New Zealand has lost its first warship since the chaos of World War II after a celebrated LGBT commander was assigned to the helm.
The HMNZS Manawanui ran aground on a reef Saturday off the coast of Samoa.
All personnel on board were rescued, but the ship experienced a severe list and caught fire, ultimately sinking beneath the waves on Sunday morning.
According to The New Zealand Herald, some 17 people suffered minor injuries in the crash. Video shows the ship stuck fast on the reef.
🇳🇿NAVY SHIP SINKS AFTER HITTING REEF
The Royal New Zealand Navy’s HMNZS Manawanui sank in the Pacific after striking a reef near Samoa’s Upolu island.
The vessel caught fire before capsizing.
All 75 crew members were rescued, with three hospitalized.
The ship was on a… pic.twitter.com/JJjrADrWZM
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 6, 2024
The vessel was the first command of celebrated LGBT naval officer Yvonne Gray.
According to the New Zealand Defense Force, Gray, a lesbian officer who originally worked in the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy, took command of the Manawanui on December 9, 2022.
Gray then commented on how she wanted to “drive” a ship.
Was there human error involved in this sinking?
“With Manawanui, it’s not just about the command,” Gray said in 2022. “This is an opportunity to take a ship still in its infancy and further the capability of that ship, and influence and help those who carry our Navy into the future.”
The New Zealand Navy celebrated Gray in a 2023 “Women Commanding the Navy” article.
Less than two years after Gray took command, the ship is now part of an unprecedented post-war disaster for the New Zealand Navy. While the ship itself was uninsured, there is some coverage to offset any future salvage operation.
Despite the loss of the Manawanui, officials are thankful that no lives were lost.
New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins said the disaster response was “something of a triumph,” noting the “very, very difficult circumstances” of the wreck.
“This could have been a truly terrible day,” Collins said.
Officials and investigators have launched an inquiry into the $100 million ship’s sinking, and have not yet determined whether the ship was lost through some failure in the hardware or from simple human error.
The loss of even a single ship is staggering for New Zealand’s navy, which has only five workable ships after the loss of the Manawanui.
Professor David Capie of the Victoria University of Wellington Centre for Strategic Studies puts the decimation of the island nation’s naval forces in perspective.
“When you think about New Zealand’s enormous maritime environment and the increasing calls on the Defence Force for responding to disasters, fisheries patrols, as well as a much more challenging strategic environment, and you only have five ships, that’s a really concerning place to be,” Capie told The New Zealand Herald.
For New Zealand, which alongside its sister nation of Australia sits in between the vast Pacific and Indian Oceans, even a naval force of six ships is seemingly nowhere near enough to protect and patrol its own coastlines.
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