MUST READ: Operation Apocalypso: the HMNZSLGBTQ Manawanui report

Calypso is the Greek nymph whose name means concealment. Cursed to… whatever, everyone in Greek mythology was cursed one way or another to perform thankless chores. I recognise it as the name of French oceanographer/documentary-maker Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s research ship and the breezy John Denver song about it from my childhood:

“Aye, Calypso, the places you’ve been to

The things that you’ve shown us

The stories you tell

Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit

The men who have served you

So long and so well

[Yodel:] Olili…”

Calypso was the operation name (OP CALYPSO 03/24) given to the Samoan mapping job undertaken by the ill-fated HMNZS Manawanui in October 2024 that saw the $60m ship sink to the bottom of the Pacific after striking a reef due to the monumental incompetence of its crew. The name was one of the details to come out of the full report of the Court of Inquiry. The $60m figure is really worse – the total write-off is $77m according to recently released budget documents. Both painful reads. And of the $32m of the write-off for remediation the Samoans affected have reportedly received absolutely nothing – meanwhile the Chinese Embassy have given them some cash and show up the NZ government for the cheap-arse colonialist pricks they are.

For reference I blogged on it at the time and following, providing a chronology since added to as the interim report was released and can now make a definitive appraisal having looked over the full report (incl. four pages of acronyms!). In summation let me express it in lyrics to the John Denver classic as above:

Op Calypso, the reefs you’ve crashed into

The learnings you’ve shown us

Does autopilot ring a bell?

Op Calypso, I blog to your spirit

The spectrum of genders who have served you

So long and so well…

[Yodel:] Upolo, Sinalei…

Witness 2 needs a fucking good lawyer – the really sharp military lawyers of the type that appear in American war movies. That is the most glaring conclusion from reading the Court of Inquiry report.

Witness 2 needs a Spencer Tracy/Rumpole of the Bailey type paragon of lawyerosity because Witness 2 is completely damned by this report. If it was a movie Witness 2 would either be a drunk, a saboteur or an idiot. The cause of the sinking was him – and it is a he/him in case you were wondering – he was the officer in charge of the ship at the time it “lost control” because he didn’t realise the autopilot was still on. The lesbian British ex-pat captain that the socials were DEI hate-mongering about so badly that the Defence Minister had to have a press conference telling people off for cyber bullying had nothing really to do with it – it was all too late by the time she got to the bridge. She made some bad calls initially, but also a few good ones later on, but ultimately a few too many poor ones when the series of decisions are netted out – that is what the Court of Inquiry found too.

It was he/him that didn’t check the autopilot switch was on when they should have gone through the troubleshooting cards on the bridge in the first instance and it was he/him who increased power all the way up to 100% when the steering didn’t respond until they were full clip 10+ knots straight towards the reef breakers, and it was he/him (together with Witness 4 – his supervisor – who also needs an A-list lawyer) that apparently told the Commander when she arrived on the bridge that they had. Although I couldn’t find it in the chronology the report mentions that the Commander relieved him of control – maybe at that point she discovered he had caused the whole fiasco, or had lost confidence in him earlier(?). The recordings don’t pick up any bridge cards being read out, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t consulted – they may not be lying or mistaken, just doing it too quietly for the mics to pick it up. I’m prepared to give some benefit of the doubt to them.

Here’s how that autopilot revelation went down according to the report which uses the voice recordings from the bridge. Be aware that if the person responding is Witness 2 then he is insinuating she knows it was in autopilot and then says he didn’t realise, but if this is another person who took over for him it would put a benign angle on this exchange:

18:27:34 Discussion about “do you want to take it out of auto now?”

18:27:38 Voice heard “ready in the boat, ready on deck.”

18:27:43 Conversation heard regarding propulsion control re-established and [redacted] “it was in auto and I didn’t realise Ma’am ………cross off now.”

18:28:00 Conversation about control of thrusters. Witness 1 states “I think we can get thrust now, standby.” Observation of VDR shows demand and response regained on port and starboard azimuth thrusters.

This autopilot realisation happened a good ten minutes after the Commander arrived on the bridge mind you.

