The memorials on the wall at the Auckland International Seafarers’ Centre form a small sanctuary of memory close to a working waterfront, where ships berth, cargo moves, and crews hurry on and off the wharves. They quietly remind us that the food in our cupboards, the fuel that powers our transport, and the everyday goods we rely on have all travelled across dangerous seas in the care of men and women whose work is far from risk‑free. Each plaque and vessel name here represents lives ended at sea and voyages broken off suddenly, urging us to remember that global trade depends on people who daily face storm, darkness, mechanical failure and human error far from immediate help.
This small area honours those who never made it safely home. It links the hush of prayer and reflection with the often unseen hazards of maritime service: sudden fire, rapidly deteriorating weather, treacherous shoals and banks, and the ever‑present possibility that a minor problem in heavy seas may become a catastrophe. As we stand among these memorials, we are prompted to pray for seafarers currently at sea, to support practical measures for safety and welfare, and to recognise seafarers not as anonymous providers of goods but as neighbours who carry our needs across the oceans at considerable personal risk.
Against that wider backdrop of loss and remembrance, one plaque and set of names draws us northwards in our imagination to the far tip of New Zealand: the story of the MV Kaitawa.
Kaitawa was a 2,485‑ton coal collier built in 1949 for the Union Steam Ship Company by Henry Robb Ltd in Leith, Scotland. Powered by twin five‑cylinder Polar diesel engines, she formed part of the vital coastal trade, carrying coal from West Coast ports such as Westport and Greymouth to industrial customers including the Portland cement works south of Whangārei, the Auckland Gas Company and the Chelsea Sugar refinery. Like many coastal vessels, her regular runs were familiar and seemingly routine, yet they threaded along exposed coastlines and over dangerous banks where weather, currents and cargo could quickly combine to threaten a ship.
By May 1966 Kaitawa and her crew were well‑accustomed to the coal run from Westport to Portland, a voyage that took them around the northern tip of the country past Cape Rēinga and the notoriously hazardous Pandora Bank. On board were 29 crew under the command of Captain George R. Sherlock.
The voyage and the night of 23 May 1966
Kaitawa sailed from Westport at 1:15 pm on 21 May 1966, bound for the Portland cement works via North Cape. Her departure had been briefly delayed when the original second mate suffered appendicitis and was landed for hospital treatment, with a replacement officer flown in. As she headed north, conditions worsened, and by the night of Monday 23 May, heavy seas and a strong westerly gale were battering the area around the Pandora Bank south‑west of Cape Rēinga.
At about 8 pm on 23 May, Kaitawa was sighted by the watch officer on another cargo vessel, MV Cape Horn, about five miles west of the northern end of Pandora Bank, still pressing on through heavy seas. Around 9 pm, in those severe conditions, Kaitawa struck the bank; her hull was breached, and the cargo of loose coal shifted dramatically, leading to capsize and rapid sinking with no opportunity for effective rescue or escape. Later analysis and recollection pointed to the combined effects of storm‑force winds, confused seas over a shallow bank, and the dangerous behaviour of loose cargo when a vessel is suddenly jarred and rolled.
Discovery of wreckage and loss of all hands
With no survivors and no radio contact after the ship was lost, the first clear indications of disaster came from the air and the shore. At 11:25 am on 25 May, an RNZAF No. 5 Squadron Sunderland flying boat sighted an oil slick about one mile north of Pandora Bank and wreckage drifting towards the coast, prompting the grim confirmation that a collier had gone down. Over the following days much of the wreckage from Kaitawa washed ashore at places such as Twilight Bay (Te Paengarēhia), while only one crew member’s body was recovered, later found on Ninety Mile Beach.
Naval survey work located the wreck itself on 8 June 1966 in about 24 fathoms (44 metres) of water, some 7.7 kilometres SW of Cape Rēinga lighthouse, with the superstructure and cargo largely gone. All 29 crew were lost, making the sinking of Kaitawa one of New Zealand’s worst 20th‑century coastal shipping tragedies and a sobering reminder of the everyday risks of seafaring.
Memorials and continuing remembrance
In the months and years after the sinking, the Kaitawa relief fund was established to support families, with Auckland City Councillor and former Royal Navy officer George Forsyth serving as chair. A memorial was later erected at the Buller River breakwater near Westport, consisting of a plaque listing the crew’s names and an anchor mounted on a circular concrete plinth, marking the home port from which so many of the men sailed. Other memorial plaques and services have been held in subsequent decades, including commemorations recognised by maritime unions and local communities (see below), ensuring that the names of the 29 lost mariners continue to be read aloud and remembered.
When visitors to the Auckland International Seafarers Centre pause in the memorial area and read about Kaitawa, they are invited not only to look back at a particular night in 1966, but also to look outward to today’s freighters, bulk carriers and coasters threading their way around New Zealand and across the world’s oceans. In telling the story of Kaitawa alongside other losses, the Centre bears witness to the cost sometimes paid in the course of everyday work and renews our commitment to support those who still carry our coal, cement, food and fuel by sea, often through conditions not unlike those faced off Cape Rēinga on that dark May night 60 years ago.
On the 50th anniversary of the loss of Kaitawa a memorial service was held at the seafarers’ centre (then located in Quay Street).
