Diver watched as friend became disoriented and descended to death on famous shipwreck

They shot out of the gloom, sleek and fast, a formation of kingfish, their flanks silver against the ocean’s black backdrop.

Hanging on to the anchor rope, 50 metres below their boat, Woodrow “Woody” Pattinson and his friend Daniel Smyth watched as the school circled, bodies the shape of torpedoes, bug eyes locking stares with the divers.

And then they were gone.

Smyth looked around for Pattinson, and noticed his buddy had dropped below him, still sliding down the anchor rope.

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The pair had planned to go only this far, then return to the surface, so Pattinson’s continued descent took Smyth by surprise.

Another 50m below them lay one of New Zealand’s most famous shipwrecks, the Niagara, sunk by a German mine in 1940 with 8 tons of gold ingots aboard.

But reaching the Niagara’s encrusted shell was a long-term project, the friends had agreed, and today’s dive was just a recce. To reach the wreck would require more training and specialist equipment.

The RMS Niagara was launched in 1912, and was originally nicknamed the Titanic of the Pacific, before being dubbed the Queen of the Pacific, after the Titanic sank.

Smyth began following Pattinson down, aware they were well past their limits, and into territory where the oxygen in their tanks turned toxic and could cause seizures, and they would start to be “narced” – where the nitrogen they were breathing caused disorienting narcosis.

By the time he hit 64m, Smyth was still 5-10m above Pattinson, and made the desperately difficult decision to stop, and swim for the surface.

Pattinson, 36, continued on, further and further down the anchor rope, into a world he shouldn’t have been in, until he was swallowed by the dark.

Pattinson had grown up looking out towards where they were diving, beyond the Hen and Chicken Islands off Northland’s east coast.

He lived on an 11ha property near Waipū with father Nige, mother Dawn, and younger brother Arlo, and if he stared at the horizon, he could picture where the Niagara went down, laden with gold, a casualty of a world war that had crept frighteningly close to home.

In June 1940, the German raider Orion, disguised as a merchant ship, had laid more than 200 mines across the Hauraki Gulf’s entrances in an effort to blockade Auckland.

Days later, the Niagara, a palatial passenger vessel headed for Suva and Vancouver with 349 people on board, struck one of the mines and began sinking in the early hours before dawn.

Everyone on board escaped in lifeboats.

But the Niagara, which once held speed records for crossing the Tasman, and its cargo, sank in 120m of water.

In its strongroom were 590 gold ingots, worth $760 million today, being transferred as payment from Britain to the United States for munitions.

The following year, a salvage team recovered 555 of the gold bars, and 30 more were found in 1953.

But five remain on the wreck, each weighing 403oz and worth about $1.3 million.

Naturally, the Niagara became the stuff of shipwreck folklore and underwater legend, and few living near Northland’s coast hadn’t heard of it.

Pattinson had, and became fascinated by it, aiming to one day dive it.

After time in Nelson and Wānaka, Pattinson left school in 2001.

He won prizes for his university work studying air pollution, gained a PhD, and carried out research in Brazil.

The outdoors were always crucial to Pattinson, and that’s where he spent most of his free time, snowboarding, mountain biking, caving.

In 2019, he began scuba diving, and completed numerous courses over the next nine months, which qualified him to dive to 40m.

But the goal of diving the Niagara, whose topside lay at 100m, was ever-present, and Pattinson and Smyth made a plan to complete more technical courses and acquire necessary equipment over the next year to finally reach the wreck.

On Friday March 13, 2020, Pattinson’s partner, Hannah Harrelson, dropped him at Auckland’s bus station, so he could travel to the Bay of Islands for his uncle’s 60th birthday party.

“See you Sunday,” he told her, as he left.

His father, Nige Pattinson, spent the following evening with his son, camping in tents, and enjoying the party.

“And he was showing me his latest music, which was bluegrass, and playing me all these songs from down south in the USA.”

At 9am the next day, Pattinson left for Smyth’s house at Marsden Point, southeast of Whāngārei, getting a ride part of the way, then hitching.

Nige Pattinson rang his son to see how he was getting on, and Woody told him they were going to dive the Niagara.

“And I said to him, you’re f…..g crazy. And he said, oh no, it’s perfect conditions, we do this stuff all the time.”

That evening, Nige got a text message saying someone was missing on the dive.

He rang 111 to get information, but police couldn’t tell him anything.

“They turned up a couple of hours later, with long faces. I felt it.

“Like, you push your luck, you push your luck, and you push your luck, and you do this stuff.

“But in one simple moment you can become unstuck, and I guess that’s what happened there.”

Pattinson and Smyth had left Marsden Point marina around 1.30pm and headed out towards the Niagara, with the idea that if they dived to 50m, they could say they’d got halfway to the wreck.

