Niagara sinking the first casualty of war in Pacific

Crew are rescued from the Niagara after she was sunk by a German mine near Whangarei Harbour in 1940. Photo / NZME.

Exactly 75 years ago today (June 19, 1940) the RMS Niagara hit a German mine off Bream Head and sank.

The Niagara went down carrying more than eight tonnes of gold from South Africa to America, to pay for war munitions.

The mine blew a large hole in the starboard side at 3.43am, but nobody was hurt. Being a calm night, all 351 passengers and crew made it safely to lifeboats and watched as the ship went down bow-first. A flotilla of small boats took survivors to another liner, which returned them to Auckland.

The Bank of England was determined to get its gold back. The following year, working at extreme depths, Kiwi salvors retrieved most of the gold using a diving bell.

Although largely forgotten, this sinking was an epic event at the time, being the first such disaster of the Pacific war and the closest this country came to enemy action.

No wonder word of the disaster spread rapidly, despite wartime censorship. During a 20-year career, the much-loved liner carried thousands of passengers from Sydney to Vancouver - via Auckland, Suva and Honolulu. Pre-war, if a young Kiwi left on their big OE, it was usually aboard the Niagara.

The sinking was part of an audacious stealth operation by the German raider Orion, which slipped into the Hauraki Gulf a few days earlier. Disguised as a Greek tramp steamer, the raider laid 228 mines, effectively mining every entrance to Auckland Harbour. Most of these were recovered and defused; some remain unaccounted for.

A current exhibition War Comes to Mangawhai tells this story at Mangawhai Museum.