Forty years ago today, on 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was in Auckland preparing for an operation to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific when it was bombed by the French secret service. Most of the crew made it to safety, but photographer Fernando Pereira was killed in the bombing.
Several Rainbow Warrior crew members later ended up living on Waiheke, including first mate Martini Gotje, engineers Hanne Sorensen, Henk Haazen and deckhand Bunny McDiarmid, and the late Susi Newborn – who’d helped purchase the Rainbow Warrior and fit it as Greenpeace’s flagship but was not crew for what was, unbeknown to all, the ship’s final campaign.
• Paul Mitchell
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