Pod Insights ABC Rewind 01 | Rainbow Warrior | The Other Cold War About this episode The crew of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior should have felt safe and welcome when they arrived in Auckland, New Zealand in July 1985. Instead they became the target of a violent attack, which led one person dead. But why – what is the twisted back-story to these events, which led to spies, secrets and bombs?
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 This month marks the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Greenpeace ship The Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour.
1:41 Speaker 00 July 10, 1985. It's Wednesday night, and aboard a ship moored in Auckland's Waitamata Harbour, the crew of Greenpeace's flagship, The Rainbow Warrior, is winding down the birthday party. It's a celebration for one of their own.
2:03 Speaker 00 In New Zealand's largest and most populated city, the temperature is about fourteen degrees Celsius outside. That might not seem too bad for a winter's night unless you've spent the past few months just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean. Although most of the ship's 12-member crew are aboard, some had taken the opportunity of a two-week shore stay to catch up with family and friends. David Robey, the only Kiwi journalist to have sailed here on the Rainbow Warrior, is back at home in Graylin, tucked up in his own bed.
2:37 Speaker 01 Being at sea for ten and a half weeks, I like sailing, but it's nice to be actually on firm ground and back here.
2:46 Speaker 00 Some of the international crew plans to use the downtime to see a bit of the country. This is 1985 after all, and Lord of the Rings hasn't yet exposed the world to the land of the long white cloud.
2:59 Speaker 00 Portuguese-born Fernando Pereira, whose photography career has seen him cover diverse subjects from anti-nuclear protests to ABBA, is keen to check out New Zealand's mountains, snap some pics, and sneak in some skiing.
3:14 Speaker 00 But he hasn't left for the slopes just yet. He's on board tonight with plans to do some Christmas shopping in the city for his two kids, Morrell, eight, and five-year-old Paul, waiting in the Netherlands. This is his last chance before the ship goes back out campaigning. It'll be quite a while before he gets back home.
3:37 Speaker 00 But for now, he's enjoying a birthday cake decorated with a jellybean rainbow, made for Greenpeace strategist Steve Sawyer. A small group of the ship's crew, some captains from other vessels, and other environmental activists have gathered for a mix of celebrations and tales from their recently completed Operation Exodus.
3:58 Speaker 00 Some people might be content with the party, but Steve finishes the evening with a strategy meeting, because after this downtime is over, the Rainbow Warrior will be sailing out from Auckland, 5,000 kilometres to French Polynesia, attempting to bring France's nuclear testing at Muradore to international attention.
4:18 Speaker 00 Good tunes, good friends, good cake, and good secret strategy meetings. What more could an environmental activist want for a birthday? The night begins to wind down into a relaxed vibe.
4:38 Speaker 00 At 11:50 PM, a massive sound rocks the ship. Glass shatters as the lights go out. Confusion. The loud bang seems to have come from the engine area. Some think they must have been hit by a tugboat. The sea is rushing into the engine room, pouring over the main deck. The ship is sinking, fast. Above, frightened partygoers rush for the wharf, but Fernando Pradera yells that he's going below to get his cameras. He disappears below deck. Then...
5:09 Speaker 00 A second explosion, two minutes after the first. This time near the stern. Captain Peter Wilcox orders everyone to abandon ship. It's a scramble to get off onto the dalk. Some dive into the water and swim for safety. No one is sure who was on the boat and who made it off. It's chaos. People are yelling, crying. All they can do is watch, heartbroken, as the old fishing trawler they're home for the last few months slumps into the dark waters of the harbor. Bubbles rising to the surface.
5:38 Speaker 02 That's when Davy Edward, the chief engineer, came up to me and said, "Well, Fernando's down there." And I remember arguing with him about it, thinking, "Oh, come on, Fernando's gone into town. That's what he always did."
5:49 Speaker 00 Davy shakes his head, adamant. "No," he said. "Fernando is down there." Photographer Fernando Pradera, the man responsible for documenting the trip, photographing Greenpeace's actions as they go, is still on board.
6:05 Speaker 00 For ABC Radio Australia and RNZ, I'm James Norkese, and this is The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. It's a story you might think you know, but trust me, you don't know the half of it. In this series, we're following the final mission of Greenpeace's flagship in a little-known part of the Pacific just weeks before its tragic sinking. This is a series about the Pacific, about people, about land and sea, and the way they're all interconnected. This is episode one, The Other Cold War.
6:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. Sucks when your language gets mangled, eh? Sucks more that you Frenchies nuked us a hundred and eighty-one times over thirty years, affecting hundreds of thousands when we don't have hundreds of thousands to spare. We don't have hundreds to spare. I've been a performer for over twenty years, a comedian, a theatre maker, occasionally a poet, a marionette puppeteer, though we don't talk about that, and recently, a podcaster. No matter the outlet, I've always tried to talk about the Pacific, and being from the Pacific, particularly to people who like the Pacific, or the idea of the Pacific,
7:23 Speaker 00 but don't necessarily know about the Pacific. Why do you think we rioted? Why do you think we're still rioting? Oh, where, oh, where? Two stars. Which is how I ended up at the British Museum in 2024, performing poetry about French nuclear testing. Now, I'm not from French Polynesia, but many islands, one ocean.
7:57 Speaker 00 My parents are immigrants to Aotearoa, New Zealand. My mother arrived in the eighties from Margaret Thatcher's UK. Mum was a children's librarian whose family came out of the Welsh working class in Swansea. My father had come over from Saarmoor in a banana boat in the 1950s. Between the two of them, I grew up with a deep love of my Pacific heritage and a growing awareness of how imperialism had affected that.
8:22 Speaker 00 Perhaps that awareness was heightened by being mixed race. Perhaps it was heightened by being the child of immigrants. Perhaps it was just New Zealand and the way it struggles to engage with conversations about Indigenous rights.
8:37 Speaker 00 If you're not from Aotearoa, or if you're a person who finds the name Aotearoa a bit too woke, rather than it just being the indigenous name for the country with snow-capped mountains, you may not be overly familiar with the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tarriti or Waitangi, and why there's so much tension in New Zealand around it.
9:09 Speaker 00 The treaty was signed in 1840 and sets up a partnership between equals and acknowledgement that the Maori people have ownership of the land.
9:17 Speaker 00 And after it's signed, nothing goes wrong, and it's perfect. The end. Thank you for listening to this podcast.
9:25 Speaker 00 The treaty is both a simple, straightforward document, and partly due to being in two languages, partly due to being signed in 1840, incredibly complicated. At its heart, it affords Maori particular rights as indigenous people of the land. Getting those rights acknowledged has been an issue from the moment the ink dried. What happens is something like this. I'll explain it in simple, universal terms. Imagine, if you will, you have a house and a distant relative shows up with a British backpacker needing to stay. And you say, "Okay, Dosa rules, though." Buy some toilet paper, cook a meal. But welcome, come on in. I'll just go grab some stuff from the shops. Then, while you're at the supermarket,
10:09 Speaker 00 the backpacker sells your house. And it turns out, they've been selling a bunch of houses but won't even acknowledge the sales, forcing you to set up an independent tribunal to look into things.
10:24 Speaker 00 That happens in 1985.
10:28 Speaker 00 And that year, the year the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, I was a small, weepix-eating kiwi kid completely confused by what I was seeing on TV. And I wasn't the only one.
10:41 Speaker 00 In the course of this series, we've interviewed activists, politicians, poets, survivors, journalists, and others as we sought to look at the final months of the Rainbow Warrior. During that time, we found ourselves traveling deep into the irradiated heart of the Pacific Ocean, and no, I don't mean French Polynesia. Greenpeace was born in Canada in 1971, and it was committed to environmental activism and awareness raising from the beginning. Its first protest was anti-nuclear, when a small group of people set sail to Amchikha Island off the coast of Alaska to try and stop a US nuclear weapons test. In 1972, Greenpeace sailed their yacht, Greenpeace III, into the Mururoa Test Area of French
11:25 Speaker 00 Polynesia, a name that makes as little sense as American Samoa, only to be chased and rammed by French authorities, ending up with its crew detained. The test continued, c'est la vie. Or, ahem, somme les soleils, if you like. Yeah, I've been to France.
11:43 Speaker 03 Impact of nuclear weapons were like, oh, oh, you know, they are still abroad. And we considered impact on the culture, the impact on the identity, the impact on, you know, the spirituality.
12:01 Speaker 00 That's Tamator Te Puhuyare, an anthropology PhD student, speaking to me from Tahiti.
