The Birth of the Rainbow Warrior

The famous ship was sunk by an act of sabotage in Auckland, New Zealand (Aotearoa), on the night of 10th July 1985, in the wake of protest against nuclear testing conducted French government. With the philosophy that ‘you can't sink a rainbow’, four years later Greenpeace sought a new Rainbow Warrior to take up the global mission.

The Rainbow Warrior's first mission is campaigning against whaling in Iceland. Greenpeace positions the Rainbow Warrior between harpoons and whales, preventing whalers from catching any whales. The anti-whaling campaign spreads to Spain. Later in the year, the Rainbow Warrior intercepts a British ship attempting to dump radioactive waste, then prevents the massacre of 6000 grey seals in the Orkney Islands.

The Rainbow Warrior does not only campaign for the environment. It is also a virtual showcase of environmentally friendly technologies. Many of these have been installed by Greenpeace since it was first launched in 1989. They include:

• a specially designed, fuel-saving, combined wind/motor propulsion system.
• solar panels for hot water.
• a heating and hot water system that uses waste heat from the engines.
• a desalinisation plant.
• a sewage treatment system.

The Rainbow Warrior has a number of interesting features. A 1.8-metre dolphin, carved from oak, is fixed to the foredeck. It was donated by a local support group in Germany. The ship also features the wheel from the original Rainbow Warrior in front of the bridge, while the original bell hangs in the ship's mess.

Rainbow Warrior, named for Native American prophecy about brave people of every colour and tribe coming together to protect the Earth, has become a symbol of peace and environmental protection the world over. In the past twenty years the ship has worked to protect forests from Indonesia to Brazil, to defend oceans worldwide from over fishing and pollution, to document environmental damage – such as the impacts of climate change from Greenland to Antarctica – and to promote environmental solutions like wind power. For many year, The Rainbow Warrior has joined other environmental missions, including: 

• Oppose deep sea trawling and whaling
• Join the forest protection campaign in Russia
• Join the toxics elimination campaign in Far East region of Russia
• Document the changes of the coral reef in Timor Sea
• Track and stop the radioactive plutonium shipment between France, Belgium, UK and Japan