Bombing a dark day in our past

The 1985 Rainbow Warrior sinking put a rift between New Zealand and France. Photo / NZ Herald

I remember going to work back in the winter of 1985 and someone mentioned there had been a ship sunk in Auckland Harbour.

Someone else said it was a big old rejigged trawler or something called the Rainbow Warrior, and me, being far from literate in the ways of the green world, figured it probably was a trawler.

Until I was reminded it was the Greenpeace flagship thing ... the Rainbow Warrior.

There were the usual pithy comments like "I hope it didn't hit a whale" but after the news began filtering out that there had been a bomb aboard, and a crewman had lost his life, it all went quite muted.

Or mild shock would be a better description.

Someone bombed a boat in one of our ports?

Not even the Germans or Japanese had managed to do that back in the 40s and they were our adjudged enemies.

As it transpired, this had been carried out by a small team of French agents who were on the books of the French government, who in turn were getting repeatedly miffed by Greenpeace's continual voyages of disruption up into the zones where French nuclear bomb testing was going on.

Today it all seems rather surreal that damaging, radioactive devices were being let off under a tropical atoll in an otherwise peaceful and serene part of the world.

And up until that winter day 31 years ago, I guess we all figured the Auckland Harbour was also a pretty serene sort of maritime place ... unless the wharfies staged a go-slow and picket line or whatever.

But people sneaked into our land, found their way through all manner of obstacles, got aboard the boat and set a bomb off.

In fact they set two bombs off.

They did not want the Rainbow Warrior to turn a propeller ever again.

At first the French government declared "non" "non" ... nothing to do with them, but then all the pieces started getting put together by the police and two of the agents were tracked down and arrested before they could dash back out to sea.

Thing was, there was as much outrage over there in France as there was here ... because we were old chums ... except on the rugby field of course.

And the outrage only grew when after being sent to the lock-up for 10 years on charges of manslaughter the agents were released by the French government after only two years.

It was a remarkable sort of time and the whole issue effectively created a remarkable script.

For it was like something out of a Bond movie, and right here in little old New Zealand.
There were several documentaries produced in the wake of what happened, and now with a little over 30 years having passed there is what appears to be a well crafted doco-drama set to screen in the TV1 Sunday Theatre slot.

Bombshell: The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior effectively centres around the man who lost his life - Greenpeace's 35-year-old photographer Fernando Pereira.

So yes, it is the human touch, and a sound recreation of what was a moment now firmly etched in New Zealand's history.

• Bombshell: The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, TV1 at 8.30pm Sunday:
A dark day indeed in New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance. When the bombs came to Auckland, not Mururoa.