Enchanter trial: Courtroom in tears listening to emotional Lance Goodhew interview

Tears welled up as the families of the victims of the Enchanter tragedy heard the captain recount the events of that fatal night for the first time.

For the past two years, Lance Goodhew has remained silent about the tragedy, but on Wednesday the court heard of his dramatic escape from his submerged boat and how he survived in a final air pocket.

“I stopped and thought, ‘I’m drowning now,’” the captain recalled what he thought were his last moments before finally swimming toward the light.

Goodhew’s initial interview with Maritime New Zealand, conducted shortly after the tragedy, came during his trial in the Whangārei District Court. He faces a charge of alleged failure to fulfill his duties as captain, which led to the deaths of the five men.

The men spent three days fishing off the Three Kings Islands before heading south toward the North Cape, where they planned to anchor on March 20, 2022.

A major bad weather front had just passed, leaving behind a wake of sea patterns that Maritime New Zealand said were too dangerous for Goodhew to operate.

From the beginning of the interview, Goodhew expressed frustration with Maritime New Zealand for not allowing him to have the support of his family. However, one of his lawyers was present.

“I have gone through a traumatic, horrible incident, my mood is not good at all. “I’ve been dealing with this an hour at a time and I’ve been denied a support person and I’m deeply upset about it,” he was recorded telling Goodhew.

Goodhew was clear; He knew the weather was going to be “unpleasant” and, although they had some difficult times in the Three Kings area, he maintained that the weather was improving when they left for North Cape on the afternoon of 20 March.

“(The weather) was a little scruffy when we left, but it’s been receding and it’s pretty nice now,” Goodhew texted his friend around 5 p.m.

Goodhew told Maritime New Zealand it was so calm the men were free to move around the boat and set fishing lines.

He said he expected to reach his destination around 8:00 pm, called his friend around 7:40 pm, and believed it was about 20 minutes after that phone call when the wave hit.

Goodhew remembered that it was getting dark and he was in the back of the boat checking his clients’ lures and decided to give them another 15 minutes before calling it a day.

Goodhew’s recollection was almost cinematic as he described a colossal wall of water with no end in sight.

“I looked out the side window at a wall of water. It was an absolute wall, I couldn’t see the top of it, I don’t know how big it was,” Goodhew said.

By this time, the boat was on autopilot and Goodhew ran to reach the helm, but it was too late.

“It tore us to pieces, and I’m honest with God with me right now, it tore us to pieces.

“He eliminated us, very easily, instantly. Crush, collapse, roll and water, all in a second.”

Almost immediately he was thrown underwater and said he was trapped under the flybridge, in total darkness, not knowing which direction was up or down.

He found an air pocket on the flybridge and took a second to calm down.

“That is the only reason that saved my life. “I raised my head to be able to breathe and calm down and I thought I had to get out of here, otherwise I’m going to drown.”

Goodhew said he took a deep breath and sank, trying to navigate the debris and when he couldn’t, he tried to get back into the air pocket, but it was gone.

“I stopped and thought ‘I’m drowning now’ and surprisingly it was pretty calm,” Goodhew recalls.

At that moment, he saw a point of light that he thought was below him and swam towards it.

As he got closer, the light became brighter and he finally broke the surface.

“I just thought, ‘what the fuck just happened?’”

He said he couldn’t understand how the sea had gone from calm to capsizing them and asked a survivor to look at the ocean.

“Look at the sea, it wasn’t rough and it just capsized us right there!”

Goodhew climbed onto the wreckage with another survivor and held one victim for two hours as the waves tossed him around.

“We were fighting to keep him, but we had to let him go,” Goodhew tragically recalled.

Several people in the courtroom, including Goodhew, were crying as they listened to the interview.

When Maritime New Zealand asked why the lifeboats were not activated, Goodhew said that had also confused him, but he realized they had become trapped under the hull in which the people were floating.

“They have depth charges and are designed to be fired at three or four meters, from memory. We saw the hull floating upside down… no shots were ever fired because the ship never sank, the ship stayed afloat, they were under the hull,” Goodhew said.

The court is now hearing evidence from marine scientists.

Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based Open Justice reporter covering courts in the Te Tai Tōkerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.