Over the weekend, the Royal New Zealand Navy’s hydrographic, diving and salvage ship, HMNZS Manawanui, ran aground off the southern coast of Samoa. All 75 of the ship’s company abandoned ship safely and only minor injuries are reported. She then listed heavily, caught fire and, some eleven hours later, sank.
As the commanding officer of the last Royal Navy ship to nearly sink – that was HMS Endurance, a ship with many similarities to Manawanui, in 2008 – I have views. I’m giving them here partly to inform, but partly also to correct some of the narratives and commentary that have emerged following the incident, many of which appear to have their basis in misogyny rather than hard-earned sea time.
There are only a few ways a ship can run aground. First, you don’t know where you are on the chart through human or system-induced navigational error (e.g. HMS Nottingham, Lord Howe Island, 2002). Second, you do know but the chart is wrong (HMS Brocklesby, Burntisland noise range, 1997). Third, you know where you are and the chart information is correct but conditions (wind, tide etc) overwhelm your ability to hold position (ferry Pride of Portsmouth collision with HMS St Albans, Portsmouth Dockyard, 2002). Fourth, you suffer an engineering defect and the subsequent loss of control sees you run aground (MV Ever Given, Suez Canal, 2021; MV Dali, Baltimore Bridge, 2024). For completeness, we should include showboating (Costa Concordia, Giglio, 2012) and deliberately grounding to save the ship from sinking (MSC Napoli, English Channel, 2007).
All initial indications in the case of Manawanui point to a loss of propulsion/control as the primary cause. This has been half confirmed by New Zealand Defence Minister Collins, who said: “We need to find out what happened, apparently it lost power, I’m aware of that, and ended up aground on the reef.”
The photos of Manawanui before she sank shows she had Restricted in Ability to Manoeuvre (RAM) shapes hoisted – a signal to other ships. The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea says a RAM vessel is one which, “due to the nature of her work, is restricted in her ability to deviate from her course. These vessels include but are not limited to: vessels engaged in dredging, surveying, or underwater operations.”
In other words, when the machinery failure happened, Manawanui was probably operating in navigationally tight waters, likely surveying an area whose charting information was dated and therefore inaccurate. Incidentally, surveying uncharted or poorly charted waters in South Georgia and Antarctica in HMS Endurance involved some of the most difficult ship manoeuvring I did in twenty years at sea.
Technically, once power was lost, Manawanui would have ceased to be RAM and would instead become Not Under Command (NUC), requiring a different signal hoist, before becoming Aground, requiring yet a third signal. However the crew probably had other priorities than flying the technically correct day shapes.
The lead up to the grounding would have been tense. Assuming there was a loss of power, the bridge team would have known very quickly how long they had before they would run aground (assuming the chart data wasn’t way out). “What’s failed”, “can we recover it” and “what are our reversionary options” would have been the conversations flying between the bridge and the engineering team. I can’t tell from the photos if an anchor was dropped – this would be a natural reaction to try and prevent a ship which had lost power from going aground but it doesn’t work in every situation. In Endurance the anchors saved us in the end, but we drifted a long way before they took hold.
The grounding of Manawanui would have been horrific, with a lot of noise, the lurching and grinding of the ship on the reef and alarms sounding on the bridge. Those from my ship’s company in 2008 who ran into the engine room of HMS Endurance to try and control the water flooding into it will never forget those moments. It would have been the same here. The damage control officer takes reports from the damage control parties so they can track the amount of water coming in and whether or not it can be stopped or contained. The ship’s marine engineering officer works alongside this, looking for ways to manage the water ingress whilst calculating the changing stability condition of the ship.
Over the weekend, the Royal New Zealand Navy’s hydrographic, diving and salvage ship, HMNZS Manawanui, ran aground off the southern coast of Samoa. All 75 of the ship’s company abandoned ship safely and only minor injuries are reported. She then listed heavily, caught fire and, some eleven hours later, sank.
As the commanding officer of the last Royal Navy ship to nearly sink – that was HMS Endurance, a ship with many similarities to Manawanui, in 2008 – I have views. I’m giving them here partly to inform, but partly also to correct some of the narratives and commentary that have emerged following the incident, many of which appear to have their basis in misogyny rather than hard-earned sea time.
There are only a few ways a ship can run aground. First, you don’t know where you are on the chart through human or system-induced navigational error (e.g. HMS Nottingham, Lord Howe Island, 2002). Second, you do know but the chart is wrong (HMS Brocklesby, Burntisland noise range, 1997). Third, you know where you are and the chart information is correct but conditions (wind, tide etc) overwhelm your ability to hold position (ferry Pride of Portsmouth collision with HMS St Albans, Portsmouth Dockyard, 2002). Fourth, you suffer an engineering defect and the subsequent loss of control sees you run aground (MV Ever Given, Suez Canal, 2021; MV Dali, Baltimore Bridge, 2024). For completeness, we should include showboating (Costa Concordia, Giglio, 2012) and deliberately grounding to save the ship from sinking (MSC Napoli, English Channel, 2007).
All initial indications in the case of Manawanui point to a loss of propulsion/control as the primary cause. This has been half confirmed by New Zealand Defence Minister Collins, who said: “We need to find out what happened, apparently it lost power, I’m aware of that, and ended up aground on the reef.”
The photos of Manawanui before she sank shows she had Restricted in Ability to Manoeuvre (RAM) shapes hoisted – a signal to other ships. The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea says a RAM vessel is one which, “due to the nature of her work, is restricted in her ability to deviate from her course. These vessels include but are not limited to: vessels engaged in dredging, surveying, or underwater operations.”
In other words, when the machinery failure happened, Manawanui was probably operating in navigationally tight waters, likely surveying an area whose charting information was dated and therefore inaccurate. Incidentally, surveying uncharted or poorly charted waters in South Georgia and Antarctica in HMS Endurance involved some of the most difficult ship manoeuvring I did in twenty years at sea.
Technically, once power was lost, Manawanui would have ceased to be RAM and would instead become Not Under Command (NUC), requiring a different signal hoist, before becoming Aground, requiring yet a third signal. However the crew probably had other priorities than flying the technically correct day shapes.
The lead up to the grounding would have been tense. Assuming there was a loss of power, the bridge team would have known very quickly how long they had before they would run aground (assuming the chart data wasn’t way out). “What’s failed”, “can we recover it” and “what are our reversionary options” would have been the conversations flying between the bridge and the engineering team. I can’t tell from the photos if an anchor was dropped – this would be a natural reaction to try and prevent a ship which had lost power from going aground but it doesn’t work in every situation. In Endurance the anchors saved us in the end, but we drifted a long way before they took hold.
The grounding of Manawanui would have been horrific, with a lot of noise, the lurching and grinding of the ship on the reef and alarms sounding on the bridge. Those from my ship’s company in 2008 who ran into the engine room of HMS Endurance to try and control the water flooding into it will never forget those moments. It would have been the same here. The damage control officer takes reports from the damage control parties so they can track the amount of water coming in and whether or not it can be stopped or contained. The ship’s marine engineering officer works alongside this, looking for ways to manage the water ingress whilst calculating the changing stability condition of the ship.