The Titanic of the Pacific, sunk by a Nazi sea mine in the Hauraki Gulf and containing hidden gold, continues to capture our imaginations, even as an ecological disaster looms.

Three forty-five am on June 19th, 1940. Forty kilometres southeast of Whangārei. 

The ship’s bridge rang to the sound of pounding feet. Half of the wheelhouse was blown away. No.2 hold had filled with water. The steering wouldn’t answer. Captain Bill Martin ordered watertight doors closed, but knew they might not hold for long. He telephoned the engine room. “Stop engines!” 

The ship’s carpenter staggered into the bridge. He’d been to measure water levels in the hold. The report was grim: his sounding rod hadn’t detected the hold at all but had gone right through the bottom of the ship. 

Quietly and without fuss, families pulled sweaters onto groggy children and shuffled to the upper decks. The corridors, hazy with acrid blue smoke, had taken on a noticeable lean downwards and to the left. 

Captain Martin couldn’t lose her. He thought about his secret cargo. Could the engines operate for long enough to attempt a beaching? He issued the order, “slow ahead engines,” but gave up soon after. No use. The propellers were rising from the water. Something had torn a hole in her front so large that she was beyond saving. The bridge went still, desperate eyes fixed on the captain. 

“Abandon ship.” 

All thanked God for the full moon and calm sea. Methodically, the crew filled and lowered lifeboats. Once in the water, they rowed like hell; a ship of her size would create a hungry whirlpool.

The ocean crept along empty hallways. Porcelaine, wine bottles, and polished silverware tumbled to one side of the dining room. Her funnels suddenly vomited steam as the engine room filled with seawater. Now at a safe distance, passengers and crew watched in despair.

Half the ship was underwater now. Her lights flickered and died. With air trapped in her bow, she reared, dripping and roaring like godzilla. 

The grand old liner bobbed upright on the surface before she relented. Tangaroa pulled her down. Waves spent themselves against the lifeboats. Then, silence. She was gone. 

You’re standing over the Hauraki Gulf. Marsden Point spews to your left and you face out to an iron sea. She’s there, somewhere, lying on her side along the plain before Zealandia falls into the Pacific. 

At the start of the second world war, the passenger ship RMS Niagara was en route to Vancouver when she unknowingly entered a minefield off Whangārei. Just weeks earlier, a German cruiser had slipped into New Zealand waters undetected and laid 228 sea mines. At 3:40am on June 19th, 1940, Niagara struck two mines and sank with no loss of life. 

Our islands have known a good many ships, but none were finer than the Niagara. Built in Scotland in 1913, she was 15,000 tonnes of Edwardian luxury. The ship had all the trappings expected of a liner from the days of Titanic. Back in Glasgow, Niagara was even named  “The Titanic of the Pacific”, though this was amended to “Queen of the Pacific” after the comparison lost its appeal. 

Britain’s Union Steamship Company commissioned the Niagara to service their Pacific route, running from Canada to Australia via Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand. When she crossed the equator on her first passage to Auckland, Niagara was the largest ship to ever come south of the line. She’d repeat this journey several thousand times, covering more sea miles than any of her contemporaries. 

In 1913, travel meant elegance. Passengers weren’t crammed, like today’s, into tubes of recycled air and lobbed between continents. Sailing on Niagara meant cigars in the library and five-course meals. It meant the slow, soothing thump of engines and the dockyard smells of Vancouver, Honolulu, and Suva.

She employed full-time musicians, elevator operators, and maitre d’s with polished buttons. She even had air conditioning. Though she was small compared to the Atlantic liners of the era, Niagara was ours. New Zealand loved her. Yet, for all this, perhaps the most famous thing she ever did was sink. 

Niagara rests in sapphire waters on the edge of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park. Surrounding the wreck, hammerheads, coral and cyclones of kingfish lure divers from around the world to this underwater jungle. 

