A Harrogate woman who now serves in the New Zealand navy has been praised for saving lives after her £60million vessel ran into a reef and later sunk.
Commander Yvonne Gray was in charge of the HMNZS Manawanui, which ran aground on a reef off the coast of Samoa in the Pacific Ocean last Saturday.
Attempts to get the vessel off the reef were unsuccessful and when it began to list at 7.52pm local time, Cdr Gray decided to evacuate the ship.
The crew of 75 were all rescued at 5.35am the following morning and an hour later, the ship started to lean heavily to one side and smoke began pouring out.
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Within 12 hours of hitting the reef it had sunk entirely, becoming the first loss of a ship by the New Zealand navy in peacetime. Though used for surveying, the 5,740 tonne vessel represents a tenth of the country’s naval fleet.
The decision of Cdr Gray to abandon ship has been praised as life-saving.
Rear-Admiral Garin Golding, chief of the Royal New Zealand Navy, said: “She made the decision and it was the right decision.”
He added: "Evacuating a ship at night is an incredibly complex and dangerous task."
New Zealand’s Defence Minister Judith Collins says a Court of Inquiry will establish how the Navy ship crashed into a reef.
She called the evacuation "something of a triumph, frankly", given the difficult conditions.
Gray was born and raised in Harrogate, attending Bilton Grange Primary School and Granby High School in Harrogate.
She obtained a Bachelor of Education (Honours) at the University of Lancaster but teaching jobs in Yorkshire were scarce at the time.
Cdr Gray discovered the Navy while taking her university holidays leading outdoor activities at a Sea Cadet centre in the Lake District.
In 1993, she signed up for the Royal Navy for 8 years, aiming to earn enough to open a restaurant but decided navy life was for her.
She spent most of her junior career at sea, including on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible and the minehunters Walney, Bridport and Cromer, after specialising as a Mine Warfare Officer.
She completed the Principal Warfare Officer course in 2004 and joined HMS Westminster as the PWO (Underwater) and Operations Officer, with operational experience in West Africa, Northern Europe and the Gulf.
After a posting to the Maritime Warfare Centre in Portsmouth, in 2009 she took the opportunity to work with the Royal Australian Navy at HMAS Watson, Sydney.
After 19 years with the Royal Navy, Cdr Gray then moved to New Zealand in 2012 after a campervan holiday where she and her wife fell in love with the country.
As the Commanding Officer of the RNZN’s Mine Counter Measures Team she participated in activities all over the world, and her role in maritime evaluation has seen her help ‘work up’ ships and crews to peak efficiency.
She took the helm of HMNZS Manawanui in December 2022. It was her first ship command.
After the ship sinking, Cdr Gray said her team “responded in exactly the way I needed them to”.
“They acted with commitment, with comradeship and, above all, with courage,” she said in a NZ Defence Force statement.
The disaster was when her “very worst imagining became a reality”.
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