Deborah Morris – November 8, 2025
Below the waters of Houghton Bay is a warship – its forward guns intact, anchors in place, helipad empty. It is the HMNZS Wellington and it’s now a living reef.
The day it was scuttled – November 13, 2005 – stopped Wellington in its tracks.
In the single biggest public event ever seen in Wellington – Scuttling Day as it was known – meant thousands of cars were abandoned, parked along the roads of Ōwhiro Bay, Island Bay, Houghton Bay and Lyall Bay as spectators filled the area to watch.
The sinking itself took under two minutes – the traffic jam took hours to fade away.
Marco Zeeman, a former Wellingtonian of the Year, had seen trawlers and ships repurposed as reefs while in Hawaii.
On returning home, he helped with the sinking of the Waikato in late 2000 and knew the HMNZS Wellington had also been decommissioned. He set up the SinkF69 Trust – and literally made history.
The Leander-class frigate of the Royal Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy was originally commissioned in 1969 and called Bacchante. It joined New Zealand’s navy in 1982 before being decommissioned in 1999.
The frigate had been extensively refitted – a four-year mission which included new fuel tanks, a new gunnery control system along with surface and navigation radar.
The Wellington had been to Fiji during the first coup there to help evacuate Kiwis and other foreign nationals, went to Sydney to take part in the Bicentennial Salute to mark the 200th anniversary of European settlement, went to Bougainville for peace keeping and to the Persian Gulf in 1995-96 supporting UN sanctions on Iraqi trade.
The SinkF69 Trust obtained resource consents in 2002 to buy the Wellington – for $1 – and sink it off Wellington’s South Coast.
In 2005 the Wellington was towed fromAuckland’s Devonport Naval Base to Wellington where it sat at the Overseas Terminal as it was stripped. More than 100,000 people were able to visit the ship.
Holes were cut in the topsides and superstructure to allow the sinking and to allow access for divers.
A text competition was held by Telecom (now Spark) to be the person who would push the button setting off the explosives that would drop the ship.
Run over the 027 mobile network it was a text version of Battleships and at the end Auckland student Jo Smith won, beating off 115,000 entrants who sent 5.4 million text messages in a three-week period.
Zeeman said she was also the daughter of a crewman of the ship.
Originally scheduled for 3pm the previous day, the sinking was delayed by bad weather. Even on the day, strong winds slowed progress as tugs worked to position the ship.
Wellington city stopped to watch. The roads were blocked and boats took to the water – 236 according to the harbourmaster at the time’s count.
First came fireworks, smoke, and an explosion — then a ball of orange flame and a massive boom. The ship sank, settling upright about 20 metres down, its bow pointing into Cook Strait.
And just like that Wellington had a new attraction.
The wreck was then cleared by Police divers and later that day the first official dive took place.
The next year a huge storm caused the wreckage to break apart, the bow broke off and lay onto its side, secured by its 12-tonne mushroom anchor, with the hangar space collapsing under the pressure of the massive waves.
Some debris from the ship also washed ashore.
The Wellington now lies in two main sections on the seabed, close to where it was sunk. The bow rests on its side, 4.5″ guns intact, with the bridge and midship area nearby.
Pieces of the ship are all over Wellington – sold off when the ship was stripped – with the bell now at Wellington City Council, propellers in Cog Park, Houghton Bay and Waitangi Park while the capstan, the huge vertical winch used for pulling ropes or cables, is in Capstan Lane in Whitby.
And Zeeman has moved on to his next big project – Whale Song, seven life-sized bronze sculpted humpback whales in pod formation, to be suspended over a site, centrally located on the Kāpiti Coast.
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