Few dare touch Niagara. At over 120 metres deep, she’s a diver’s Everest. The only people hubristic enough to challenge that cold, dark abyss are obsessive, Olympian fit, and a little mad. 

Pete Mesley’s one of those divers. He belongs to a select group who defy health, careers, and bank accounts for the sensations of deep-wreck diving. In 1999, Mesley was one of the first divers to reach the Niagara. He brought over $150,000 worth of gear and over 18 years’ experience to the expedition, and even then it was as risky as a space walk. 

Mesley’s no stranger to the danger waiting at Niagara’s depth. In 2009, he was on an expedition to the HMHS Britannic when a diver in his team ran into trouble and became unconscious underwater. 

“My friend ended up passing away,” recalls Mesley, “and we still had five and a half hours of decompression after that to think about our friend.” 

Chemistry, not drowning, is what Mesley worries about when diving Niagara. A lot can go wrong. Ascend from the wreck too quickly and the body becomes a shaken-up can of soda. Pea-sized bubbles of inert gas rocket through capillaries, making a ruin of one’s organs. 

Dive deep, however, and the oxygen in your tanks becomes toxic. Designed to inflate a pair of lungs squeezed under a 100-metre column of water, the oxygen in Mesley’s tanks is dense; just one breath at Niagara’s depth is equivalent to 11 breaths on the surface. Mesley needs to dilute this concentrated oxygen with another gas, usually helium or nitrogen, otherwise it will fry his nervous system. 

He can’t use too much nitrogen. Excess nitrogen leads to a feeling of woozy drunkenness bordering on a blackout, similar to how ravers feel when huffing canisters in a mosh pit. Divers call this “the martini effect” or, less affectionately, “the rapture of the deep.” Because diving a wreck requires constant vigilance, nitrogen narcosis often precedes accident and death. 

When diving the Niagara, Mesley uses a gas blend known as trimix: 7% oxygen, 70% helium, 13% nitrogen. Trimix helps him dive deeper, longer, and with reduced threat of narcosis. It’s nonetheless dangerous. Marathon trimix dives risk hypercapnia, a condition caused by another bad actor: carbon dioxide. 

The brain automatically knows to exhale when our lungs fill with CO2. Breathe high-density gas 100 metres underwater, however, and this process goes haywire. When diving Niagara, Mesley must consciously ventilate his lungs to manage CO2 levels in his bloodstream. In other words, he has to remember to breathe, and breathe properly. If he doesn’t, hypercapnia invites an unwitting slide into oblivion.

Juggling gases, knowing when to dilute them, and noticing the physical and mental signs of getting this wrong make trimix certifications a diver’s PHD. When Mesley first dove Niagara in 1999, he was one of New Zealand’s only trimix-qualified divers. 

Since the 1990s, leaps in remote operated vehicle (ROV) technology have driven deep sea divers, their expenses, and high mortality rate to the point of practical redundancy. This raises the question: why would anyone want to go down there? 

“Being there is everything,” stresses Mesley, who’s now planning his sixth trip to the RMS Niagara. “You can’t make that shit up. You can’t.”

He closes his eyes, straining to describe the first time he saw the Queen. It’s impossible. He singles out small moments: finding a coffee cup; a desk fan; peering out of Niagara’s gilded windows.

History is different when it’s 120 metres underwater. Niagara’s muddy green corridors aren’t much to look at in themselves, but spellbinding for the challenge of getting there. To divers like Mesley, the liner is a mountaintop, a palace, and outer space rolled into one. 

After 80 years underwater, Niagara is a mess of steel bulging with silt and ambling sea life. It’s the epitome of Davy Jones’s Locker: a dreamlike, dour hell where the living aren’t welcome. From each hatchway or gash in her hull, a gloomy void beckons the foolhardy: come in, look around, stay a while… there’s gold down here, don’t you know?

Beyond the thrills and atmosphere, here’s another reason to risk a journey to Niagara: she sank carrying eight tonnes of gold.  

