Titanic of the South Pacific now a 'ticking timebomb'

By Angela Gregory

WHANGAREI - Sightings of oil slicks above a Second World War shipwreck off Whangarei's east coast have renewed calls for action to remove oil reserves from the "ticking timebomb," which could trigger an environmental disaster.

Fishers have recently reported slicks above the wreck of the luxury ocean liner Niagara, sunk by a Nazi mine in June 1940 - the first ship casualty of the war in the Pacific.

Destined for Suva and Vancouver, the 349 passengers and crew took to liferafts and survived the violent explosion at 3.40 am, which sank the ship ironically dubbed by its builders the Titanic of the South Pacific.

Over the years local fishers have reported slicks above the 3415-tonne wreck, located about half-way between the Hen and Chickens and Mokohinau islands, 23 nautical miles off Bream Head.

A Whangarei marine watchdog, Wade Doak, said his calls for action to remove oil from the wreck, which was a "ticking timebomb," had fallen on deaf ears.

Mr Doak said the ship had likely been bunkered up with enough oil to get it to North America.

A big spill would destroy Whangarei's mangrove systems, and the nearby Hen and Chickens Islands were a nature reserve.

He said the Solomons and Vanuatu had identified the environmental risks posed by wartime wrecks in their seas and begun to clean them up.

Keith Gordon, an Albany salvor who first explored the Niagara with remote-operated equipment in 1988, was back last January and saw oil coming from the wreck. He is concerned thousands of tonnes of oil could still be in it.

He said he had proposed a survey to assess the risks but the Maritime Safety Authority, while interested, had had doubts as to whether it could finance the project.

Mr Gordon said the Niagara had been "quite a ship" in its time and was chased by German raiders in the First World War, before succumbing to the mine in 1940.

The Niagara was carrying 590 bars of gold, then worth œ2.5 million and owned by the Bank of England, when it sank. Most of the bullion was salvaged using a deep-water diving bell and a mechanical grab in 1941, with a second operation in 1953 recovering another 30 bars, leaving five unaccounted for.

The Northland Regional Council's maritime manager, Peter Wavish, said it was assumed the wreck was starting to break up, with corrosion allowing oil to escape.

But he said there were difficulties in removing oil as divers could spend only very short periods on the wreck, which had sunk in a depth of 120m.