New details have emerged of the rescue of sailors and passengers from the stricken HMNZS Manawanui in treacherous conditions. Herald reporter George Block has obtained fresh accounts of the rescue from the captain and crew of two ships who responded to the mayday call. But many questions remain
HMNZS Manawanui: New details emerge of rescue of Kiwi sailors and passengers by Malaysian ship as questions remain over grounding
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The crew assumed the radio silence meant those aboard had already begun evacuating the ship.
They were right.
The 75 crew and passengers had begun piling into four life rafts and two rigid-hull inflatable boats (RIBs) shortly before 8pm.
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Most were Royal New Zealand Navy ratings and officers but also aboard were several civilians from Metservice and GNS Science.
They tied the lifeboats and RIBs together, but one lifeboat and one RIB became separated.
Three of the lifeboats ended up going out to sea while the other lifeboat and RIB went onto the reef, where it’s understood they were damaged and overturned.
The Herald understands Commander Yvonne Gray was with the lifeboat and RIB that went back towards the reef. She and others walked over the reef in trying conditions for hours before they were picked up.
Others spent long hours in the water before they were picked up or managed to swim ashore.
The Lodbrog’s crew said they established communications with the Rescue Coordination Centre in New Zealand as well as with their owner in Malaysia and the vessel manager in France.
“The crew prepared the vessel for rescue operations by readying recovery equipment, securing the ship for arrival, and organising clothes, food, drinks, and medical supplies, including hospital and first aid needs.”
Conditions were already challenging, with winds from the east of 25 to 30 kts (46 to 56 km/h) and swells of 3m to 4m, increasing as the night wore on, according to the crew of the Lodbrog.
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When they came closer to the coordinates in the mayday call, the Lodbrog’s crew saw lights from the life rafts.
“As they approached, the castaways used red flares to signal their exact location,” according to the account from the Lodbrog.
They managed to establish communications with the sailors from the Manawanui via VHF radio.
“The crew did not see the grounded vessel during the night as it had no lights, and their focus was entirely on locating and identifying the life rafts and rescue boats, which had already drifted west of the grounded position.”
At this point, the Lodbrog switched to Dynamic Positioning (DP), a computer-controlled system allowing a ship to keep its position constant using its propellers and thrusters, along with feedback from location data like GPS. (The Manawanui also had DP, with a built-in redundancy meaning no single fault should cause the ship to lose its position, known as DP2).
After switching to DP, the Lodbrog made its final approach until reaching waters with a depth of 50m, all the while tracking the lifeboats using radar, the Lodbrog spokesman said,
“Due to safety concerns, it was not possible to get closer.
“The castaways proceeded to the C/S Lodbrog using a local diving boat available on-site and their own rescue boat.”
Lodbrog held its position, creating a lee on the port side, meaning it moved its left side away from the wind to create shelter.
The crew then lowered ladders and nets over the port side to allow 11 people from a Manawanui RIB to clamber up onto the cable ship.
By this point, the Manawanui crew had spent several hours in the RIB and lifeboats, according to the account from the Lodbrog’s crew.
“There was added pressure to account for all castaways, with multiple parties being recovered by the C/S Lodbrog, a local police boat, a local diving boat, and some even swimming ashore in the dark. The challenge of tracking numbers at various locations and briefly losing sight of some individuals raised concerns, but fortunately, all were eventually accounted for.”
Another rescuer, from local Samoan firm Ark Marine, earlier told the Herald they were towing a RIB with 11 people aboard from the Manawanui, attached to a life raft with another 10 aboard.
After the 11 people from the RIB boarded the cable ship, conditions worsened and there were fears it had become too risky for those on the life raft to board the Lodbrog, so they clambered into the now-overloaded dive boat instead.
The crew of the Lodbrog spoke highly of the Manawanui survivors they recovered.
“The crew were understandably in a state of shock, but it was clear that they were well-trained.
“They quickly regained composure once onboard and assisted the C/S Lodbrog crew in accounting for their members, using their remaining phones to contact other rescued parties at different locations.”
Another ship to respond to the Manawanui’s mayday call was the Cunard luxury liner Queen Elizabeth.
Captain Stephen Howarth, of the Queen Elizabeth, said they received a distress call stating Manawanui had run aground, relayed from the New Zealand rescue coordination centre (RCC), at 7.15pm local time.