As the Germans took France in 1940, they forced Britain’s army to abandon most of its equipment and flee back across the channel. The Empire needed replacements fast, and the then-neutral United States was willing to trade weapons for gold bullion. Niagara was the latest mule, laden with some 590 gold bars, bound for North America. 

When news reached London that their payload sank, the Bank of England ground its teeth. Like true bankers, they cut the stingiest salvage deal imaginable: for every bar recovered, they’d pay 2.5% of its value. 

Hardheaded Welsh mariner John P. Williams answered the call. He gathered a crew in Auckland, purchased a vessel, secured a contract from London and set sail into the minefield. 

It would be the most daring salvage operation in New Zealand history. Their steamship, The Claymore, was a rust-bucket coaster with a leaky hull driven by two thirds of a propeller. On their journey into Niagara’s graveyard, Williams ignored navy orders to avoid the Gulf before it had been cleared of mines. 

Once, the crew discovered a mine caught in the ship’s mooring line. Seasoned salvor, John (Johnno) Johnstone, went down in a diving suit. 

As he detangled the mine, he noticed it had lost its mooring cable. The realisation hit too late. Johnstone’s lifeline caught on one of the mine’s horns and he joined the freed bomb as it rose towards the Claymore. If Johnstone didn’t think fast the crew would be blown to pieces. He decided to use his diving suit as a barrier, striking the hull first with his helmet and then pinning the mine down with all his strength. He maintained this spacehopper position for an eternity while his comrades radioed for help. A navy ship pulled the mine into open water and Johnstone was freed. 

It had been six months since the Niagara sank and the Claymore scoured the Gulf well into 1941. Eventually, their trawling line brought up the green paint of Niagara’s hull and Johnstone went down again. 

This time he was tipped over the side in an observation bell, the diving suit useless at Niagara’s depth. A fridge-sized cylindrical chamber with tiny windows, Claymore’s bell looked purpose-built to induce nausea. Luckless Johnstone even recalls spinning down to the wreck on his first foray thanks to heavy swell and twists in the bell’s cable. 

Johnstone felt a thump and the bell stopped moving. He peered outside, seeing scattered suitcases, curtains waving through portholes, and The Queen of the Pacific lying on her side. 

They’d found her.  

Over 10 months, the salvors chewed their way to the ship’s bullion room using a crane-mounted dredging claw and improvised explosives. Each move was carefully coordinated from a telephone in the bell. The margin for error was razor thin. Any collapse of the unstable wreck risked scattering the gold and entombing whoever they had underwater. 

By the time the operation ended, Captain Williams was stupefied; eight weeks of meticulous toil had produced 533 out of 590 gold bars. No operation at that depth, surrounded by mines, with a crew that green on a coaster that broken, had succeeded before. 

The salvors didn’t seem to mind their pittance wages. Nor did they appear bothered when Winston Churchill mistakenly attributed the effort to Australia. Recognition is small fry; to achieve the impossible is its own reward. 

Further salvage efforts would retrieve the gold Claymore missed. Now, just five bars remain on the Niagara. On his 1999 dive, Mesley kept his eyes peeled but couldn’t stay long; shipwrecks have a way of punishing impudence. 

He’d snagged a coffee cup and that was enough. For 25 minutes of “bottom time” on the wreck, Mesley’s dive computer prescribed a decompression schedule of around 300 minutes. When he finally flopped aboard their charter boat, Reel Passion, he was still fizzing. “One giant step for man, one insignificant leap for mankind”, joked his dive partners. 

The atmosphere on Reel Passion in the moments after Mesley’s dive was ecstatic, but there was a stink in the air.

They say you can find the Queen of the Pacific by following your nose. Maritime New Zealand, the agency responsible for the wreck, regularly receives reports of oil slicks in her vicinity. By all accounts, the ocean around her reeks of fuel. Most of these slicks, though not exactly beneficial for the Gulf, dissipate naturally. This won’t be the case when her tanks rupture. Auckland councillor Mike Lee believes that day is coming soon. 

