Tui sinks gracefully amid cheers, tears

By Angela Gregory

TUTUKAKA - The former Navy vessel Tui went to the bottom off Tutukaka on Saturday, to the cheers of thousands of spectators and a few tears from an old shipmate.

A spokesman for the Tutukaka Coast Promotions Society, Jeroen Jongejans, said about 500 pleasure-craft surrounded the old hydrographic ship as it was scuttled 400m offshore, and a few hundred spectators watched from land.

Mr Jongejans had hoped the 63m ship would sit upright on the sandy seabed. Instead, it flipped on to its port side.

But about 50 dive industry representatives had been down to the wreck already and "thoroughly enjoyed it."

Mr Jongejans confirmed there were suggestions of sinking another ship, perhaps the frigate Waikato, at Tutukaka, 29km north-east of Whangarei.

He believed a cluster of wrecks would be a drawcard for divers and good for fish life, but said it was too soon after the Tui project to seriously consider it.

A wreck diver, Mike Wiggins, said the Tui would not be easy to explore, but the dive should be awesome.

Visibility had been poor on Saturday because of choppy waters, he said. "There was a lot of creaking and groaning, which was scary."

The last commander of the Tui, John Campbell, said not everything had been stripped from the ship to leave the impression that it had sunk while operational.

The Tui had gone down gracefully.. "It was a nice way to end - better than being cut up into razor blades."

A retired Navy shipbuilder, Norm Greenall, shed a few tears.

"It was quite sad, like putting someone to rest."

Mr Greenall, who lives in Tutukaka, had served on the Tui and was in charge of the team that prepared it for sinking.

He was one of the last to leave the ship. "It was quite an eerie feeling when we opened the valves and the water gushed in."

The chairman of the promotions group, Pete Vink, had a sinking feeling of his own when he realised he had missed by seconds the climax of 18 months' planning.

Mr Vink had gone below deck on a Navy boat just as the Tui finally slipped beneath the waves, nearly an hour after the valves were opened, and plunged 32m to the ocean floor.

"One minute it was there, the next it was gone," he said.

"I was a little disappointed. I didn't even see the funnel go down, just a whole lot of bubbles."

The United States Ambassador, Josiah Beeman, said it was a special day as United States Navy boats were sunk only occasionally.

"And there has never been one deliberately sunk overseas in peacetime."

He hoped the sinking of the redundant Tui, which the United States had leased to the New Zealand Navy 27 years ago, would set a precedent because of the local economic benefits.

FIRST LOOK: Dive instructor Glenn Edney inspects the Tui, which was not stripped completely to leave the impression that it sank while operational. HERALD PICTURES / GLENN JEFFREY