the west and Norsewood in the east, down to Wellington. The whole region was governed by a provincial government until the introduction of local councils and a central government in 1876.
Today also marks the anniversary of a massive 8.2 magnitude earthquake which struck Wellington 168 years ago on January 23, 1855. The earthquake hit at 9.11pm and the shaking lasted for 50 seconds.
This earthquake had a significant impact on the landscape of the flourishing city. The seabed was raised, swamps were drained and the southern end of the Remutaka Range was lifted six metres.
A number of larger buildings collapsed, but many single-storey wooden buildings remained standing, most with damage from falling chimneys and moving foundations. Ten minutes after the shake, a four-metre tsunami swept through Wellington Harbour and surged along Lambton Quay.
A sketch of Whanganui township, 1856, the year after the earthquake. Artist unknown. Whanganui Regional Museum Collection Ref: W-EV-20
The immense quake was felt throughout the country, and several residents of Whanganui recorded the event here.
Mr Bates was relaxing in the Commercial Hotel when the building started shaking. As the bottles at the bar began rattling, he ran outside, forgetting to put down his glass of gin, and recalled watching the buildings “dance” and having to dodge the falling chimneys. The next day, Bates described the change in landscape. Some parts of the riverbank had collapsed while others had risen, and all the bottles he heard rattling in the Commercial Hotel had smashed.
In a letter to his sister, surveyor HC Fields wrote he had just gone to bed in Waitōtara and was reflecting on a day of strange weather and odd-acting animals when his house began shaking. He considered sheltering between his bed and table in case his house collapsed, but the shaking knocked his table into the fire. When it stopped he went to check on his neighbours, but the aftershocks were too strong and he was thrown from the path, unable to stand.
Fields walked to Whanganui the next day and recalled the landscape was full of cracks, with sand and mud brought up from below. On reaching the town, he noted only two brick chimneys still stood, while those made of pumice remained in place, and the brick Pūtiki Church was in pieces.
A description of the earthquake and aftermath, 1855, by an unidentified Whanganui resident. Published in the Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle newspaper on February 21, 1855.
The Whanganui River didn’t escape either, with surges making their way far up the river. One man found that the swollen waters had washed his boat 18 metres onto dry land.
One recollection estimated there were 250 aftershocks in the first 11 hours after the earthquake, and that they continued for weeks before the earth settled again.
Sandi Black is the archivist at Whanganui Regional Museum.