12:07 Speaker 03 When I, you know, when I talk about culture, I talk about social life, social lifestyles. I talk about, you know, our own identity.
12:16 Speaker 00 Since the catastrophic atomic blast over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, there had been decades of research, development, and testing, or detonations, of more and more powerful weapons. Mostly, this has been done in the open-air Nevada, or Australia and Algeria, and the tests were not universally loved by the locals. But in 1963, the US, the UK, and the USSR agreed to end atmospheric testing. China didn't sign the agreement, nor did India. Pakistan didn't have a bomb yet, nor did North Korea. And Israel was refusing to say, as it still does.
13:04 Speaker 00 But what of the French? Well, they went meh, no. We'll do what we want, mon ami. You don't have the Russians on your doorstep.
13:16 Speaker 00 France had been testing their weapons in the Sahara Desert, because if you can't nuke one of the world's largest hottest deserts, where can you nuke? Well, after they were booted out of Algeria in the mid-sixties, they decided maybe they should try the world's largest, wettest ocean, and shifted focus to the Pacific. They resumed atmospheric testing in 1966 at Mururo. It was a bold and confusing choice for a country that held up environments like Jacques Cousteau as a cultural icon. Maybe they thought it would make the deep-sea dives easier if everything glowed in the dark.
13:47 Speaker 03 Regarding the radiation induced cancers that people have been getting for years, it's pretty clear that, you know, those are intergenerational impacts, and our people are still dying.
14:05 Speaker 00 By the 1980s, Greenpeace had upgraded from sailboats to ships, and from being a mild annoyance to a pain in several governmental butts. As nuclear technology also advanced, Greenpeace's continued protest against both nuclear-based weapons and power was beginning to make geopolitical ripples around the world.
14:25 Speaker 00 But it was the 80s, and everything was getting bigger.
14:34 Speaker 00 People alive between 1980 and 89 often cringed at the excess of the decade: big hair, big shoulder pads, big corporate rock. For a child, though, it was awesome. Yes, there was a sort of emptiness about it, but for kids like me, it was all about: big robots, hello, Voltron; big vehicles, also Voltron; big toys, again, Voltron; big wrestlers, not Voltron; a movie called Big, big guns and with the biggest explosions. And no explosions were bigger than nuclear ones. Even a child knew that. That's why the biggest countries had nukes, and lots of them.
15:12 Speaker 00 The United States had anywhere between 21,000 to 23,000 nuclear weapons. The USSR had around 39,000. The UK had a couple of hundred, and France had 360. Films were set in post-apocalyptic wastelands. Cartoons had nuclear-affected mutants. And as political rhetoric escalated, you could see how an anti-nuclear movement and Greenpeace's efforts might just gain a following.
15:38 Speaker 00 New Zealander kept things small.
15:44 Speaker 00 Not much in the way of hairspray and shoulder pads. Heaves of us were still in bucket hats, sandals, and socks. Many still are. And as for nukes, we didn't want them either. Like Greenpeace, New Zealand was definitely swimming against the tide.
16:01 Speaker 00 In Waitmata Harbour in 1985, the crew of the Rainbow Warrior mocked, criticised, threatened, detained for its anti-nuclear stance by other countries. Should have been more than safe. In that harbour, in that city, in that country, Greenpeace's anti-nuclear argument wasn't just tolerated, it was understood.
16:27 Speaker 00 Before we start playing some deep Enya cuts, Greenpeace hadn't just popped into Auckland in July 1985 for some tea and ginger nuts.
16:39 Speaker 00 The city provided the crew with a midway point between its Pacific operations.
16:43 Speaker 04 There's a lot of nuclear history in the Pacific, much more than people, I think, really know or understand.
16:51 Speaker 00 This is Bunny McDymed, a Kiwi and Rainbow Warrior crew member.
16:55 Speaker 04 And the legacy of what's gone on in the Pacific in terms of nuclear issues has a very, very long tail.
17:02 Speaker 00 She's 26 when she decides to join the Rainbow Warrior as it sails across the Pacific.
17:07 Speaker 04 It was an anti-nuclear campaign that Greenpeace was involved in in the Pacific, which was about... Nuclear testing, because the French were still testing in French Polynesia then.
17:19 Speaker 00 So, by 1985, activism against French nuclear testing in the Pacific isn't new. With the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace is repeating its 1972 strategy. Sail in, get in the way, try to delay, or even stop the test, and make some noise. This time, they're going with a bigger boat to take it to the French. After their Orkan layover, they would once again attempt to stop French testing in Polynesia.
