New Zealand navy ship sank due to ‘series of human errors’, inquiry says

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SYDNEY (Reuters) – A Royal New Zealand Navy vessel that ran aground and sank off the coast of Samoa last year was doomed by several errors, a government inquiry found on Friday, highlighting inadequate training of crew and poor leadership.

A final court of inquiry report said that the crew did not identify risks related to the survey task carried out by the ship and that the supervision was not adequate.

“The direct cause of the grounding has been determined as a series of human errors,” the report said.

The Manawanui, a specialist dive and hydrographic vessel, grounded on a reef on the southern side of Samoa in October while conducting survey operations. All 75 crew members survived.

An interim report released in November said the crew did not realise the ship remained on autopilot and consequently thought its failure to respond to control inputs was the result of a thruster failure. The final report confirmed those findings.

New Zealand Navy Chief Garin Golding said the report “highlighted a gap between work as imagined and work as done”, with a series of issues compounding the direct cause.

Golding said the navy had already begun implementing some recommendations in the report, while others would take more time.

Defence Minister Judith Collins told reporters that the government would release “very soon” the country’s defence capability plans, but did not give a timeframe on when it would happen.

The country’s national security strategy in 2023 said the government needed to spend more money on its military as its armed forces struggle with ageing equipment and a shortage of manpower. Plans to increase spending on defence, which is less that 1% of GDP, are expected to come with the release of the defence capability plan.

(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Gerry Doyle)