On this day just before midnight, the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior was sabotaged and sunk by two explosive devices attached to the hull by agents of the French intelligence service (DGSE). Rainbow Warrior was in New Zealand at the time, leading the protest against French nuclear testing at the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. The photographer, Fernando Pereira, returned to the ship after the first explosion to attempt to retrieve his equipment, and was killed when the ship was sunk by the second, larger explosion. After the admission of a cover-up by the French government, an international arbitral tribunal ordered France to pay $8 million to Greenpeace in compensation. Rainbow Warrior’s original masts now stand outside the Dargaville Museum in New Zealand.
The Sinking of Rainbow Warrior
10th July 1985