WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Mistakes by members of the crew caused a New Zealand navy ship to plow into a reef off the coast of Samoa, where it caught fire and sank, according to the preliminary findings of a military Court of Inquiry released Friday.
The ship's crew did not realize autopilot was engaged, believed something else had gone wrong with the ship, and did not check the HMNZS Manawanui was under manual control as it maintained course toward land, a summary of the inquiry's first report said. The full report has not been made public.
All 75 people on board the vessel evacuated safely as the boat foundered about 1.6 kilometers (a mile) off the coast of Upolu, Samoa, in October. The ship was one of only nine in New Zealand's navy and was the first the country lost at sea since World War II.
Officials did not know the cause of the sinking at the time, and Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Garin Golding ordered a Court of Inquiry to investigate.
''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,'' Golding told reporters in Auckland on Friday. ''Muscle memory from the person in control should have leaned over to that panel and checked whether the screen said autopilot or not."
The crew "mistakenly believed its failure to respond to direction changes was the result of a thruster control failure,'' he said. A number of contributing factors were identified, Golding said, including training, planning, supervision, readiness and risk assessment.
The Court of Inquiry is expected to continue until the first quarter of next year. Golding said given human error was identified as the cause, a separate disciplinary process will begin after the inquiry.
Three crew members who were on the bridge as the disaster unfolded are likely to face such a process, Golding added. They were the officer in control of the ship, an officer supervising that person, and the ship's commanding officer. The navy chief would not name them.
