Alex and the Rainbow Warrior Bombing

In memory of Fernando Periera.

Today (10 July 2026) marks the 41^st anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. The Rainbow Warrior was the Greenpeace flagship and was preparing to sail to Mururoa to protest the testing of atomic bombs by the French.

To mark this anniversary, I am posting an excerpt from my historical novel Alex and the Rainbow Warrior Affair. This novel is aimed at the tweenage (ages 10-13 or so) market. The novel follows the adventures of Alex, a thirteen-year-old boy, who time travels trying to find his father. Along the way he gets caught up in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, even though this had happened before he was born.

In this extract from the novel Alex experiences the bombing firsthand.

Alex and the Rainbow Warrior Bombing

Out in the harbour Alex heard an engine puttering.  Peering out past the ships and the docks Alex could see some ripples in the distance.  Someone had an outboard engine running.  That’s weird he thought.  Not too many small boats go out at night.  Never mind, I’ve got more important things to think about.  Alex kept walking.

Somewhere close by there was music.  Someone must be having a party.  Alex could hear the strains of “Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”  It appeared to be coming from one of the boats a couple of wharfs further on.

Alex passed a woman walking the other way.  “Good evening,” he said.  “Evening,” she replied with a foreign accent and kept walking.  Strange, thought Alex, am I in some foreign harbour?

Alex sat down on the side of a wharf with his feet dangling over the edge. 

All of a sudden there was an almighty boom and a plume of water shot into the air from the next wharf over.  Shouting began.  It came from the boat that Alex had heard the party on earlier.  Alex ran towards the boat.  He could hear the ship’s warning horn blaring out short blasts.  Aaa..uu..garr!  Aa..uu..garr!

Racing towards the boat he saw a large white dove painted on its bow and rainbow-coloured stripes along its railing.  “Shit,” he said to himself, “this is the Rainbow Warrior.”  The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship of Greenpeace; the international environmental group opposed to French testing of nuclear weapons.

When was he?  It was… when was the Rainbow Warrior bombed?   He remembered it was not long before he was born.  His mother had told him about it.  She’d been in her mid-twenties and a volunteer with Greenpeace at the time she was pregnant with Alex.  She’d told him about the Rainbow Warrior being blown up by French agents.  Alex remembered she’d also said something about one of the crew being killed in a second explosion.  Perhaps if he got there in time, Alex could save the crewman.

From the wharf Alex yelled, “Get out, get out, there’s going to be another explosion.” 

A few of the crew were climbing off the boat onto the wharf.  A large man with a bushy beard heard Alex and coming over to him demanded that he tell him what he was talking about.

“The explosion.  There’s going to be another one,” Alex said.  “You gotta get everyone off the boat.”

The man yelled out something in a foreign language to someone still on board.  Whatever he’d said it was too late.  Another enormous explosion shook the ship.  Within seconds the Rainbow Warrior started to list to starboard, towards the wharf.

Alex heard someone on board yelling “Abandon ship, abandon ship!”

Three more men clambered off the boat, one of them half naked.  Someone from somewhere threw blankets on them and a photographer took a snap.  Doesn’t take journalists long to sniff out a story, thought Alex.

“Where’s Fernando?” shouted one of the men who had just got off the boat.  “Fernando, where is he?  He was right behind me.”  Alex knew what had happened to Fernando.  Alex had been too late.

Fernando Periera, the Portuguese photographer, was standing in his cabin doorway when the man had last seen him.  That was when the captain yelled out for everyone to abandon ship.

Another man was also screaming, “Fernando’s down there, he’s still down there.”

“No he’s not,” argued the half-naked man.  “He went to town.”

The other man joined in, “You’re wrong, Captain, he was there,” he groaned, “right there; he had his camera gear round his neck.  Why the hell didn’t I just grab him by the neck and pull him?”

“Don’t blame yourself, Martini.”

“But I could have saved him, I could’ve damn well saved him.”

“You had to do what you had to do.”  The half-naked man was trying to reassure the other man.  Alex realised that the half-naked man was the captain.

The large, bearded man came over and put his arm around Martini to console him.  That was when he remembered Alex.

“Hey, you,” he yelled at Alex.  “Come here.”

Alex walked over, a bit shaken.  He kept looking at the Rainbow Warrior.  It was almost completely under water.

“You told me there’d be another one.” The big man glared at Alex.  “How did you know that?”

“I…I…I just knew,” said Alex.  How could he tell them how he knew?

“I don’t believe you; I reckon you had something to do with it.”

“N..no, really, I… I just knew.”  Alex was worried; he could see that the man didn’t believe him.  He’d believe him even less if he tried to tell him he was a time traveller.  How was he going to get out of this mess?