HMNZS Manawanui on reef in Samoa

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It doesn’t look good. There is a major fire onboard as well . There is concern over pollution as well but the fire and the surf over the reef could well alleviate that.

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Is no one looking at their charts, or even out a window in the South Pacific anymore?

They were surveying the reef at the time.

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They are getting a real close look now. I wonder if the fire caused a loss of propulsion

HMNZS Manawanui (2019) - Wikipedia

The ship has now sunk. From what I have heard the depths drop away close in with soundings of 2000 metres close by.

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AIS Marine Traffic quit receiving updates on her 5 hours, 15 minutes ago.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:305150/mmsi:512457000/imo:9273662/vessel:HMNZS_MANAWANUI

Quote after gCaptain art.
HMNZS Manawanui , the Navy’s specialist dive and hydrographic vessel, is equipped for coastal and harbor surveys, underwater explosive disposal, underwater search and recovery, and limited mine countermeasures.‘
End quote.

Pity that among 78 crew there were no personnel who could use all this equipment that is not available on merchant vessel and avoid grounding.
Shit happens.

The navy has in the process of forming a Court of Enquiry. The area hadn’t been surveyed since 1987 and there has been a number of seismic events since then. In that area you can be 100 metres off and out of soundings on a standard echo sounder.
I’m curious about the fire and when it started. I think she was DP 2 so it would have to be a colossal failure of propulsion machinery for that to be the cause.
One thing, the navy is pretty prompt on Courts of Enquiry and subsequent Courts Martial.

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From Sal: x.com

image



Disheartening to view these photos. With the breaking seas and discolored water in the vicinity it doesn’t look very deep there.

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x.com
It is starting to seem like going green was an epic fail.
There is a picture of the reef from an aircraft that I have seen that shows no trace of the ship.
The normal supply of diesel fuel to ships in New Zealand is automotive diesel. Marine diesel is not available.

Was this ship using the biodiesel? The Twitter post says they don’t the information whether it was or wasn’t.

The jury is still out but scuttlebut says yes. Short answer I don’t know.

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A ship that size would/should be using survey launches to cover shallow areas around reefs.

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We used to use boats with horizontal sextant angles,a station pointer with a sounding board and a wet paper echo sounder. A crew of 4 backwards and forwards fixing every minute or so.
Now you can fly an aircraft along the shallows using LIDAR. Given the depth of water she could use the equipment she had to take accurate soundings and using side scan sonar to mark the limits of the reef.

Very sad to see. Surveying in reef waters is not always easy. She should have been able to detect reefs ahead and to the side as a standard precaution in such waters.

Having sailed for years in unsurveyed waters in northern Australian in RAN patrol boats, I know the dangers. Lots of reefs in the Gulf of Carpentaria have a name after the patrol boats that hit them. They were more robust patrol boats in those days and could survive.

We did our own hand-drawn surveys, chatted to local fishermen and the navy droggies came along much later and charted little passages we had been using for years. One wonders at the importance of resurveying this reef with such a large ship.

P.S. Upolo is the birth place of my great grandmother who, being a princess, was sent to Fiji to marry a selected prince from elsewhere. She didn’t like him and eloped to North Queensland with my English/Fijian great grandfather. We maintain links to the Samoan part of my family.

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I will not second guess why she ran aground (the ship not the CO). I am continually amazed at the feckless lack of will among doing your duty whether merchant navy or naval by the once competent western world. The pandering to protecting the sainted god of environmentalism and DEI and short shrifting just plain old fashioned Competence, will, the determination to not allow your ship to sink, to burn and get praised by feckless abandonment of your duty of a master or worse yet a military commissioned Commanding Officer who increasingly are inwilling to risk lives to save their ship. If you wanted to be a docile schoolteacher you should have stayed ashore not tiptoed into a naval career path. All lives saved, great and of course she will be decorated for cowardice and “environmental stewardship” and get to name the next replacement ship with an indigenous unpronounceable stone age name. In hindsight is there even a reason for any of the 5 eyes nations to even possess a navy, it’s so yesterday and racist considering four of the five eyes were built on the blood, sweat, determination and vision of those abhorrent European dare I say, white people. Just scrap all the ships and donate them to Mauritius, they will need them to patrol their new possession Diego Garcia and the entire Chagos Archipelago on behalf of our future Chinese communist masters,

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But how do you really feel about it?

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