“Without whipping up moral panic, there is a clear and present danger,” says Lee. “A responsible government would ensure that this is at least checked out.”

Lee, alongside other public servants, iwi leaders, conservationists, and engineers, petitioned governments of every colour for decades to investigate how much oil remains on Niagara. So far, the official response has been that such a survey is too expensive. At this, Lee seethes, frustrated by what he sees as a political culture more inclined to short-term outcomes than long-term solutions.

“[Niagara] indicates a major weakness in our public sector,” he argues. “A weakness which suggests it’s much easier to talk than to do.” 

Lee shares his frustration with nations throughout the Pacific, who today contend with nearly 3,800 rotting second world war wrecks. Carrying ordnance, toxic chemicals, and vast quantities of fuel, these vessels are disintegrating as the conflict fades further into the past. Micronesia’s Chuk Lagoon alone, once the site of a battle between Japan and the United States, unwillingly hosts over 50 bleeding ships. 

Pacific advocates like Dr. Anthony Talouli assert that it falls to ex-combatants to clean up their mess. “It is an issue that the Pacific cannot deal with by themselves,” says Talouli. Without awareness, willpower and resources, he argues, forsaken war remnants like Niagara risk crippling an ecosystem we can’t live without. As Pete Mesley will remind you, shipwrecks have a way of punishing the irresponsible. 

The kit Mesley wore to reach Niagara was like a miniature submarine: one hulking dry suit, a thicket of tubes and four gas cylinders. Untying his harnesses aboard Reel Passion, Mesley felt buoyant again. He singled out a man in his 60s among the crowd on deck and handed him the coffee cup he’d retrieved from the liner. 

“I gave this cup to Keith and this man wept. He wept!” recalls Mesley, gleefully. 

No story about the RMS Niagara is complete without Keith Gordon. The man is a legend among divers and Niagara fiends. Now in his late 80s, Niagara’s still got her hooks in him. 

Gordon and his friends, Wade Doak and Kelly Tarlton, came of age during the advent of diving in the 1950s. The trio devoured accounts by explorers like Jacques Cousteau, the inventor of scuba. “Cousteau got a lot of people involved with diving,” says Gordon, “the adventures and things we would read… and, you know, the equipment was becoming available. Although, in New Zealand, we had a lot of problems with imports. We had to make a lot of our gear.” 

Without modern safeguards like depth or pressure gauges, his friends recycled fire extinguishers into air tanks and wore fleeces to withstand the chilly Christchurch sea. “When it got harder to breathe, you knew your air was running out,” says Gordon, recalling their trial-and-error approach to the dangerous new hobby. “Health and safety? That’s only a term I’ve heard of in the last five or 10 years.”

Now with the means of discovering them, it didn’t take long for the boys to gravitate towards shipwrecks. “Searching for them and finding them and exploring them […] was always an interest, of course,” recalls Gordon. “We always knew the Niagara was there but she was always like the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, you know?”

Gordon’s career spanned the Pacific, but Niagara’s hooks held fast. Using an ROV, he took the first photographs of the wreck and has since led the way in telling her tale. To Gordon, Niagara is living history: deadly, mysterious, and melancholic all at once. 

“It’s not like a heritage building or something that’s been modified over the years,” says Gordon, “what you’ve got down there is an actual capsule of that day, that time, that event and the story behind it.” 

Back above the Gulf, it’s started to pour. You’re still looking out to Bream Head, watching the silhouette of an oiler tramping out to sea. You think, is that what she looked like? You try to imagine her: how there might be nothing left of her one day; how her gold might never be found; how her legend will slip into ancient history. 

It’s then, as you stand there getting rained on, staring into nothing much, that you realise the Niagara’s hooked you too. She pulls you down into that freezing water through clouds of kingfish, silt, and rust. You’re there in the gloom, surrounded by treasure. Wonder is your gold.