New Rainbow Warrior sets sail

Greenpeace's new Rainbow Warrior is heading to Matauri Bay in Northland for a service to remember the day the original ship was sunk by French bombs in Auckland 20 years ago.

Two decades ago tomorrow, French saboteurs used limpet mines to sink the Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf.

They were acting on the orders of the DGSE - the French secret service - which in turn was ordered by French defence minister Charles Hernu to stop the ship and the Greenpeace campaign against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

The bombing killed Greenpeace's Fernando Pereira and caused outrage.

French secret service spies Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur were convicted of manslaughter and France paid $13 million in compensation. From that the new Rainbow Warrior was bought.

The ship headed for Matauri Bay in the Far North where the wreck of the original ship was sunk in 1987, two years after the bombing. It had been raised from the harbour bottom and the huge hole in its side patched at the Devonport naval base.

It was escorted out of the harbour by a flotilla of peace boats, including the brigantine The Breeze, which led a peace flotilla to Mururoa atoll after the Rainbow Warrior was sunk to protest against nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Tomorrow a simple powhiri will be held at Matauri Bay.

Three divers, including Peter Willcox, skipper of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 and of the new ship, are to take a marble sculpture of a dove with the New Zealand version of an olive branch, down to the wreck.

Mr Willcox has never dived on the Rainbow Warrior since it was sunk.

Greenpeace said the Rainbow Warrior would always be a symbol of peace and the terror bombings in London yesterday gave tomorrow's commemorations even more resonance.

- NZPA