The bombed remains of the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior. Photo / Tristan Siegmann /Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
The bombed remains of the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior. Photo / Tristan Siegmann /Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
“And then the explosion. Outside, it was heard as a dull boom that shook nearby buildings and rattled window panes. The Rainbow Warrior lifted slightly in the water and then settled, the sea boiling and steaming on its starboard side. Within seconds she was listing as thousands of gallons ofwater rushed into the engine room.
“Inside, it came as a thump and a shiver. The lights went out and those in the messroom were thrown off the chairs and tables on which they perched.
“Fernando Pereira, apparently stunned by the second explosion, drowned in the cabin next to his own, straps of a camera bag twined around his legs.
“The first bomb had blown a hole two metres by three into the engine room … the second, set near the propellor, had destroyed the ship’s propulsion system. Carefully, the Rainbow Warrior, had been sunk and disabled.” – From the 1996 book Death of the Rainbow Warrior, by Michael King .
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the night when French agents bombed the Greenpeace flagship moored at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf, an attack then prime minister David Lange labelled “a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism”.
