OLD WELLINGTON.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 90, 18 April 1911, Page 3

OLD WELLINGTON.

SOME EARLY EARTHQUAKES. MEMORIES OF A VETERAN. An old identity of Wellington, Mr. James M'Dowell, who contributed some interesting earthquake memories to The Post some years ago, is again moved to put pen to paper, this time by the utterances of Dr. M'Laren, who prophesied dolefully from Auckland regarding Wellington's disregard of his .warning to build earthquake-proof buildings. Mr. M'Dowell writes: — " I related in your columns over two years ago the experiences of the late Mr. John Plimmer concerning Wellington's two severest earthquakes, those of 1845 and of 1856, which you again recorded in your obituary notice of the late Mr. John Valentine, and his experiences, related to me, of the start of the great earthquake whilst the 65th Regiment was undergoing monthly inspection on the drill ground on the place which is now Fitzherbert-terrace. Since then we have had a lecture on earthquakes at the Town Hall by our Dr. Bell, and recently our chief librarian, Mr. Baillie, secured a lecture from the Victorian geologist when he was passing through Wellington. Both were of interest to the inhabitants of Wellington, and confirmed Messr3. Plimmer and Valentine's accounts given to me over 42 years ago as to the faults or cracks that opened along Tinakori-road into the harbour, also along Pipitea Point, and from the Albert Hotel across Willis-street into the water of the harbour, and over which the traffic went on planks until such time as those openings gradually filled up. THE ALARMIST PRONOUNCEMENTS. "It is the alarmist pronouncement of Dr. Malcolm M'Laren that causes me to write thic letter and give some more reminiscences of earthquakes given to me by valned friends who have joined the great majority. The late ,Mr. Isaac Plimmer was working in a sawmill of his father's on Mount Victoria when the earthquakes started that lasted for over three months from first to last. Some of the people went at night to the top of Mount Victoria and saw the flashes of eruptions at intervals in the sky in the direction of the Cheviot county or the Hanmer hot springs. Those electric and eruption bursts w,ere of the same claes as those I saw in 1869 and 1870 from Number Two Line, south side of the Wanganui river, and whicß proceeded from Tongariro. These reverberations were distinct and prolonged even at that great distance. Again, when the Pink and White Terraces were destroyed, the reverberations from the eruptions were so great that many heard them at my I place in Oriental Bay as prolonged intervals of thundering. A SUBMARINE CRATER. "I remember Sir George Nares over forty years ago in the Challenger, surveying around Cook Strait for the cables and showing us a map of his discovery of the volcanic crater whose eruptions have so often disturbed our city. /His book, published as 'The Three- Years' Cruise of H.M.S. Challenger.' was in the Parliamentary Library many years ago. I presume it is still there. The mouth of this sub- , marine monster crater— much larger j than Mount Eden, one that dominates Auckland — lies towards the mouth of Palliser Bay, and is distant from Wellington as the crow flies about 64 miles. One lip of the icrater hasi been blown out. After all heavy earthquakes the sea from Palliser Bay till past KaiKoura is covered for many jiniles with quantities of dead fish from submarine eruptions. "Captain Cook relates that while in Ship's Cove cleaning his ship they experienced very severe earthquakes. Captain Cook's journals are in the reference library of the City Council, Victoriastreet, and can be read there by all. SAN FRANCISCO AND WELLINGTON COMPARED. I "The late Mr. Thomas Dwan told me that when he was in the United States Army and stationed at" San Francisco, after they defeated the Spaniards, they had a long series of earthquakes. The severest shocks shook down the old Spanish barracks, built of adobe (sundried bricks), and killed hundreds ot United States soldiers. Afterwards camp was made in marquees and wooden structures. Wellington and San Francisco are used to shakes. I have lived in both cities. A great resemblance is that all or most of the many business streets of both cities are built on reclamation fillings on the top of shells, mud, debris from the back-ground, the foundations being too infirm to resist vibrations. Steel-frame buildings and concrete to a great extent resist earthquakes and fires. The common bricks of San Francisco, when tall buildings fell, resolved themselves into clay and useless muck. The" steel frames stood, wood houses stood, but their rotten brick chimneys damaged them. San Francisco bricks steeped absorbed in time 21b of water. Our Wellington bricks are, as a rule, full cousins to the rubbish of San Francisco, and a tall building in Wellington would rival those of San Francisco if put to a severe shake or upward thrust. Although the brick structures there behaved so badly, the tall Spreckles structures of steel and concrete stood the vibrations, and the wooden buildings up the cable tramlines behaved equally well. The damage done to them was caused by their rotten brick chimneys, and the vast losses were caused by want of any water to put out the numerous fires caused by thesa chimneys. The earthquakes parted the waterpipes that supplied the city at their junctions, and the fires spread and burned themselves out as time went on. Oakland, across the Bay of San Francisco, did not suffer very severely, although so largely a wooden town at that time, as wooden houses stood the shocks except for the damage done by chimneys. A SEVERE SHAKE. "The severest shake we had in Wellington for forty years was on a forenoon about six years ago — I do not remember the date — when the badly-built chimneys on Adelaide-road and part of Kent-terrace suffered, as they were all built on made ground — I remember it as a mud flat and bog. Outside of those chimneys no damage occurred. "I relate the experience of the lateMr. Bennett, of Hobson-street, Auckland, on the night the Pink and White Terraces were destroyed by the Tarawera eruptions, as follows : — 'At intervals all that night there was the rumble under Auckland as if a hundred express trains were running at full speed, backward and forward from Mount Eden under the harbour to Mount Rangiloto, and faint smoke issued from Rangitoto for some time. Seventeen extinct craters and volcanic cones are visible from Mount Eden on a clear day. Eve«i by tradition, the Maoris have no record of eruptions. Good may occur to Wellington by Dr. MacLaren's prophecy. Moral : to cease building wkh rotten bricks, in either houses or chimneys.'*

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