Glasgow-built ship prepares for final resting place

Sinking ships seems to be a national sport of the New Zealanders! Not long after we told the tale here of the TROY D - see here for article which was sunk as a reef and dive site we learn that another vessel is making preparations to meet a similar fate.

This time it is a vessel with connections to the UK.

HMNZS CANTERBURY was launched in Glasgow at the Yarrow shipyard on 6th May 1970 by Her Royal Highness Princess Anne, back when Britain still built ships for our cousins. Of 3182 tons displacement the frigate was completed in 1971 and began service with the Royal New Zealand Navy, being commissioned on 22nd October 1971.

She was the last of the Leander class for the New Zealand navy and presents the end of their steam turbine era.

She was decommissioned in 2005 and sold to the Bay of Islands Canterbury Charitable Trust for the princely sum of one dollar! Now she is being towed into drydock at Devonport Naval Base, Auckland where she will have her hull cleaned back. In four days time, all having gone well including the removal of the marine pest sea squirt from her hull and having her propellers removed and lashed to the deck, she should be ready to begin her journey northwards to Opua where she will berth for six months and anything salvageable will be stripped from her and sold.

After this, it's off to Deepwater Cove at Cape Brett where she will be sent to the bottom, a haven for marine life and a hull for divers to marvel at. She will join another Leander class vessel, the Harland & Wolff-built WAIKATO, sunk there in 2000.

In many ways an inglorious end for what should be a fighting vessel, but a constant reminder of that famous and numerous Leander Class.