Manawanui sinking: New Zealand's reputation 'tarnished'

Saturday, 30 November 2024

Rear admiral of the New Zealand Navy Garin Golding explains the timeline of events that lead to the Manawanui sinking in Samoa.

New Zealand’s reputation has been “tarnished big time” by the sinking of the Manawanui, Labour says, as late yesterday it was revealed “human error” was at fault after crew failed to realise the ship was on autopilot.

Defence Minister Judith Collins and navy chief Rear Admiral Garin Golding yesterday fronted the initial findings of a military investigation into the October 6 sinking of the HMNZS Manawanui off the south coast of Samoa, explaining a failure to switch off its autopilot and other mistakes made by the crew ultimately sank the $103 million dive and survey vessel.

Golding said it would be on him to earn back the trust of New Zealanders after the sinking, and the navy would “own it, fix it, and learn from it”. Collins said it was “extremely disappointing”.

Three crew, the officer in control of the ship at the time, this officer’s supervisor, and the captain, Commander Yvonne Gray, were expected to face disciplinary action.

HMNZS Manawanui ran aground while surveying a reef south of Samoa late in October, then sank.

Labour Party defence spokesperson Peeni Henare, a former defence minister, said the sinking had “tarnished big time” New Zealand’s reputation.

“We've got a huge job to build that again, and I suspect it's going to take a long time.”

Henare was among MPs to attend a meeting of Nato parliamentarians in Montreal, Canada earlier this month, and throughout meetings with Australian, British, Latvian, and other counterparts two matters were consistently raised: the recent haka protest in Parliament and the Manawanui sinking.

“It was raised by all of the delegations,” he said, “They asked questions that we've been asking and didn't have an answer to.”

Defence minister Judith Collins and Rear Admiral Garin Golding at a prior press conference about the Manawanui sinking.

Now there was an answer, Henare said there needed to be an open military court process for any disciplinary action taken against the crew. There was an “expectation” that anyone at fault would lose their job, he said.

There was also a question of why it happened: was the navy’s training sufficient, and did they have the right personnel?

“New Zealanders should expect it to be open. This is a huge event.”

The error had echoes of a disaster that struck the Interislander ferry Aratere earlier this year, when a failure to successfully switch off the autopilot had it run aground in the Marlborough Sounds.

“You’d think the lessons learnt from the Aratere were being passed around the industry,” said Iain MacLeod, Merchant Service Guild vice president.

“But [in] normal practice of a vessel operating in close proximity to a reef, doing survey work, they should have been able to have a better understanding of how the bridge equipment worked.”

Labour Party defence spokesperson Peeni Henare.

Golding said the officer in control of Manawanui should have had sufficient “muscle memory” to check the autopilot screen as the disaster unfolded.

“The crew did not realise Manawanui remained in autopilot and, as a consequence, mistakenly believed its failure to respond to direction changes was the result of a thruster control failure.”

The Manawanui had been conducting a 22-hour survey on the edge of a reef on Samoa’s southern coast, in a strong 25 knot breeze and moderate swell, when the ship did not respond as intended to an attempted turn.

The operating autopilot then meant the ship turned toward land, and efforts to slow the ship instead accelerated it to more than 10 knots. It travelled 635 metres while grounding multiple times for 10 minutes before control was regained.

In this photo provided by the New Zealand Defence Force, divers survey the area around HMNZS Manawanui on the southern coast of Upulo, Samoa, after the Manawanui ran aground and sank on Oct. 6.

Attempts to turn the ship off the reef failed, and though the hull of the vessel was not compromised and it had not taken on water, the ship was determined to be “no longer stable”.

At 6:46pm the decision was made to abandon ship -- which was successful as no lives were lost. Hours after abandonment, the ship caught fire and sank.

“Obviously, this has had an impact to our reputation,” Golding said, reiterating it was on the navy to “own it”.

Audits have already been conducted of other navy vessels to ensure early lessons from the Manawanui sinking have been learnt, but the court of inquiry will continue to investigate other contributing factors to the sinking. Any disciplinary action would happen only after the inquiry was finished.

Collins, who in the aftermath of the sinking defended the ship’s captain, Gray, amid a torrent of misogynistic online abuse, said “this is not at all a good result”.

'Nobody is happy about this … But as I've said, complaining about it's not going to make it better. The main thing is, we get on, we sort out all of the lessons from this. We don't allow this to happen again.“

An effort to extract up to 900,000 litres of diesel from its hull is ongoing. A salvage company’s tug boat has been preparing to leave New Zealand for more than a week, and Golding said it was expected to depart on Friday.

Salvage would begin on December 16.