17:52 Speaker 00 Of course, they never got there.
18:00 Speaker 00 The detonation of two mines attached to the side of the Rainbow Warrior stopped them.
18:08 Speaker 00 Speaking of detonations, the first French Pacific nuclear test, code-named Alder Baron, took place in the lagoon at Mururo Atoll on 2 July 1966. Pollution from the plutonium fission bomb was estimated to have spread as far east as Peru and as far south as New Zealand.
18:25 Speaker 00 And Kiwis weren't happy. Ever seen an angry Kiwi bird? They might be small, but they can get really loud and really annoying. Our feelings, and probably those of a lot of smaller Pacific nations, were perhaps best summed up by a banner at a 1972 Wellington protest. It read, "We don't pee in the Atlantic, so don't shit up our Pacific."
18:47 Speaker 00 1973, New Zealand and Australia took France to the International Court of Justice to stop the testing. An interim injunction found in our favour. This might come as a shock, but it turns out you can just ignore the ICJ. So the French did.
19:04 Speaker 00 In response, Prime Minister Norman Kirk sent two navy frigates into the Mururoa testing zone. Cabinet Minister Fraser Coleman was on board, after his name was literally drawn out of a hat. The running joke was that there were no other names in that hat.
19:20 Speaker 00 Coleman and the crew with him witnessed two atmospheric detonations. Kirk, or Big Norm as he was known, gave one of the great speeches in New Zealand history.
19:29 Speaker 05 We're a small nation, but we will not abjectly surrender to injustice. We've worked against the development of nuclear weapons. We've opposed their testing everywhere and anywhere. We shall do our utmost to ensure that the eyes of the world are riveted on Mururoa and what is planned to take place there.
19:55 Speaker 00 Kirk went on to say, "No self-respecting nation with right on its side can meekly acquiesce to the intransigence of others. We are a small nation, but in the interests of justice, we claim the world's attention."
20:11 Speaker 00 Not that Kirk was perfect or anything. The Dawn Raids started during his time in office, when New Zealand police raided the homes of almost exclusively Pacific people, including my dad and uncle, in a crackdown on overstays. It was racial profiling of Pacific people, which another prime minister, many, many years later, apologised for. For me, it just goes to show that because a person, or group, or government says they care about the Pacific or the Pacific environment, that doesn't always extend to Pacific people. Distinctions between people and place just don't exist in the Pacific, and we'll get into that later.
20:50 Speaker 00 But maybe Kirk was right about the eyes of the world putting pressure on France and rousing its conscience. At least a little. Because just months later, in 1974, it quietly ended atmospheric testing in Mururoa. "Viva la Pacifica!" No? No. They carried on testing. Underground.
21:11 Speaker 00 And by 1985, not much has changed. Sure, France has just given French Polynesia full autonomy, but that's way short of full independence. And France carries on testing, more than 120 tests and counting. The opposition of local people still ignored.
21:32 Speaker 00 In New Zealand, we've just voted in a new Labour government promising to make the country a nuclear-free zone.
21:39 Speaker 00 It feels like nuclear issues matter, and even small countries have a voice. But then, boom.
21:53 Speaker 00 After the second blast, the crew find themselves huddled on the dock before being whisked away several blocks to a police station. They sit in the harsh fluorescent lights of the cop shop, waiting for news as those crew members previously absent begin to arrive. Though they wish otherwise, they know one member is not coming.
22:15 Speaker 00 The news arrives sometime around 4:00 a.m. Fernando's body has been found. What time is it in the Netherlands? Someone is going to have to let his kids know.
22:27 Speaker 00 The sun rises, and the image of the half-sunk Rainbow Warrior makes it clear that their ship is lost. That image is broadcast around the world, from Wellington to Washington.
22:40 Speaker 06 Rainbow Warrior, with her cheerfully painted hull, sags lower in the water. Her white dove of peace painted on the bow now trails a half-submerged wing, and everyone looking on clearly feels the sadness of what has happened.
