On July 10, 1985, at 11:48 p.m. and 11:51 p.m., two extremely powerful bombs planted by the French secret services sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in less than four minutes in an attempt to stop a campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific ocean. Ten people were on board. Fatal for my friend, the photographer Fernando Pereira, this terrorist attack, ordered by President François Mitterrand1, and a veritable declaration of war against New Zealand, quickly became an incredible international political fiasco and a scandalous state affairs, now recounted in the history books.
In 1980, at the age of 23, I had the chance of embarking upon the Rainbow Warrior as a photographer and a crew member. It was the beginning of my long journey as a photographer for Greenpeace (over 37 years, 220 reports, 40 countries, 12 ships). At the beginning of this saga, I lived on the Rainbow Warrior for a year and was an eye witness to four spectacular campaigns and their victories.
Recently, Greenpeace International agreed to return to me 35 kg of my negatives and slides that were stored in their Amsterdam offices. I have just finished digitizing this unique collection after a long operation of rescuing originals very damaged by the tumult of years. In these archives, I rediscovered many forgotten images. They take us to the heart of the daily life of the crews of the Rainbow Warrior.
To pay tribute to the memory of this very special boat, I propose a portfolio spanning from 1980 to 1986, containing many photos of non-violent direct actions that highlight the recklessness and the commitment of these pioneers in environmental protection.
This album begins with my very first report for Greenpeace, shot over three weeks while off the coast of Great Britain to intercept, with drums and trumpets, a cargo ship loaded with Japanese nuclear waste.
The following campaign would be longer; six months of extreme intensity in Spain. In 1979, the Spanish killed 425 whales off their coast. This adventure ended with a fantastic escape from the military port of El Ferrol and by a global moratorium on whaling voted by the International Whaling Commission in 1982. This triumph is engraved in gold letters on the long list of Greenpeace victories.
We’re young, we’re fired up. We believe that whales are part of the common heritage of humanity, we do not agree with their extermination, and we are determined to make it known…
– Rainbow Warrior Mon Amour
Barely recovered from our emotions, we set sail again with the Rainbow Warrior and crossed the Atlantic to oppose the killers of baby seals in 1981 on the Labrador ice floe and in 1982 on the ice of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Campaigns which would lead to a total embargo by the European Union on the importation of seal skins and in turn, would lead to the collapse of seal hunting in Canada.
In August 1985, I was assigned by the Associated Press to cover Greenpeace’s campaign against French nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean on a new ship, urgently chartered to compensate for the disappearance of the Rainbow Warrior. In October, disembarking in Auckland after 43 days at sea, I was able to follow the trial of the “false Turenge spouses”, the assumed name of the two agents of the DGSE (General Directorate of external security) arrested following the largest police investigation ever conducted in New Zealand. Charged and imprisoned for Fernando’s murder, their charge would later be reclassified as manslaughter. 150 journalists of all nationalities requested accreditation from the court to follow this event, at the end of which the false Turenge couple were sentenced to ten years in prison.
In Auckland, I was also able to take my last photos of the Rainbow Warrior before its immersion in the Matauri Bay Marine Reserve. Today, this wreck, steeped in history, has become a tourist attraction visited by divers all over the world.
Before July 10, 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was already well known, the attack turned it into a legend.
Pierre Gleizes is a Greenpeace photographer. To see Pierre’s Rainbow Warrior portfolio visit, La planète de Pierre Gleizes
1 Admiral Pierre Lacoste, directeur de la DGSE, Un amiral au secret, Flammarion, 1997
