Sinking most dignified option

The message from the Navy on what will happen to Canterbury arrives by email and without elaboration: "It is likely that Canterbury will be disposed of in an open tender process." That is, sold for scrap, and probably to an overseas buyer. The Chilean Navy has several aging Leanders, but it's unlikely to want another.

The thought of tendering Canterbury makes many of her former sailors shudder, and also makes it harder for tourism groups to claim her as a dive wreck.

The rumour doing the rounds is that the Government wants cash out of Canterbury. The last decommissioned Leander, Wellington, was sold to a trust for a token $1 last year. (For the past four years Wellington has been tied up at Devonport, providing spare parts for her sister ship.)

Talk to scrap metal dealers and they reckon on current rates and trends, Canterbury will probably fetch around $400,000.

Nonetheless, Dean Savage, the owner of Dive Tatapouri, near Gisborne, is one of a loose-knit group of dive and tourism operators hoping a change of heart will mean Canterbury can become a local artificial reef. Savage is waiting to hear whether the local port will donate berth space, a crucial part of any such project. Then, he says, he'll start lobbying Defence Minister Mark Burton and local MPs for Canterbury to be handed over.

The navy ships Tui, a hydrographic vessel, and the Waikato, another Leander, were wrecked off Tutukaka in 1999 and 2000 respectively. They support lots of marine life and are major tourist attractions. The question is how open the Government is to supporting another.

Even then, sinking ships is an expensive job. Entrepreneur and submarine builder Marco Zeeman, whose Sink F69 Trust will blow Wellington to the bottom of the sea near the capital on November 12, says the preparation involved - consultation, resource consents, stripping and welding - leaves little change from $1 million.

However, he estimates that a frigate scuttled as an artificial reef is worth millions of dollars a year to the local economy.

"There are too many upsides for people not to want to support it."

However, Brian Franks of Christchurch's Dive HQ is watching a dream evaporate. He is keen to have Canterbury in the South Island, but hasn't yet been able to raise the personnel or the money to do it. In an ideal world, Canterbury would be scuttled off Kaikoura. "The idea still has a great amount of appeal."

Paint a picture of a ship cut to pieces and Navy people tend to grimace. When you've spent years travelling in the womb of a ship, they say, caring for her and relying on her in turn, it's the worst indignity to see her end up as reinforcing rods. "Out of all the options," says a former Canterbury boss, Commander Dean McDougall, "sinking is probably the most dignified."