Warship sails to Anzac Cove for 90th anniversary

Ninety years after thousands of New Zealand and Australian soldiers died in the fruitless Gallipoli campaign, an Anzac warship will anchor off the beach where the troops landed.

The Australian frigate HMAS Anzac, the first built under the 10-ship joint venture programme with the New Zealand Navy, will anchor off Anzac Cove next month for the 90th anniversary commemorations.

It will arrive in time for the April 25 Anzac Day commemorations after reliving the route an Australian World War I convoy took when it left the Australian city of Albany in 1914. The frigate will deliver a peace message from Albany inside a five-inch brass shell case.

The Turkish city of Gallipoli, which signed a friendship agreement with Albany in 2003, was to fill another shell case with peace messages to go back to Australia, said the Australian Navy magazine.

New Zealand will not send a warship to Gallipoli this year but New Zealand's top soldier, Chief of Defence Force, Air Marshal Bruce Ferguson, will lead a contingent of men and women serving in the Army, Navy or Air Force, or who served in World War II or the handful of wars which followed.

The defence party will be drawn from the three services and include a Maori cultural group and a guard.

Prime Minister Helen Clark will also be at Gallipoli.

The New Zealand service will be held at Anzac Cove, where the troops landed, and at Chunuk Bair which was captured by New Zealand troops and held briefly before the Turks took it back in August.

Chunuk Bair was where Corporal Cyril Bassett won New Zealand's first Victoria Cross of World War 1 for laying telephone lines under heavy fire from the Turks.

- NZPA