The official Court of Inquiry findings into the sinking of HMNZS Manawanui are out and lesbian Navy captain Yvonne Gray is facing court martial — so SugarTits and I went through the actual report because some of this stuff you genuinely cannot make up.
The alarm goes off at 18:15 and nobody says anything about it. By 18:16 the bloke on watch is telling the supervisor "it's not really doing what I want it to do." He says it twice. The ship hits the reef at 18:17 — grinding and shaking noises on the recorder — and the captain arrives on the bridge, calls for calm, then asks someone else to look at the propulsion system because they understand it better than her.
Ten minutes after hitting the reef, someone goes "do you want to take it out of auto now?" The response: "it was in auto and I didn't realise Ma'am." The ship was on autopilot the whole time. That's it. That's why the ship sank.
Twenty nine minutes after the crash the Mayday goes out. At 18:47 she pipes all personnel to get a bottle of water, go to the toilet if they can, and grab some extra layers.
Oh — and the report confirmed the captain wasn't qualified to command that ship. Neither was the supervisor on the bridge. And the chapter in the procedures manual covering exactly what they were doing had never been filled in.
At least nobody died
The crew of the ship had no idea how the vessel functioned. It was not the fact the Captain was a woman, but was promoted to her position without being qualified to command the vessel - done for political reasons. Other members of the crew seem to have had inadequate training.
[Posted at the
SpookyWeather2 blog, May 3, 2026.]
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