New Zealander Bill Peni has had a remarkable 50-year career as a Navy and commercial diver.
When the Capitaine Bougainville caught fire and began to sink off the Northland coast half a century ago, Navy diver Bill Peni was among a team dispatched to search for victims.
It was a mission that would leave a lasting mark on the then 23-year-old, whose underwater career eventually spanned five decades and countless other harrowing assignments.
It was 3.40am on September 3, 1975, when Captain Jean-Raymond Thomas ordered his 29 crew and eight passengers to abandon ship. Sixteen died at sea, his wife among those lost and never recovered.
The couple’s three children, including their infant daughter, fell one by one from their lifeboat as it rolled more than 10 times in monstrous waves.
A storm in Whananaki had sparked the fire onboard the ill-fated freighter two nights earlier. The sea, though calmer, was still stirred up when Peni joined the search.
“We couldn’t see more than four inches in front of us,” Peni, now 73, recalled.
“We laid down a jackstay line and searched by feel. At one point, I thought I’d found a hand, but it grabbed me back. It was my dive partner.”
He also mistook a seaweed-covered rock for a victim’s head.
The team spent a day combing the seabed near Whananaki but found no bodies.
Peni only recently learned through media coverage of the tragedy’s 50th commemoration the captain had survived, saying he’d like to meet him.
He said after leaving to refill their air tanks at Devonport the day of the search, the team wasn’t called back. He suspected disturbing rumours may have played a role.
“There were a couple of other boats operating in the area, also searching,” he said.
“We heard — and I don’t know if it was just a rumour — that someone had told locals there was a $100 bounty for any bodies recovered.”
Boats began turning up and trawling the bay with grapnels.
“We said, if this is going to happen, we’re out of here — the mess it would make and the danger to ourselves made it too risky."
The psychological toll on Peni was heavy - as it was for many of his assignments.
In those early days, Navy divers like himself were responsible for underwater operations across the entire North Island — from customs inspections to body recoveries.
“We did everything,” he said. “Suicides, accidents, criminal investigations.”
Among the more notable criminal cases was a search of the Waikato River for the weapon used in the infamous Crewe murders case.
Eventually, police developed their own dive teams.
In 1973, a 21-year-old Peni was among a dive team sent to Mururoa aboard the frigate HMNZS Otago.
The deployment was part of a diplomatic protest by the New Zealand Government against France’s nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
Prime Minister Norman Kirk had dispatched the HMNZS Otago followed by the HMNZS Canterbury to serve as “silent accusing witnesses with the power to bring alive the conscience of the world”.
The mission was symbolic — a peaceful but powerful stand against environmental and human harm. Kirk had assured the crew that the Government would look after them.
“They didn’t,” Peni said.
Very little was known about the harmful effects of nuclear radiation in the 1970s.
He believes many of his shipmates have died from cancer or cancer-related illnesses, which successive Governments have refused to link to the tests.
University of Otago research has since shown a high number of cancers - such as prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukaemia and skin cancers - were prevalent among Mururoa veterans.
“We were there for about a month and witnessed one test before the frigate Canterbury came and relieved us. They, and an Australian tanker, the HMAS Supply, also saw at least one test,” Peni said.
He recalled being inside the ship’s citadel during the detonation.
“When we came back outside, we could see the mushroom cloud. I’ve got photographs of it, taken by a press photographer onboard.”
Peni left the Navy as a petty officer in 1978 to pursue a career as a commercial diver. He worked on oil rigs and high-stakes recovery missions around the world. He lived in Dubai, Mexico, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Australia before retiring to New Zealand.
During 2002 he was assigned to the gruesome aftermath of the China Airlines Flight CI611, which had disintegrated between Taipei and Hong Kong, killing all 225 on board.
They spent a month recovering bodies and aircraft parts requested by Boeing.
“It wasn’t pleasant,” he said, “but we just wanted to get people back to their families”.
Another assignment took him to Thailand aboard the Australian Tide, where he was supervising teams of divers living in a pressurised chamber that allowed them to work 12-hours shifts salvaging 800-year-old ceramics from the sea floor at a depth of about 60m.
Peni recounted that mission taking a turn when heavily armed Thai marine police boarded the ship.
“They threatened to sink us and to put us all in jail.”
Peni claimed the crew was forced to hand over an estimated $11.4 million or porcelain artefacts to ensure their release.
A few hours later they had a similar incident after being surrounded by seven Thai navy vessels.
On another job, while travelling from Timor to Singapore, the vessel he was on was boarded by pirates off the coast of Indonesia at 2am.
The crew was robbed and shots were fired but fortunately, everyone survived - especially fortunate given the reputation of pirates in the region for throwing crews overboard.
“I was hauled out of bed at gunpoint. They wanted our young Filipino chef’s wedding ring and he couldn’t get it off so they were going to cut his finger off.
“The captain couldn’t open the safe so they bludgeoned him.”
During the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, Peni was aboard a diving vessel en route to repair a pipeline off Iran when it was struck by an Exocet missile.
“The Iraqis had destroyed a major Iranian pipeline from Kharg Island. We were going to repair it and they got wind of who we were. They put a missile into us.”
Civilian and commercial vessels, such as oil tankers and support ships, were often caught in the crossfire.
Peni claimed an Australian man died and 12 others were injured.
“I managed to get away with it and was back at work five days later,” he said.
Peni’s retirement has not been without health issues that he suspects stem from his colourful working life. However, he doesn’t regret his chosen career: “Yeah, it was great!”
Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in journalism, most of which she spent reporting on the courts in Gisborne and the East Coast.