(Bloomberg) -- Human error led to the sinking of a New Zealand Navy vessel earlier this year, a Court of Inquiry has found.
The HMNZS Manawanui was carrying out survey work off the coast of the South Pacific island of Samoa on Oct. 5 when it ran aground on a reef. The crew abandoned the ship, which subsequently caught fire, capsized and sunk. No lives were lost.
“The direct cause of the grounding has been determined as a series of human errors which meant the ship’s autopilot was not disengaged when it should have been,” Chief of Navy Garin Golding said in a statement Friday in Wellington.
Crew did not realize autopilot was engaged and mistakenly believed there had been a thruster control failure, he said.
“Having mistakenly assessed a thruster control failure, standard procedures should have prompted ship’s crew to check that the ship was under manual control rather than in autopilot,” Golding said. “This check did not occur. Remaining in autopilot resulted in the ship maintaining a course toward land, until grounding and eventually stranding.”
The Court of Inquiry continues to review why the incident occurred and what would come next in terms of lessons learned, he said. Given human error was identified as the cause, a separate disciplinary process would need to be commenced once the inquiry concludes early in 2025.
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