Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior
By David Robie
Little Island Press. July, 2025
On July 10, 1985, agents from France’s secret service bombed the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior as it sat moored in Auckland Harbour, Aotearoa New Zealand. The attack sank the vessel and killed 36-year-old photographer Fernando Pereira, shocking the world and exposing one of the most blatant examples of state terrorism against environmental activists in the West.
Forty years later, award‑winning journalist David Robie has released a fully updated anniversary edition of his book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. Robie was the only journalist on board during the Rainbow Warrior’s final humanitarian and anti‑nuclear mission in the Pacific, when the ship arrived in New Zealand, giving him a unique vantage point on the events leading up to the bombing.
First published in 1986, Eyes of Fire was an account of the voyage that brought the plight of Pacific peoples and the devastating legacy of nuclear testing to global attention. The book chronicles Greenpeace’s flagship role in campaigns against commercial whaling, nuclear waste dumping and nuclear testing in the Pacific. Between 1946–96, the United States, Britain and France detonated at least 318 nuclear weapons in the region, leaving behind widespread environmental destruction and a public health crisis that still endures.
One of the Rainbow Warrior’s final missions was to relocate 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll, whose lands had been poisoned by radiation from the US’ infamous Bravo “test” in 1954. The 15‑megaton detonation — a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — left generations of Rongelapese suffering from thyroid cancers, stillbirths and other health problems.
The new edition of Eyes of Fire reflects on the enduring legacy of these events, situating the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior within a broader pattern of state efforts to suppress environmental movements — a reality that resonates even more sharply today, as governments and corporate media increasingly brand peaceful climate activists as “terrorists”.
At the time of the bombing, the Rainbow Warrior had become a potent symbol of international solidarity with Pacific peoples and their struggles against militarism, colonialism and environmental destruction. Its destruction, intended to stifle opposition to France’s nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll, instead galvanised global support for Greenpeace and anti‑nuclear movements.
“Forty years on, the Rainbow Warrior remains an icon of resistance, and the issues it fought for are far from over,” Robie said at the new edition’s launch in Auckland on July 10. “Eyes of Fire is not only a record of what happened, but a reminder of the courage of those who stand up against nuclear colonialism and for the protection of our planet.”
[The 40th‑anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior can be purchased here.]