Grace O'Sullivan, crew member on 'Rainbow Warrior'
GRACE O'SULLIVAN from Tramore, Co Waterford, was a member of the crew of the Greenpeace vessel, The Rainbow Warrior, when it was sunk by French intelligence agents in Auckland harbour in July 1985.
The then 23-year-old was not on board at the time of the explosion – she was volunteering aboard a sailing boat, and learned that a Portuguese photographer, one of 13 on board The Rainbow Warrior, was killed only after speaking to her mother in Ireland. "I literally could not believe it because I couldn't understand it – it just didn't make any sense to me," she says now.
Often labelled the French Watergate, the attack on the ship had a part in discrediting then president François Mitterrand. After initially denying all responsibility, defence minister Charles Hernu and Admiral Pierre Lacoste, head of the French intelligence agency DGSE, were forced to resign two months later.
“At this stage, knowing all the facts, Fernando [Pereira (35)] was murdered by the French government that night,” O’Sullivan says now.
Pereira’s death had a huge impact on the crew, and they resolved to remain with Greenpeace. Many are still involved in the organisation.
In October 1985 she was detained by French navy commandos as four Greenpeace members tried to sail into territorial waters of the Mururoa Atoll just hours before France set off an underground nuclear device at the South Pacific test site.
She and three fellow activists were kept aboard a French ship and taken to Tahiti before being deported.
O’Sullivan was also heavily involved in protests surrounding the Sellafield nuclear site.
After 26 years working for Greenpeace, she returned to Ireland in 2001, where she completed a field ecology degree from UCC through distance learning.
The mother of three now takes groups on “eco walks” exploring Tramore’s sand dunes and saltmarshes, an idea originally conceived by Éanna Ní Lamhna. “It made me look into my own back yard where I grew up and all of a sudden I was looking at it with new eyes. I live in one of the most beautiful environments in the whole world.”
O’Sullivan, who became Ireland’s first woman champion surfer in 1981, is also a surf instructor. She continues to volunteer with Greenpeace and for Oceana, researching sea turtles and Cetacea.