When a Warrior Dies

Someone has done a cowardly act of murder in the middle of the night, obviously with the intent to kill, as well as to sink our ship...

– Former Greenpeace International director Patrick Moore, who was on the Rainbow Warrior the night she was bombed

The Rainbow Warrior will fade away, will break up. It in itself will be a memory in a hundred years, a hundred and fifty years. But that kōhatu, that kōhatu has evolved over before even there was a Rainbow Warrior, and probably even before there was a Matatua.

– Mātauri Bay local (and later Māori Affairs Minister) Dover Samuels

The boulders of Piakoa beach are all of volcanic origin. From time to time, over millennia, a single basalt pillar tumbles down from the cliffs above. It's one of these crystalline rocks, kōhatu, that Chris Booth has selected as a central element of the Rainbow Warrior monument.

– Narrator Donna Akersten, early in this documentary

Two and a half years after she was bombed, the Rainbow Warrior is at sea again — her final voyage, under tow to Whangaroa Harbour. Tomorrow morning she’ll sail the last leg down the harbour, then scuttled in 20 metres of water off Mātauri Bay. Not just a grave for the Rainbow Warrior but a living memorial for those who knew her.

– Reporter Mark Sainsbury

My philosophy is that we must think positively. I think somehow we are all gonna work together in one way or another to preserve mother earth, I just am that way...

– Sculptor Chris Booth, in the final part of this documentary

Māori tradition identifies the Mataatua waka as one of the great voyaging canoes that migrated from the homeland, Hawaiki, to Aotearoa-New Zealand circa 600 – 1000 years ago . . . The final resting place of the Mataatua waka (canoe) is widely accepted by descendants of the Mataatua as being on the river bed of the Tākou River.

– Atareiria HeiHei, Tamoe Ngata & Bruce Stirling, in a 2012 NZ Historic Trust report (see 'More information' tab)

I see the Rainbow Warrior as probably the biggest battleship that ever traversed the oceans of the world. But she wasn’t armed with guns, she was armed with peace. The only power she had was what she stood for . . . she had so much power that the French even sent their secret agents in, to bomb her.

– Dover Samuels, who suggested that the Rainbow Warrior be buried at Mātauri Bay, at the start of this documentary

I know for me, as a Pākehā sculptor who’s been absorbed into that area in one way or another, it is of an immense significance that the Mataatua canoe is buried at Tākou Bay, and that the Rainbow Warrior is buried off the Cavalli islands just nearby.

– Chris Booth, on why he chose rocks for his Rainbow Warrior memorial from near where the Mataatua waka is believed to lie

I think the one thing that everybody agreed on was that they didn't want to see it cut up for scrap. I think that was the only thing that everybody was totally agreed on.

– Former Greenpeace New Zealand co-director Carol Stewart on the Rainbow Warrior, in the fifth clip