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Peter Henry Willcox | |
---|---|
Born | March 6, 1953 70) | (age
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Activist |
Peter Willcox (born March 6, 1953) is an American sea captain best known for his activism with the environmental organization Greenpeace. [1] He was on board as captain of the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed and sunk by the DGSE (French intelligence service) in New Zealand in 1985.
In 2013, he was aboard the MV Arctic Sunrise when the Russian military boarded it and arrested him and 30 other activists in what became known as the "Arctic 30." He was detained for two months before being released. In 2014, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Guardian for his environmental activism.
Willcox was born to Eleanor Sharpe of Woodstock, Vermont. Sharpe, a member of the U.S Ski team at the time, was unmarried and gave the baby up for adoption at the urging of her family. Willcox was adopted by Roger and Elsie Willcox of South Norwalk, Connecticut.[ citation needed ] He was raised in Village Creek. Willcox's parents were both politically active. Roger, a community organizer specializing in co-ops, was a sailor. Elsie, who died in 1973, was a middle school science teacher in Norwalk and founded an environmental club in the late 1960s.
Both his mother and grandparents, Henry and Anita Willcox, were subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and their careers were ruined as a result. Elsie, fearful that a subpoena would endanger her chances of adopting another child, took Peter and his brother Michael underground for three months in 1956. After the adoption papers were finalized, they returned to Norwalk, where she did receive a subpoena to testify.
Willcox was taken to many civil rights demonstrations as a child. These culminated in 1965, when Willcox and his father attended the last day of the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights march. The event crystallized his view that non-violent demonstrations or actions can be useful tools for social change.
Willcox attended North Country School, and later The Putney School in Vermont.
During his senior year at The Putney School, Willcox received the number one position in the 1972 draft lottery. He applied for and received conscientious objector status. Thanks to the work of Bill Siebert, the previous first mate, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater was approved by a Federal Judge to be acceptable work for conscientious objectors. Although President Nixon declared the Vietnam War as over in February 1973, and the draft over, Willcox joined Clearwater. He spent the 1973 season as 2nd and 1st mate, and came back in 1976 as captain. While at Clearwater, Willcox met Pete and Toshi Seeger and saw them as inspirations for activism.
After spending a year doing humpback whale research on an old square rigger, Willcox saw an ad for mates and engineers on the newly-arrived Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior . Given a spot as a possible deckhand, he was promoted to First Mate on his first day. Four months later, when the British captain left the ship to return to his family, he became the skipper. On July 10, 1985, as the Rainbow Warrior was at Auckland Harbour preparing to sail in protest French nuclear testing, it was bombed by French intelligence agents and sunk. The incident, which killed freelance photographer Fernando Pereira, caused an international scandal.
On September 19, 2013, he was arrested off Russian waters for participating in another Greenpeace campaign. [2]
1981
Offshore Oil drilling on Georges Bank.
1982:
Stopping National Lead Industries from dumping a million gallons of sulfuric acid off the New Jersey beaches every day.
Seal killing in Canada.
Dolphin killing as part of the tuna industry in the Pacific.
Whaling campaign in Peru.
1983
Seismic surveying off the coast of California.
Driftnet fishing in North Pacific.
Whaling by Russia in Bering Sea.
1985
Relocating the village of Rongalap in the Marshall Islands who were victims of the U.S. Atomic Testing program.
Rainbow Warrior was blown up in Auckland by French military personnel, killing shipmate Fernando Pereira.
Sailed on Vega IV to Mururoa atoll.
1987
Action with Danish Fisherman against Waste Management Services ship Vulcanos.
1988
Action on USN destroyer bring nuclear weapons into Denmark.
1989
First trip on board the second Rainbow Warrior.
Tasman Sea action against drift netters.
Scientific Testing at Mururoa.
1993
Exposed Russian dumping of nuclear waste in Sea of Japan.
1995
Sneak into Turkish power plant burning coal with banner.
2000
Return toxic waste to U.S. embassy in Manila.
2001
Soldertalje, Sweden action over burning toxic waste to generate electricity.
2003 (?)
Guns for Logs in Italy, France, Spain and Netherlands.
2007
Research trip to Bering Sea with two one-man submarines.
2009
Research trip to Greenland to document global warming.
2013
Captains the Arctic Sunrise in an action against Russia's oil drilling platform in international waters in the Arctic. He and the crew are arrested and held in prison for two months before being granted amnesty. Demonstrations were held all over the world urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to release the Arctic 30.
2016
Peter captains the second Rainbow Warrior near Fukushima, Japan to monitor radiation levels being released into the environment by the damaged nuclear reactors.
Willcox was married in 1991, just in time for the birth of his first daughter, Anita. His second daughter, Natasha, was born in 1995. He was separated in 2002 and moved from Spain where he had been living back to Norwalk, Connecticut. His daughters joined him in 2004. In 2013, he married Maggy Aston, whom he had met on the Clearwater in the late 1970s, on Islesboro island in Maine, where he now lives. He has a step-son named Skylar Purdy. He has nine brothers and sisters, either adopted, biological or step.
