The crew and Commanding Officer of
the HMNZS Manawanui Navy ship were undertrained and the boat
was not up to the task it was doing, a report into last
year’s grounding says.
Multiple failures of the crew,
the ship, and the Navy itself have been identified in a
damning final Court of Inquiry report into the incident off
the coast of Samoa in October.
The report also
contains a full
transcript of the dramatic night. Including the captain
telling the crew they would survive if they abandoned
ship.
“This is the Captain. This isn’t a great
situation. however I have faith that you all know what you
need to do. We’ll get to our liferaft stations, we’ll get in
our liferafts and we’ll survive this and then we’ll wait for
help to arrive.
“Make sure that you can do what you
can to prepare yourself for getting in that liferaft if that
means getting extra clothes then do that. All personnel are
to try to get to the loo before they get in the
liferaft.”
One witness had been heard telling a
colleague “I’m trying to save the ship” and “it’s not
stopping”, while another calls for calm. Crew are urged to
get hands on emergency stations before a mayday call is made
and eventually, crew are ordered to prepare to abandon ship
and head to liferafts.
Here’s how the grounding
played out:
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Minister of Defence
Judith Collins, KC, Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral Garin
Golding, and President of the Court of Inquiry, Commodore
Melissa Ross held a media
conference in Auckland on Friday about the
findings.
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