Mike Pryce is enjoying his retirement and the absence of 2am phone calls about ship breakdowns. Photo / Melissa Nightingale
Mike Pryce is enjoying his retirement and the absence of 2am phone calls about ship breakdowns. Photo / Melissa Nightingale
Thirty miles off the coast of Wellington there's a deep hole that acts as a graveyard for dumped explosives and old ships.
Former harbourmaster Captain Mike Pryce would enjoy a few cups of tea as he watched the hollowed-out shells of unwanted vessels slowly disappear beneath the waves, sinking 1.7kmdown to lie with the rest of the abandoned ships.
The process of scuttling an old ship costs about $30,000 and takes weeks of work and planning.
Mike Pryce relaxes on board CentrePort tug Toia towing the hulk of fishing vessel Atlantic Elizabeth out into Cook Strait for scuttling in 2008. Photo / Supplied
Pryce, 70, said he was involved in sinking about six ships during his nearly 30 years as Wellington and Porirua's harbourmaster.
It was one of the highlights of his career he looked back on this week after retiring in May.
A lot of his job revolved around planning and procedures, such as the plans involved in scuttling ships.
"They've usually been old fishing vessels that have been abandoned in the port," he said. "The owner's gone bankrupt, not a snowflake's chance of getting any money out of them."
His job was to organise getting all the oil cleaned out of the ship, and other parts, including the engine, removed, then towing the boat out to the hole in the Cook Strait.
It was easier than towing them 200 miles out into the open ocean where it would be safe to sink them, he said.
While some old vessels have been turned into dive sites, it is difficult to get approval for this. People also offer to scrap the vessels, but there is no good place to do so without risking some kind of contamination.
"Luckily we have a hole outside Wellington, an explosives dumping ground about 30 miles south east of Wellington.
"It's 1.7km deep, they're not coming up again."
Several other ports around the country also bring their old ships over to sink them in Wellington.
It's a whole day job, which involves towing the vessel out and sending one person onto it to open valves that let the water in.
Captain Mike Pryce stands in the captain's cabin in the Wellington Maritime Museum towards the end of the Wellington Harbour Board era. Photo / Supplied
"Some people suggest using explosives but this complicates life with paperwork."
There's no danger for the person on board opening the valves. The ship doesn't just "go 'blip' and down like a brick", it takes "friggin hours" to sink.
"It's not just a case of popping the valves and diving over the side."
It's one of the fond memories Pryce can look back on now his 28 years of service as harbourmaster has come to an end.
He took on the job at the age of 42 after years of working on tankers and travelling the world. He was employed by the harbour board before the Greater Wellington Regional Council was even set up.
Over the years he's seen a lot of legislative change, but was frustrated at the endless cycle of reviews.
"They haven't worked out how the previous review is going before they want to change it again, they never give it a chance to bed in," he said.
The biggest and best change to the ports was the introduction of tracking technology that allows them to see where all the ships and boats are at any one time.
Before then, they would watch the Interislander ferries disappear into the fog and blustery weather and hope for the best.
I wasn't sure how I would feel but I don't have to worry about when there's a southerly storm and rain battering the side of the house, I don't have to worry what the ship's doing anymore now.
Vessels were tracked from the Beacon Hill signal station in Seatoun, which Pryce guessed was "probably the last manned signal station in the country". It was an important post, he said, due to Wellington's bad weather and marine conditions.
Another change to the industry is around safety policies. Ports in New Zealand were now much more "risk averse" and focused on preventing incidents from happening.
There was "no average day" in the role of harbourmaster, a job filled with variety. Pryce might expect to have a quiet week, then discover there'd been a marine oil spill which he would need to organise the cleaning of.
"Everyone's a lot more careful now," but in earlier days there could be an oil spill each week.
Other weeks he'd be woken by phone calls in the middle of the night if a ferry had broken down, and he had to make sure someone was handling it properly.
The late phone calls was one thing he doesn't miss about the job now.
"I'm still settling into my new retirement lifestyle, using my gold card a bit more often," he said.
"I wasn't sure how I would feel but I don't have to worry about when there's a southerly storm and rain battering the side of the house, I don't have to worry what the ship's doing anymore now."
Pryce remains the president, secretary and editor of New Zealand Ship and Marine Society.
