The culprit behind Wellington's mysterious hum may have been a grey and sinister navy ship, though the Wellington City Council is not yet entirely convinced.

A low-pitched humming sound has been troubling residents in the Mt Victoria, Newtown and Mt Cook area since Saturday.

Many are now pointing the finger at the Singapore navy frigate Stalwart which was berthed in Wellington Harbour for the past week, but a few complaints to council have continued since the boat's departure yesterday.

The constant hum has attracted up to 40 noise complaint calls since Saturday and about 30 emails theorising on the cause from around the country.

Wellington City Council spokesman Richard MacLean said the frigate left Wellington yesterday and though many on the waterfront had theorised the ship was to blame, there had been two more calls in the past 12 hours.

''A lot of people are saying they think it's the frigate. It's a plausible explanation because they usually have large diesel generators on board. It was a pretty large, grey, sinister-looking ship.''

MacLean said council would be watching the phone logs carefully to see if the number of calls died down now that the ship had left.

He said over the past week, council had received emails from across the country with everyone wanting to share their theories and experiences.

''Someone was telling us it was made by bugs flying around or swarms of insects. Others thought it was the ventilator on top of Mt Victoria. It's obviously not causing anyone any great angst apart from reports from a few people being kept awake by it.''

This week the council had sent noise control officers to two call-outs related to the hum but MacLean said people had mainly just been wanting to report the noise rather than have council come and listen.

He said it was not yet certain that the hum had been caused by the frigate but that proof would be in the pudding.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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