They acknowledged the message and were north of Upolu at the time so set courses for the area reported in the distress call and increased speed, Captain Howarth said.
Captain Howarth said their hotel and medical teams were alerted. They set up the guest gymnasium with mattresses and bedding as a 78-bed dormitory.
(The distress call received by Queen Elizabeth had said Manawanui had 78 people on board, though the Defence Force later revised this down to 75 in public statements).
“We were ready to receive the crew of the stricken ship,” he said.
They arrived near the scene of the wreck about 11.30pm.
“We could see the lights of a number of life rafts and boats in the water as well as the lights of the Manawanui, which remained on all the time we were on scene, and soon after the lights of police boats that came to assist from shore.”
They spoke via radio with the crew of the Manawanui but were unable to launch boats because of the weather conditions, with winds of 65 km/h, the captain said.
“On arriving at the scene there was a stretch of un-surveyed water about 1.5 miles wide between us and the Manawanui which meant we were unable to approach beyond this point.
“This far out at sea we encountered 35 kts of wind from the southeast and 3 metres of swell in the ocean. In such conditions it was not safe to launch any of our own boats to assist and so instead we kept the line of communication going between the scene and RCC New Zealand.”
British warship recovers key evidence, but questions remain
Earlier this week, the Herald revealed the British crew of the Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel HMS Tamar had recovered the navigation record book of the Manawanui, expected to become an important piece of evidence in the Court of Inquiry into the sinking. The black box recorder has also been recovered.
Since that story was published on Thursday, the Royal Navy issued a statement providing more detail, including that the Tamar was directed to a debris field by a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-8A Poseidon.
The Royal Navy said Tamar, permanently deployed to the Indo-Pacific, had just left Fiji on a patrol to combat illegal fisheries when it received the distress call and diverted to Samoa.
The patrol vessel arrived about a day later “after a 650-mile dash at full speed through heavy seas” according to the Royal Navy.
“Tamar was still needed, however, to help with the aftermath of the sinking: protecting the wreck site, helping to prevent any illegal activities or snoopers, and helping our New Zealand allies recover any official material/equipment and personal effects from the waters around Samoa,” the press release said.
“When the British ship arrived off the wreck site at sunrise on Sunday, the bridge team had expected to find the surrounding waters littered with flotsam: shipping containers and debris, plus a potential oil slick.
“None of that was to be seen, but Tamar was soon directed to debris by a long-range Royal New Zealand Air Force P8 patrol aircraft, scouring the area. It was recovered and has been returned to the New Zealanders.”
Various questions from the Herald to the NZ Defence Force this week were met with the same response, including several on the state of the ship before it sailed from Devonport about a week before it sank.
“As your questions fall within the scope of the Court of Inquiry into the event, we have no comment to make,” a Defence spokesman said.
Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Garin Golding said he expects the court to provide some interim findings by mid-November and has pledged transparency on its eventual report, though he said some information would need to be redacted on national security and “privacy” grounds.
Minister of Defence Judith Collins said the Manawanui “apparently lost power” in a breakfast television interview soon after the sinking. Nothing further has been provided.
A photo from the scene taken by a rescuer shows some lights on aboard the Manawanui, but these could have been powered by battery banks from its emergency uninterruptible power supply units.
According to the captain of the Queen Elizabeth, its lights were on when the time it arrived shortly before midnight. Lodbrog’s crew said they did not see lights on the vessel.
A fire broke out aboard the ship before it sank, starting in the engine room, according to Samoan authorities.
It remains unclear and unconfirmed if the ship lost propulsion and drifted onto the reef, or whether it could have retained propulsion but lost the ability to control its movements using its thrusters.
The Manawanui, formerly the civilian oil and gas survey vessel Edda Fonn, was driven by two main azimuth thrusters at the aft of the vessel. Azimuth thrusters are propellers in pods that can rotate at any angle, making a rudder redundant.
The ship also has tunnel thrusters in the bow, providing lateral force for manoeuvring. Shortly after it was delivered, the Navy described it as the most manoeuvrable ship in the fleet.
It manoeuvred with the aid of a Kongsberg K-POS Dynamic Positioning 2 (DP2) System, akin to a marine autopilot.
DP2 refers to its level of redundancy, and means it should be able to keep station – stay on course or in one place - even if one component on board fails.
George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin. He can be reached on george.block@nzherald.co.nz
