RMS Niagara

[Brian James]

Trans-Pacific steam ocean liner RMS Niagara pictured in Woolwich Dock, Sydney on November 3rd 1923. She was sunk in 1940 by a mine off the coast of New Zealand....She was built at John Brown & Company Shipyards, Clydebank and completed in March 1913. On the night of 13–14 June 1940 the German Auxiliary Cruiser Orion laid a field of 228 contact mines across the mouth of the Hauraki Gulf, in a bid to blockade Auckland, New Zealand's largest commercial port. For the next four days ships passed in and out of Auckland without hitting any of the mines. On the night of 18–19 June 1940 Niagara left Auckland, her cargo included half of New Zealand's entire stock of small arms ammunition. It was being sent via Canada to mitigate a shortage due to the Dunkirk evacuation. In her strong room she was secretly carrying 590 gold bars from South Africa, valued at £2,500,000. They were a payment from the United Kingdom to the then-neutral United States for munitions. Divers recovered 555 bars in 1941, and another 30 in 1953, but five gold bars remain unaccounted for.
Niagara was bunkered with oil when she sank. Heavy fuel oil has leaked from her bunker tanks ever since, and has caused some environmental damage in and around Hauraki Gulf. Some oil remains in her wreck, and the scale of environmental threat it may pose continues to be debated.