The day was fine, with a gentle swell, and the pair drank two or three beers en route.

Pattinson sent Harrelson a message saying he might not be home that night, as he and Smyth were living their dream of diving on the wreck.

He’d borrowed dive gear from Smyth for the day, and when they got in the water, they checked each other’s equipment for leaks, and then secured an extra dive tank at 5m if they ran short of air while returning to the surface.

Around 4pm, they began descending the anchor rope, and when they reached 50m, Smyth, who was wearing a dive computer, signalled to Pattinson to stop. Pattinson indicated he was okay, and agreed when Smyth motioned they should start ascending.

That was when the school of kingfish appeared, and the divers became momentarily distracted.

It was only when they’d passed that Smyth noticed Pattinson had carried on descending, and was now well below him.

He followed his friend, but knowing the regular air they were breathing would turn toxic below 60m, Smyth eventually had no option but to leave his friend, and kick for the boat as fast as he safely could.

After checking the surface for Pattinson and finding nothing, he called emergency services.

Ten days later, after a major search involving the Navy, Customs, and the Police dive squad, Pattinson’s body was found by a remote operated vehicle.

He was lying on his side, on the Niagara, his dive equipment still in place, except for his fins, which were missing.

“He got there,” says Nige Pattinson. “But I don’t think he was very conscious by the time that happened.

“If you’re delirious or out to lunch with narcosis, you don’t know which way is up.”

A coroner’s report released today says Pattinson was likely overcome by a mixture of nitrogen narcosis, oxygen toxicity, or panic at the situation he found himself in.

The fact he hadn’t jettisoned his weight belt, or inflated his BCD (buoyancy control device – divers’ equipment that can be inflated or deflated to alter buoyancy) to allow him to ascend, suggested his judgement was impaired.

His drinking before the dive – toxicology tests showed an alcohol concentration about twice the legal driving limit – may have compounded this.

And the bottom line was that Pattinson’s inexperience at such depths meant he was ill-equipped to deal with any rapidly evolving crisis.

Renowned diver and shipwreck expert Keith Gordon says despite the Niagara’s allure, it should only be visited by the most experienced divers breathing mixed gases.

Pattinson was an amateur, with recreational diving equipment, and even diving to 50m was pushing his limits.

“They shouldn’t have been there.”

Gordon explored the Niagara in the 1980s, recovering various items, including its bronze bell, and wrote a book about the wreck, Deep Water Gold.

He was consulted by police during the search for Pattinson, as he had plans of the ship, and he paid tribute to those who recovered Pattinson’s body in what was a difficult environment with often poor visibility.

“I thought they might have a  chance.”

Somewhere in his Wānaka home, Nige Pattinson has a box of photos of his son’s adventures.

“And there’s just pretty girls, and chilling out, and on the beach, and having barbecues, and in the forests, and doing a lot of stuff with nature – hiking and climbing and all that stuff.”

In dealing with Woody’s death, he chose not to have regrets about what his son could have accomplished, or how he could have helped the world as a top scientist.

“I didn’t have any of that. He had a great time. He lived three or four normal lifetimes as far as I was concerned. And, you know, I appreciated what he’d achieved, and moved on.”

Daniel Smyth told the coroner that Woody always wanted to dive deeper and liked to “push the limits a little bit”.

And that reflected how Woody lived his whole life, Nige Pattinson says.

“He did all sorts of stuff and got away with it. And he was famous for pulling it off and getting away with it.

“But you just don’t know when that element will turn, or you may not achieve that thing.

“Maybe it was destined to happen anyway. It’s a kind of a mystery, but it was no surprise to me, because of the way Woody went into things – possibly over-confidently.

“Or maybe that’s not a fair word. He just had that intense enthusiasm for doing things which you wouldn’t normally do.”

Woody Pattinson’s death from drowning was ruled an accident by the coroner.

And there’s the rub.

Where does the fragile line lie between bravery and bravado, between adventure and foolhardiness, between pushing limits and pushing your luck?

When does reasonable risk become irresponsible recklessness?

How would we discover anything, or ever extend our knowledge, without challenging ourselves, Nige Pattinson asks?

“You’ve got to get beyond the boring stuff, and create a bit of danger and unknown, and get into it.”

Woody had done that all his life, Nige says.

He’s seen a video taken before Woody and Smyth headed out that day.

“They were playing music and carrying on and getting their gear ready and there’s a clip of Woody saying, ‘Niagara, we’re coming for you.’ Like, famous last words.”

The fact he chose to do it didn’t surprise Nige. And what happened next was always going to be a possibility in the world Woody lived in.

“Some people tell you you’ll never get over it. But I have a sort of wider, more open view. We can adjust to this stuff.

“But his spirit is still around me, if you know what I mean.

“He’s out there.”