King Kong ship meets watery grave
The Venture II, aka Manuia, which was used for Sir Peter Jackson's King Kong film, was scuppered in Cook Strait on Tuesday 9 February. This video, shot by Marco Zeeman, shows the listing ship taking on water and sinking.
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The boat that featured in Peter Jackson's blockbuster film King Kong has been sent to Davy Jones' Locker after being left to rot at a Wellington wharf for the last five years.
The Venture II was scuttled in the ammunition dumping ground in Cook Strait today under the supervision of Wellington Harbourmaster Captain Mike Pryce.
Its watery grave was 1.7km deep and 37 nautical miles from Miramar Wharf, where the boat had been moored since 2005.
"After we towed it there we disconnected the tow line, put a couple of people on board, opened the scuttling valves and then watched it fill up and sink," Capt Pryce said.
The process took exactly one hour.
There had been calls for the boat to be used as a dive attraction in shallow water off Wellington's south coast, but the proper resource consents were not approved.
The Venture II joins two trawlers from Nelson, a barge from Picton and plenty of old ammunition, Capt Pryce said.
There was no commemoration when the old boat disappeared below the waves.
"It's been there too long for a ceremony."
Once the King Kong movie props had been stripped from the ship it looked like a "wreck", he said.
"If it had been the original King Kong ship that might have been a bit more touristy."
Wellington ratepayers are footing the bill for the sinking, an estimated $30,000.
- NZPA
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Another thing, for the greenies amongst us - sinking a boat is done in a very environmentally friendly manner - that's why it cost $30k. The Wgtn Harbour Board strips all non-environmentally friendly stuff off it - plastics, oils, fuels, etc etc, and anything that might break off and float away causing shipping hazards. Then, when it's mainly a metal hulk, it gets sunk, creating a haven for fish; an artificial reef.
Any diver will tell you that the biggest concentration of fish is found on sunken ships.
Stop blaming the easy targets and start thinking for yourself, sheeple. As much as I wish the ship was kept above the waterline, this was a very professional operation, and nothing to do with Peter Jackson or any of his companies. If you want the full story, check out my blog entries on it.
- Jack Machiela http://nznoldor.blogspot.com/
Check your facts everyone - Peter Jackson hasn't owned this boat for about four years - he sold it to someone who was going to turn it into a tourist attraction but for various reasons this never happened.
Peter Jackson did the right thing by Wellington from the start.
I can't believe anybody would now want him to foot someone else'e bill after all he's already done for Wellington!
Peter sold it to someone else didnt he.
@scott #20 - "There's a mistake in the caption. The boat wasn't scuppered, it was scuttled. To scupper a boat is to scrape the barnacles off the bottom." They were trying to scrape the barnacles off... They were just slightly overzealous in their efforts.
Seems a bit of a waste.... must be an awful number of baked bean cans to make a hull that size, reuse, reduce, recycle??
"Scuppered"? Are you sure its not meant to be scuttled?
Woo! New Dive site for Wellington :D Lets hope this one is better than the other ones we have...
Why was it not cut up for scrap?!
Not very environmentally friendly.
There's a mistake in the caption. The boat wasn't scuppered, it was scuttled. To scupper a boat is to scrape the barnacles off the bottom.
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not worth while to recycle, its cheaper to mine and smelt new steel than to recycle the old rusted steel