New Zealand just lost one tenth of its naval defence fleet. The HMNZS Manawanui – the jewel in the nation’s small military crown – ran aground near Samoa this past weekend after hitting a reef and catching fire.
The £75 million specialist survey vessel sank on Sunday morning off Samoa’s southern coast of Upolu. An order to abandon ship was made the previous evening after it got into trouble. It was only the ship’s third deployment in the southwest Pacific, after the onetime commercial ship was purchased with much political hoopla from Norway in 2019 by the government of former prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Arriving in the south seas, the vessel was retooled as a state-of-the-art military asset with the promise of a bright and limitless future.
On board this weekend were 75 personnel, including seven civilian researchers from other countries, four staffers from other militaries and the ship’s Yorkshire-born Commander Yvonne Gray.
No lives were lost in the accident, the most recent of a number of mishaps for New Zealand involving misfunctioning military assets.
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