SS Port Kembla
|Name:||SS Port Kembla|
|Owner:||Commonwealth and Dominion Line|
|Builder:||Hawthorn Leslie & Co. Ltd.|
|Out of service:||18 September 1917|
|Fate:||sunk by mine|
|Tonnage:||4,700 GT, 2,990 NT|
The SS Port Kembla was a steamer owned by the Commonwealth and Dominion Line and named after Port Kembla, New South Wales, Australia. It was sunk 17 kilometres (11 mi) off Farewell Spit on New Zealand's South Island on 18 September 1917 by a mine laid by the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Wolf. During an inquiry held in Wellington shortly after the sinking it was thought that the explosion was from an internal source rather than a mine.
The ship lies at a depth of 96 metres (315 ft) and is visited by scuba divers. In 2012 plans were being made for a second attempt to recover 1200 tonnes of lead from the ship. An earlier attempt in 1977 did not come to fruition because of ownership disputes.