The Auckland International Seafarers Centre exists to serve the welfare needs of visiting merchant seafarers. We do this through ship-visiting, the provision of a welcoming centre where the seafarer can relax away from the ship, and the opportunity to contact home using free wifi and other facilities.
Alongside these practical services for today’s seafarers, we maintain a quiet corner where plaques and memorabilia recall seafarers who have suffered through shipwrecks and wars, reminding visitors of the cost that often lies behind global trade.
The story of HMNZ Transport Aparima is one of the histories we help to keep alive in our small remembrance area.
A plaque commemorates the 25 New Zealand named crew members and ’27 Lascar Seamen’ of HMNZT Aparima, “torpedoed in the English Channel 19th November 1917”, and originally erected by shipmates in a former seafarers’ centre in November 1938. Their names sit among many others, linking today’s visiting mariners with those who sailed before them and never returned home.
Photo credit: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/troopship-aparima
HMNZ Transport Aparima began life as a twin‑screw cargo steamer built of steel by William Denny & Bros at Dumbarton in 1902 for the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand. At 5704 gross tons, about 430 feet in length and 54 feet in beam, she was designed for the Calcutta and oversea trade and was for a time the company’s largest cargo vessel.
By 1912 Aparima had been fitted out to carry officer cadets and became the company’s main training ship, making over 30 voyages on the India service. With the outbreak of the First World War she was taken up as a troopship, sailing multiple times as an HMNZ Transport with New Zealand soldiers and horses to Suez and later to the United Kingdom.
Torpedoing in the English Channel
On the night of 18/19 November 1917, while outward bound from London and heading for a Welsh port to coal, Aparima was struck in the stern by a torpedo fired from the German submarine UB‑40 in the English Channel, south‑west of Anvil Point. The explosion tore a huge hole in her hull and she sank within a few minutes, giving the crew little time to reach the boats.
There were no passengers or troops on board, only her working complement of officers, cadets and largely Indian (Lascar) ratings. Of about 110–115 people carried, more than fifty were lost, including the 17 cadets named on the plaque, whose quarters lay close to the point of impact; many of the survivors were later landed in Britain by patrol vessels and a Norwegian steamer.
Today the wreck of Aparima lies in around 40–42 metres of water on the floor of the English Channel, still visited by divers who can see her gun, anchors and other fittings.
For those of us at the Seafarers Centre, however, the more important memorial is the simple plaque bearing the names of 25 New Zealand crew members, a reminder of the human stories behind every ship that passes through Auckland’s harbour.
