Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Claire Bowes.

And now a program from our archives. It was on the 9th of July 1985

that the Greenpeace campaign ship, the Rainbow Warrior, was bombed by French secret

agents in Auckland, New Zealand.

One crew member was killed and the old North Sea trawler which had found a new life as a vehicle for environmentalists was sunk.

The Rainbow Warrior had sailed to Canada to stop seal coals and harassed the whaling fleets of Russia and Japan.

She and her crew were in New Zealand as part of a campaign against French nuclear testing in

Polynesia. Her Captain Pete Wilcox spoke to me in 2010.

We had just come from the Marshall Islands where we had relocated an entire village from an atoll that had been nuked by the US nuclear

testing program in the 50s because that year in 1985 that was a year of

protesting nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Our feeling was if it was safe, do it in Paris, if it was safe do it in Washington, D.C.

But don't turn smaller third world countries into your testing zone. The crew sailed into

Auckland, New Zealand to prepare for the next leg of the journey. Spirits were high.

They just celebrated campaign manager Steve Sawyer's birthday and the young crew were excited about their first trip to the South Pacific.

I remember going to bed at about 10, 30, 11 o'clock.

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