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The Rainbow Warrior (sometimes informally called Rainbow Warrior I) was a former fisheries research trawler operated by the United Kingdom government, which was later purchased by the environmental organization Greenpeace.

The ship began its career as the fisheries research trawler Sir William Hardy, operating from its home port of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. The vessel was built to enable the government operated fisheries laboratory, the Torry Research Station, to test new types of fishing equipment, new engineering technology, and to provide a supply of fish for experiments performed by the laboratory.

The ship served with the UK government for 22 years, before being sold directly to Greenpeace in late 1977.

The ship was then active in supporting a number of Greenpeace protest activities against whaling, seal hunting and nuclear weapons testing during the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was sunk whilst in harbour in New Zealand by operatives of the French intelligence service (DGSE) on 10 July 1985, killing one crew member onboard.

Early career
The Sir William Hardy was initially designed between 1948 and 1951 to replace an earlier fishery research vessel, the City of Edinburgh, which was a steam powered drifter adapted for trawling and for scientific work. The design work was undertaken by the builders Hall, Russell & Company in collaboration with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), who would operate the vessel, and the Admiralty. The designers were also advised by representatives of the fishing industry and other interested parties.

Hall, Russell & Company constructed the vessel at their shipyard in Aberdeen, where it was allocated the yard number 846. The keel was laid down on 6 July 1954 and the completed hull was launched on 29 November 1954, with the naming ceremony performed by Mrs G.A. Reay, the wife of the Torry Research Station superintendent.

The vessel would be attached to the Torry Research Station, a government fisheries laboratory in Aberdeen, to allow them to test new types of fishing gear, new fishing vessel technologies and to provide a supply of fish for other work performed onshore by the laboratory. The Torry Research Station worked on technology for the preservation of fish; cold storage technology, smoking and curing technology, and fish oil extraction techniques.

Design
The design of the Sir William Hardy would include new and experimental technologies, the most significant of which was the propulsion system. The Sir William Hardy was fitted with a diesel-electric propulsion system, the first British built vessel to be built with this propulsion system. The system featured six diesel generators providing electricity to drive one electric motor and in turn, one propeller. The diesel-electric propulsion system was considered to be untried and untested when fitted to the Sir William Hardy and this would cause some problems initially.

The Sir William Hardy was designed primarily to allow experiments to be conducted on the handling and preservation of fish, and as a result, the fish hold was fitted with an experimental refrigeration system, comprising a cold store and a plate freezer, to allow the freezing of fish at sea. The plate freezer was designed by the Torry Research Station. These items would enable handling and preservation experiments to be conducted at sea. The planned experiments also included observing any benefits the addition of antibiotics to ice used to store fish would have on preservation, and the benefits fish washing might provide.

During sea trials with the ship in March 1955, overheating of the engine room and the new propulsion system was discovered. The engine room ventilation was improved by the builders at a cost of approximately £3,000 to prevent overheating, delaying completion of the ship by two months. The first research trip commenced on 21 November 1955, however the vessel saw only sporadic service in its first year, it was in dry-dock for two weeks during March 1956 to enable additional scientific equipment to be fitted to the hull.

Hector Hughes, the Member of Parliament for Aberdeen North repeatedly asked questions in Parliament about the completion and work of the Sir William Hardy around the time of its introduction to service.

Operations
The Sir William Hardy operated from Aberdeen for most of its time with DSIR and MAFF, trips

The Sir William Hardy served with the DSIR until 1965, at which point responsibility for the ship (and the Torry Research Station) passed to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). The ship would serve with MAFF until 1977, when she was laid up in London for disposal.

With Greenpeace
Greenpeace planned to purchase a vessel from which they could monitor and protest against the Icelandic whaling industry in the North Atlantic. Susi Newborn and Denise Bell (co-founders of Greepeace UK) search for a suitable vessel ended when they found the Sir William Hardy in London and with assistance from Athel von Koettlitz, an engineer and childhood friend of Newborn's, they inspected the vessel. Their bid of GB£42,725 was subsequently accepted by the United Kingdom government and after eight months of fundraising, they managed to make a 10% deposit, the balance being due within 60 days.

The Dutch branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (then known as the World Wildlife Fund) provided a grant of GB£38,000 and this allowed the outstanding balance to be paid off. Volunteers would spend four months refurbishing the engines and electrical systems and repainting the vessel whilst it was berthed in the King George V Dock in London's Docklands.

The Sir William Hardy was re-named Rainbow Warrior on 29 April 1978, taking its name from a book written about an Aleut and Cree prophecy which foretold of a tribe, the Warriors of the Rainbow, who would rise up when the world became poorly and sick, to put the world to rights. The vessel, although renamed, retained Aberdeen as its port and the United Kingdom as its country of registry.

