Earthquake 23 January 1855
Account by H. C. FIELD published in Transactions
of the New Zealand Institute 1891: On Earthquakes
in the Vicinity of Wanganui

"I was building a mill for the Maoris at Waitotara at 
the time, and was living in a toitoi whare, which I fully
expected would be shaken to pieces over my head. 

There was a very peculiar condition of the atmosphere that 
day - I never experienced anything like it before or since;
though, of course, I cannot say whether it was connected in 
any way with the earthquake. The day was perfectly calm, and
unusually cold for the time of the year. Dull leaden clouds 
hung low, threatening rain. Altogether it seemed a day specially 
suited to hard work, and yet no one could work. I had a job on 
hand which I was anxious to complete, yet found it impossible to
work at it for more than two or three minutes at a time, with 
long intervals between, owing to restlessness and lassitude. 

Every one in Wanganui seemed to have felt the same. The poultry
crept about, with their wings and tails drooping, as if they
were all ill. There was a herd of forty or fifty wild goats
grazing near where I was at work. Ordinarily they ran like
deer if any one approached within a hundred yards of them;
but that day I had repeatedly to drive them out of the house
or mill, and they even let me handle them. 

About 6pm a steady drizzly rain began to fall, and continued up 
to the time of the earthquake, when it ceased quite suddenly.

I had just turned in, at about 9pm, when I heard a very loud
earthquake-explosion, which was followed by a sharp upheaval
and violent shakes, accompanied by loud rumbling. I at once
lighted a candle to see what was happening. 

There seemed to be three shocks joined together. Twice the 
motion slackened and then became more violent again. The third
time the motion was so violent that my table (a small one,
and perhaps a little topheavy with a pile of English papers
which I had just received, and which stook on top of it) was
turned completely upside down. This was the culmination of
the shock, which then gradually subsided, the gyratory action
being so violent as to produce a feeling like sea-sickness.

Altogether the shock must have lasted fully three minutes. It
was succeeded by another, and then a third, after which others
occurred at longer intervals.

There was a Wesleyan Mission family living about half a mile
from me. The missionary had been away from home for some days,
but had returned that evening, though I was not aware of his
having done so. Thinking his wife and sister must be greatly
alarmed, I dressed myself and started in the dark for their
house. The track was merely a native path through high fern;
and several times, as I went along, I was fairly thrown right
and left into the fern, and could hardly keep my feet.

On reaching the house, I found the family sitting with the
doors open, ready to rush out if the house should be actually
falling. The ladies were to carry blankets, which lay ready
folded on the table, and the missionary was to snatch up the
little girl, who was sleeping on a sofa. I remained there till
morning.

When daylight came, we found that the ground was cracked in
all directions, and that on an alluvial flat just in front of
the house there was a crack fully 50 yards long, through which
sand and water had been thrown up from a depth of 15ft. or
20ft., and scattered on the surface to a width of about 20ft.,
and to a depth of several inches.

After taking a cup of coffee, I started for Wanganui, to see
how my wife and children had fared. On reaching the pa where
the track to Wanganui crossed the Waitotara River, I found the
Maoris sitting outside their huts in great alarm.

The ground was cracked in all directions, and, as the slight
shocks passed along, the cracks could be seen to open and close
- a thing which the Maoris said they had never known to occur
previously.

The Maori mailman was just on the point of starting for Wanganui,
so we travelled together. On reaching the sea-beach, along which
our route ran for about five miles, we found that the whole face
of the cliff was thrown down, and that further small slips
were constantly occurring.

An isolated mass of shell-rock, called "Te Ihonga," similar to
the Pulpit Rock at the Isle of Wight, which had stood at the top
of the cliff, and had for ages marked the place at which to turn
off from the beach to go across the sandhills to the Waitotara
crossing, had been thrown down and dashed to pieces.

On reaching Wanganui, I found that, though my own folks and
property were safe, immense damage had been done, particularly
in the stores and hotels. The ground was cracked in many places.
The foreshore on the river fronting Taupo Quay (which faces
southeast), from the quay roadway to low-water mark, was like
an ill-ploughed field; and the alluvial flats beside the river
were specially fissured.

At what is known as "Sutherland's Flat", about five miles above
the town, two cracks, fully 100 yards long, and from 30ft to
50ft asunder, extended, from the river back into the flat, and
the interval between them had sunk down fully 6ft., so that at
high water boats could be taken into the flat.

Except two low double ones, which were so built into the
framework of a house that they could not move, every brick
chimney in the neighbourhood was destroyed; but the pumice
chimneys and houses, of which there were many at that time,
all escaped injury.

There was a brick church at Putiku, with walls about 8ft high
and a heavy roof. Though built with a mortar of shell-lime,
specially burnt for the purpose, scarcely two bricks were left
adhering to each other. This extraordinary disintegration was
no doubt due to the weight of the roof, which had come down
en masse, grinding the brickwork to pieces.

A brick wall at the adjacent mission-station was also thrown
down and broken to pieces. Prior to this earthquake, a good many
houses had been what was called "bricknogged" - i.e.,
the intervals between the studs had been filled with brickwork,
and the inner facing plastered. Nearly the whole of this
bricknogging was shaken down, and what was not so was so
loosened as to be unsafe, and had to be removed.

There was no loss of life or limb, but several narrow escapes.
In one case an old bed-ridden woman had just been carried into
the next room while her bed was made, and all the bricknogging
beside it was shaken down on to the bed from which she had been
removed.

In another case a nurse and several children had to huddle
together at one end of a room while the chimney fell between
them and the door, and then scramble over the fallen brickwork
to make their escape.

The Rev. R. TAYLOR, too, and his family had rushed out of doors
on feeling the shock, and had only just passed the brick wall
when it fell and covered the path which they had traversed.

A certain amount of good was done by the shock in draining
swamps. These had been formed by layers of ironsand becoming
rusted together and forming a pan, which prevented the surface-
water from soaking downwards. The shock cracked these pans, and
enabled the water to escape.

Shocks occurred at frequent intervals for some time afterwards -
in fact, for several months it could never be said that the
earth was still. Even when it was dead calm there was always
a long, low swell running up the Wanganui River, and as we lay
in bed at night we could feel that we were being gently rolled
from side to side. It seemed as if every wave which broke on
the beach continued its course through the land. This continued 
until the equinoctial gales of March and April rendered it no 
longer noticeable.

Wanganui was upheaved by the shock to an extent of from 1ft to
15in.; but all but about 6in was gradually lost afterwards.

It was asserted that a fire, supposed to be volcanic, was
observed in the vicinity of the Inland Kaikouras; and vessels
sailing south of Wellington reported the sea covered with dead
fish. The people on board a vessel, which reached Wellington
a few days after the earthquake, reported having felt the
shock fully 150 miles west of New Zealand. They had been much
alarmed, as they thought the vessel was dragging over a shoal
or reef not marked on the charts.

A friend, who had camped by the mouth of the Rangitikei River,
with a herd of cattle, on the night of the earthquake, lately
told me that the ground there was extensively and very deeply
fissured, and that a sulphurous smell was distinctly perceptible.
A similar smell was said to have been perceived at Wanganui,
but I did not observe it at Waitotara.