1989-2011 Ships: rainbow warrior
In service: 1989-2011 Built: 1957 Type of ship: Former North Sea fish trawler Length: 55m Max. speed: 13 knots Crew: 11, max 30 The former Grampian Frame was converted to a motor yacht with sail assistance by Greenpeace when she joined the fleet as the successor of the first Rainbow Warrior, destroyed four years earlier by the French secret service in Auckland, New Zealand. She literally and figuratively embodied the message that ‘You Can’t Sink a Rainbow’. She spent her early Greenpeace years on pulp-and-paper campaigns in the US and Canada, toxics actions and Gulf War protests and an Alaskan tour highlighting overfishing and protesting oil exploration before she, like her predecessor, travelled to Moruroa to campaign against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. For the first time, video film of the encounter between Greenpeace and the French Navy would be seen around the entire world. She was also part of the Peace Flotilla that sailed into Moruroa in 1995. This time, French commandoes boarded and seized the ship in French Polynesian territorial waters, badly damaging the vessel. She was not released until March of the following year.
main image Sailing in the Mediterranean sea at sunset, 2010 © Paul Hilton / Greenpeace inset image 1 Madeleine Habib at the wheel in 1995, as the ship sails towards the French nuclear test site at Moruroa Atoll © Greenpeace / Steve Morgan image 2 En route to Ebeye in the Marshall Islands, 1990 © Greenpeace / Lorette Dorreboom image 3 Captain Joel Stewart, on the bridge during the 1991 Alaska tour © Greenpeace / Robert Visser image 4 Eurythmics concert on the Rainbow Warrior, raising funds for Greenpeace and Amnesty International in London, UK, in 1999 © Greenpeace / Steve Morgan
82 THE GREENPEACE chronicles
This Rainbow Warrior travelled all over the world and was active across the whole range of Greenpeace’s campaigns, before age began to creep up on her. In 2010, she was gracefully retired from Greenpeace’s service, and was transferred to Friendship, a Bangladesh-based NGO that will refit her for use as a hospital. The ship was renamed Rongdhnou, the Bengali word for ‘rainbow’.