HMS Orpheus struck the Manukau Bar while entering harbour near Auckland, New Zealand, in February 1863. Confusion over navigational instructions contributed to the wreck. Of the 259 people aboard, 189 died, making it New Zealand's worst recorded maritime disaster.

The wreck generated New Zealand elegies, newspaper poems and commemorative verse concerned with distance, uncertain charts and death at the colonial frontier. Later poets have placed the disaster beside Maori knowledge of the dangerous harbour entrance, exposing failures of imperial confidence.