The paddle steamer City of Dunedin departed Wellington at around 5 p.m. on Saturday 20 May. It was never heard from again and no trace was ever found of its 25 crew and at least 22 passengers.
The steamer Tararua, en route from Port Chalmers to Melbourne, struck a reef at Waipapa Point, Southland. Of the 151 passengers and crew on board, 131 were lost including 12 women and 14 children.
Although no New Zealanders were aboard the world’s largest ship when it sank in the chilly North Atlantic with appalling loss of life due to a lack of lifeboats, they followed the news closely.
It was a Sunday afternoon when the storm swept across the country, beginning with little more than a steady drizzle. By the time it had ended the next morning, at least 25 people had been killed.
On 5 October 2011 the MSC-chartered, Liberian-flagged container ship Rena astonished local mariners by grounding on the clearly marked Astrolabe Reef in the Bay of Plenty. Some fear New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster is in the making.
Crew from HMNZS Leander carry out maintenance on a torpedo. Leander-class light cruisers carried standard Allied 21-inch (533-mm) torpedoes in eight deck-mounted tubes. They did not have the range or speed of the 24-inch (610-mm) Type 93 ‘Long Lance’ torpedoes used by the Japanese. This was a fact brutally exposed at Kolombangara – of the 51 ‘fish’ launched by Task Force 36.1, only two hit the target (helping to sink the cruiser Jintsu); in return long-range Japanese torpedoes sunk one Allied ship and badly damaged three others (including the Leander).