Having shat all over Witness 2 it must be said no one high up is shown to have any glory in this. I agree largely with the court’s finding that given the Commander had less than two minutes from the time she came to the bridge to the time of the grounding and given that she was entitled to rely on the information given by her officers that it is marginal to argue she should have known the autopilot was the issue. However, when I read their chronology there is some lag between officers making an order and the order actually being actioned, so we cannot assume just because the voice recording has an order that it has been carried out at all – for example the anchors took forever and it didn’t make sense having finally let the anchors out to then start bow thrusting hoping to get off the reef. Given no one could figure out what was going on the Commander should have stopped the engines – as Witness 2 had suggested at one point – but it seems they just kept powering on and on and on. The exchanges seem terse with frustration at a few points resulting in sarcastic retorts. I can’t get over seeing things like Witness 2 calling “emergency shutdown” and there being no shut down of anything at all, of anchors being readied and yet continuing power and only being dropped after they had well and truly grounded.

All the other findings – the many dozens of findings from the myriad terms of reference and their multitudinous sub-terms – of inadequacies of command, of personnel, of training, of planning and of pretty much all aspects of the operation, while troubling and embarrassing don’t immediately concern the principal reason for the grounding – the human error of the soon to be stockaded Witness 2. All the other findings are the unhappy but inevitable result of a fine-tooth comb being dragged through the tangle-haired mop of a feral dog. Every nasty, smelly, sticky thing has been caught. The learnings, so many learnings from what resembles a Micky Mouse navy can be put down to something the Court didn’t consider and as defence personnel themselves probably cannot contemplate – that the NZDF cannot be relied on to mark its own homework. The defence force just make up their own manuals and rules and procedures and then proceed to ignore most of it – that is what the fine tooth comb sifted out.

The complacent attitude of the NZ public service seems to be perfectly harmonised to the Royal NZ Navy attitude. Much of which we are left to speculate on exactly how bad it is. The terms of reference concerning the Ship’s culture have been heavily redacted – indeed entire pages are blanked out on the matter of culture that’s exactly how bad it is. Things were skipped; things were missing. Turns out that although collectively all the officers on the bridge had in aggregate all the correct endorsements and certifications, unfortunately none of the staff on the bridge seemed to have the correct endorsements and certifications for each of their actual roles. The result was the navigational version of the Morcombe and Wise sketch with André Previn where Eric explains the chaotic shambles of a tune he has played was indeed played with all the right notes – just not in the right order.  Some facts that came to light are head-scratchers: the supervisor to the doomed Witness 2 had less experience on that vessel than his underling. The hydrographic staff were similarly misaligned.

The whole mission was something of a rush job. From the delay leaving Devonport naval base through to dropping anchors after it was all too late and they were grounded on the reef the operation now looks pathetic in its entire execution. Not disclosed was why the “holiday” gap was there and what the ship’s prior track was that day so we can see the whole mapping array. Given the inexperienced hydrographic staff – was it a problem of their poor planning?

The crucial moment when it appears Witness 2 forgets to disengage the autopilot reads like a farce – a screwball comedy think Abbot and Costello or Marx Bros. Right at the moment he needs to concentrate to make the turn, right when they are closest to the reef, at the point they are heading in the direction of the reef, his supervisor starts this idiotic musing about what if this situation went horribly wrong and they crashed into the reef could they drop anchors in time etc, and he’s trying to have a conversation with him about this nightmare scenario that they probably couldn’t stop and this is while he’s trying to do all these things to turn the ship and the sun’s going down, the shift is about to change, the lights have been dimmed on the bridge, the hydrographer is putting pressure on to do the last part of the survey… and right at this point of maximum focus being required the supervisor distracts him with the ponderings of the worst imaginable scenario… which due to him being distracted then starts to play out in real life. You cannot make it up. High farce. It’s comedy gold. You can see the moment in the transcript where he orders “stop logging” and he’s already trying to turn that he’s getting things out of synch. And as for setting the autopilot for such short runs of a couple of hundred metres instead of doing it manually – I don’t understand.

Even the abandon ship speech by the Commander – which must have been a tense and heavy moment – has a comedic end note:

18:48:55 Witness 1 pipes “…this is the Captain. This isn’t a great situation, however I have faith that you all know what you need to do. We’ll get to our liferaft stations, we’ll get in our liferafts and we‘ll survive this and then we’ll wait for help to arrive. Make sure that you can do what you can to prepare yourself for getting in that liferaft if that means getting extra clothes then do that. All personnel are to try to get to the loo before they get in the liferaft.”