22:53 Speaker 00 The police begin asking questions. They assume at first that this is an accident: a shorted switch, a loose connection, bad ventilation in the engine room. Captain Peter Wilcox is clear: This is not an unfortunate mishap. There is nothing on the ship that could have caused this. And two explosions? Even if you could claim this as accidental, what accident would cause two separate blasts in two different parts of the ship? The police are moving quickly, even as they continue to methodically weigh up possible causes. Wilcox has no time for it.
23:28 Speaker 07 Somebody blew up our boat. They ripped her guts out and killed one of her crew. I feel as if someone had ripped out some of my guts in the process.
23:38 Speaker 00 He's right, and before long he has proof. Police divers confirm that yes, there are two holes in the starboard side of the ship, opposite the wharf. One outside the engine room, one near the propeller shaft. Both exploded on the outside of the ship, not inside. This was not accidental.
23:54 Speaker 08 Detective Superintendent Alan Galbraith, in charge of the investigation, says Interpol has been contacted in an effort to establish leads, and he does not rule out the possibility of action by overseas agents or terrorists. He says whoever planted the bombs knew their business well. If someone planted such a device, and we're assuming they did, that they didn't know what they were doing, they knew where to put it and they knew how to detonate it. Detective Superintendent Galbraith added that this particular type of bomb must be considered very unusual for New Zealand, and he says whoever sabotaged the ship would have been aware that there were people on board and that their lives were at risk.
24:29 Speaker 00 Detective Superintendent Alan Galbraith, the officer now in charge of the case, does not rule out that this is the action of overseas agents or terrorists. And in the shock and disbelief the blast brings, New Zealanders are asking, why? Why Auckland Harbour? Why did it happen to us, of all people?
24:55 Speaker 00 If you've met New Zealanders, you'll know we have an incredible strength that can also be a bit of an Achilles. The nation is capable of rallying together for important causes like fighting Covid, or making Lord of the Rings, or championing our national rugby teams. But that same fervour of solidarity can also make us culturally myopic. So when a Portuguese-Dutch man was killed by two bombs planted on an international ship in Auckland, the entire country went, it happened in New Zealand, so it happened to us. They vowed to hunt down the killers of Fernando Pereira, a stranger to the nation, with the speed and hunger of people whose grandma had just been mugged at church.
25:41 Speaker 00 The Rainbow Warrior had been stopped from continuing its Pacific mission to protest in French Polynesia. Those with the most to gain by this bombing could well be the people Greenpeace were protesting against. But as the news went worldwide, there were people outside New Zealand who had other theories.
25:57 Speaker 01 I didn't know who. I just know that, you know, some haters out there bombed the hell out of, you know, the Rainbow Warrior just to cripple, you know, Greenpeace and their activities.
26:09 Speaker 00 That's James Matayoshi, the mayor of the island of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands, where the Rainbow Warrior had just sailed from.
26:17 Speaker 01 Maybe it's something America is, you know, doesn't want to continue to dwell on, that, you know, they're trying to cripple, you know, all of our advocacy.
26:29 Speaker 00 To understand how Greenpeace ended up in the Marshalls and why the Marshallese even suspected US involvement in the bombing, we'll first have to meet the people of Rongelapato, learn what they have been through, how they suffered, and eventually rallied with a little help from the crew of the Rainbow Warrior. Next episode, we take you where things begin, to a terrible moment in Pacific history, a powerful moment of nuclear testing, and the start of so much suffering. March 1st, 1954, the Castle Bravo detonation, and the Day of Two Sons.
27:12 Speaker 00 That's next time on The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior was written, produced, and presented by me, James Norkeyse. Sophie Townsend is the script editor and writer, Justin Gregory, writer and producer. The Last Voyage is a co-production between ABC Radio Australia and RNZ. Justine Kelly is the head of ABC Radio Australia, Tim Walken is executive editor, audio for RNZ. Faleanga Fulu Ingas Tunsla is the Content Director for ABC Radio Australia. Piana Yuritic-Gregg is the Production Coordinator for RNZ. Alison Barclay for ABC.
27:56 Speaker 00 RNZ's Rangi Poik engineered the series. Designed by Dexter Edwards. Website by Hing Yi Kong for RNZ. Huge thanks to Eve Burns, Hilary Josiah, Giff Johnson from The Marshall Islands Journey. Our respect and love to all the people we met in the Marshall Islands. Catch the whole series wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Previous 03 The Loveday Trilogy | Miyakatsu Koike Next 02 | Rainbow Warrior | The Day of the two suns Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated