First came a distant hollow sound, swelling at a frightening rate

George Albert Hansard, who kept a journal aboard Her Majesty's steam vessel Acheron during its four-year charting of the New Zealand coastline, recorded the effect on Wellington of the 1848 Marlborough earthquake; the quake is now almost forgotten, particularly overshadowed by the big 1855 quake. It's estimated to have had a magnitude of 7.5. Author Sheila Natusch recounts his reportage:

The earthquake itself, need it be said, afforded Hansard splendid copy. First came a distant hollow sound, swelling at a frightening rate, and next thing a convulsive shock - houses crashed, bricks came tumbling down, women and children rushed to and fro, and even the stoutest-minded felt off colour. There were three shocks. The first, a long deliberate shaking that lasted a couple of minutes ('three', said a Frenchman at Akaroa), was solemnly believed to have stopped the current gale in its tracks. As soon as the shock ended, the gale sprang up again. The shock was felt over a wide area.

The second one next day was ushered in by a bang, followed by a jolt, a loud roar and a tremblement de terre. Waves were seen, a foot high in some places, passing along the ground. Unfortunately, walls and brick buildings were thrown down, killing three people.

The third and most violent grand shock arrived early in the morning two days after the second. It too came roaring into the midst of a howling gale and apparently shocked it out of existence - or at least took people's minds off it - while it knocked down the remaining brickwork. This time, as everyone was still in bed, no harm was done to lith and limb. After that there were no more violent shakes, just a diminishing series of aftershocks, noticeable even on board the Acheron. One of them sounded like barrels rolling along the deck. With two-thirds of its 'chimnies' down, the walls of the Wesleyan Chapel scattered in all directions, the half-ruined Ordnance Store propped up with timbers, and heaps of brick and rafters where there had been houses, Wellington must have looked dishevelled in part; but Lambton Quay, and houses built on higher ground, especially one-storey houses, were not badly damaged. 'All wooden houses, small and great, seem perfectly uninjured, Hansard wrote.

- Sheila Natusch, The Cruise of the Acheron, Christchurch, 1978, p.74.

The commander of the Acheron was Captain John Lort Stokes, who in the 1830s had shared a cabin with naturalist Charles Darwin aboard the Beagle. The same year as the Marlborough earthquake Stokes Inlet and Lort River in Western Australia were named after him.