Operations
The Rainbow Warrior left London on her maiden trip with Greenpeace on 2 May 1978 with a crew of 24, destined initially for the site of Torness Nuclear Power Station where it would protest against the construction of a nuclear power station, at the time still at the planning stage. Greenpeace would then take the Rainbow Warrior to Iceland on the first of several anti-whaling protests in the North Atlantic, before sailing south in July 1978 to protest against the disposal of radioactive waste. The Gem was discovered in an area of the Atlantic designated for disposal of radioactive waste, operating to dispose of radioactive material clandestinely on behalf of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. Greenpeace and Rainbow Warrior would finish 1978 by successfully disrupting the Norwegian Grey seal hunt on Orkney in October. Their efforts and the ensuing public outrage caused Bruce Millan, Secretary of State for Scotland to reduce the number of seals which could be killed to 2,000 from an initial quota of 4,300. The hunt was carried out without the Norwegians in December 1978.

Greenpeace would again take the Rainbow Warrior to Iceland on anti-whaling demonstrations in 1979, the ship being impounded and the crew arrested in June 1979.

Tam Dalyell, Member of Parliament tabled questions in Parliament concerning the impounding of the Rainbow Warrior and arrest of her crew.

The original engines were replaced in 1981, with new Detroit Diesel motors being fitted. It was during this refit that is was discovered the hydraulic system fitted to the vessel when she was originally built was designed to use a hydraulic fluid derived from whale oil.

Sails in a ketch rig configuration were fitted in 1985, prior to the Rainbow Warrior sailing to the Pacific Ocean to demonstrate against French nuclear weapons testing.

In early 1985, Rainbow Warrior was in the Pacific ocean campaigning against nuclear testing. In May, she transported some 300 Marshall Islanders from Rongelap Atoll, which had been polluted by radioactivity from past American nuclear tests at the Pacific Proving Grounds.

She travelled to New Zealand to lead a flotilla of yachts protesting against French nuclear testing at the Moruroa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia. During previous nuclear tests at Moruroa, protest ships had been boarded by French commandos after sailing into the shipping exclusion zone around the atoll. For the 1985 tests, Greenpeace intended to monitor the impact of nuclear tests and place protesters on the island to illegally monitor the blasts. The French Government infiltrated the Canada-based organisation and discovered these plans.

The bombing


The Rainbow Warrior, then captained by Peter Willcox, was sabotaged and sunk just before midnight NZST on July 10, 1985, by two explosive devices attached to the hull by operatives of the French intelligence service (DGSE). One of the twelve people on board, photographer Fernando Pereira, returned to the ship after the first explosion to attempt to retrieve his equipment, and was killed when the ship was sunk by the second larger explosion.

A murder enquiry began and a number of the French agents were tracked and arrested. The revelations of French involvement caused a political scandal and the French Minister of Defence Charles Hernu resigned. The captured French agents were imprisoned, but later transferred to French custody. They were confined to the French military base on the Island of Hao for a brief period before being released. After facing international pressure, France agreed to pay compensation to Greenpeace, and later admissions from the former head of the DGSE revealed that three teams had carried out the bombings. In addition to those successfully prosecuted, a two-man team had carried out the actual bombing, but their identities have never been officially confirmed. On 22 September 1985, the French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius summoned journalists to his office to read a 200-word statement in which he said: "The truth is cruel," and acknowledged there had been a cover-up, he went on to say that "Agents of the French secret service sank this boat. They were acting on orders."

Following the sinking, Greenpeace and the French Republic entered into an agreement to submit Greenpeace's claims against France to international arbitration. The arbitral tribunal, seated in Geneva, Switzerland, was composed of three members (Professor Claude Reymond, Sir Owen Woodhouse and Professor Francois Terre) and rendered an award in 1987 in favor of Greenpeace, ordering France to pay it some $8.1 million. David McTaggart, Greenpeace's chairman, described the award as "a great victory for those who support the right of peaceful protest and abhor the use of violence." Greenpeace was represented by Lloyd Cutler and Gary Born of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.

The wreck of the Rainbow Warrior was refloated on 21 August 1985 and moved to a naval harbour for forensic examination. Although the hull had been recovered, the damage was too extensive for economic repair and the vessel was scuttled in Matauri Bay in the Cavalli Islands, New Zealand, on 12 December 1987, to serve as a dive wreck and artificial reef to promote marine life. The hull is now covered with a large colony of vari-coloured sea anemones. The masts were salvaged and now stand outside the Dargaville Museum. A second ship, named Rainbow Warrior after the first vessel, was acquired in 1989.

Literature
A number of books have been published about the incident, including Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, produced the year after the sinking and written by shipboard author David Robie.

In popular culture
Several fictionalised films have been made about the ship, including The Rainbow Warrior Conspiracy (1989), The Rainbow Warrior (1992), and two French films Operation Rainbow Warrior and Le Rainbow Warrior (both 2006). The Steven Seagal-directed On Deadly Ground, an action film inspired by Greenpeace's activities, had the working title "Rainbow Warrior".

In addition, a number of musicians and bands have referenced the original Rainbow Warrior and the sinking, including the Danish/American band White Lion and their song Little Fighter, Belgian band Cobalt 60, the New Zealand band The Bats ("Green" on Silverbeet), the Irish folk-rock singer Luka Bloom, the Faroese metal band Týr, and the Argentinian metal band Rata Blanca. Geffen Records released a double album, Greenpeace Rainbow Warriors, in 1989 and included songs from artists such as U2, INXS, The Pretenders, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and White Lion. German punk band Die Toten Hosen also referenced the sinking in their song "Walkampf", although not by name.