Willcox grew up sailing. His father Roger was a multiple class national champion, who took his son big boat racing in the early 1960s. Roger continues to be a fair weather frostbite dingy sailor at age 94. Willcox raced for the America's Cup syndicate Freedom – Enterprise in 1979. He has done ten Bermuda Races, did eight S.O.R.C.s (Southern Ocean Racing Circuits) in the 1970s and is still active today. He currently races on a boat called Christopher Dragon out of New York.
He estimates he has sailed over 400,000 miles in his professional and recreational career.
He retired from Greenpeace in June 2019. He continues to race, ship out, and sail for a better planet.
Willcox's memoir Greenpeace Captain: My Adventures in Protecting the Future of Our Planet [3] was released on April 18, 2016 in the United States and Canada by St. Martin's Press. In Australia and New Zealand, the book was released by Random House Publishing.
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity" and focuses its campaigning on worldwide issues such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering, and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, lobbying, research, and ecotage to achieve its goals.
Fernando Pereira was a Portuguese-Dutch freelance photographer, who drowned when French intelligence (DGSE) detonated a bomb and sank the Rainbow Warrior, owned by the environmental organisation Greenpeace on 10 July 1985.
The sinking of Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique, was a state terrorism bombing operation by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), carried out on 10 July 1985. During the operation, two operatives sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, Rainbow Warrior, at the Port of Auckland on her way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship.
Arctic Sunrise is an ice-strengthened vessel operated by Greenpeace. The vessel was built in Norway in 1975 and has a gross tonnage of 949, a length of 50.5 metres (166 ft) and a maximum speed of 13 knots. She is classified by Det Norske Veritas as a "1A1 icebreaker". The ship is powered by a single MaK marine diesel engine.
The Don't Make a Wave Committee was the name of the anti-nuclear organization which later evolved into Greenpeace, a global environmental organization. The Don't Make a Wave Committee was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to protest and attempt to halt further underground nuclear testing by the United States in the National Wildlife Refuge at Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The Don't Make a Wave Committee was first formed in October 1969 and officially established in early 1970.
Fri, a New Zealand yacht, led a flotilla of yachts in an international protest against atmospheric nuclear tests at Moruroa in French Polynesia in 1973. Fri was an important part of a series of anti-nuclear protest campaigns out of New Zealand which lasted thirty years, from which New Zealand declared itself a nuclear-free zone which was enshrined in legislation in what became the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. In 1974, coordinated by Greenpeace New Zealand, the Fri embarked on a 3-year epic 40,233-kilometer "Pacific Peace Odyssey" voyage, carrying the peace message to all nuclear states around the world.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (NZ) was co-founded in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1959 with the help of Elsie Locke and Mary Woodward. Mabel Hetherington, who belonged to an earlier generation of peace activists from England, was largely responsible for setting up the organization in Auckland when she moved to New Zealand after World War II. With Alison Duff and Pat Denby, Hetherington carried it in Auckland through the 1960s. It was largely from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (NZ) and the Peace Media that Greenpeace New Zealand evolved.
In 1984, Prime Minister David Lange banned nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships from using New Zealand ports or entering New Zealand waters. Under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987, territorial sea, land and airspace of New Zealand became nuclear-free zones. This has since remained a part of New Zealand's foreign policy.
The Rainbow Warrior is a 1993 made-for-television drama film directed by Michael Tuchner and starring Jon Voight and Sam Neill.
The MV Greenpeace was a Greenpeace ship built in 1959 as an oceangoing tug/salvage vessel. She was purchased by Greenpeace in 1985 from the Maryland Pilotage Company, the vessel then being named MV Maryland, and transferred back to the Netherlands to be refitted with modern equipment before being recommissioned. She took over from the first Rainbow Warrior, which had been sunk in 1985 by French commandos. In 2001 she was replaced by the MV Esperanza.
Rainbow Warrior was a Greenpeace ship involved in campaigns against whaling, seal hunting, nuclear testing and nuclear waste dumping during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure bombed Rainbow Warrior in the Port of Auckland, New Zealand on 10 July 1985, sinking the ship and killing photographer Fernando Pereira.
Rainbow Warrior was a three-masted schooner most notable for service with the environmental protection organization Greenpeace. She was built to replace the original Rainbow Warrior that the French intelligence service (DGSE) bombed in 1985 in the Port of Auckland, New Zealand, which sank the ship and killed photographer Fernando Pereira.
Prirazlomnoye field is an Arctic offshore oilfield located in the Pechora Sea, south of Novaya Zemlya, Russia, the first commercial offshore oil development in the Russian Arctic sector. The field development is based on the single stationary Prirazlomnaya platform, which is the first Arctic-class ice-resistant oil platform in the world. Commercial drilling was planned to begin in early 2012, however it was delayed at least until the Spring of 2013 due to protester's "safety concerns". Safety concerns have been raised about Prirazlomnoye platform, citing use of decommissioned equipment, however Gazprom's oil spill response plan for Prirazlomnaya was renewed in 2014, and most questions found its answers. The Arctic Prirazlomnoye field produced the 10 millionth barrel of Russian North Arctic Oil in March 2016.
Rainbow Warrior is a purpose-built motor-assisted sailing yacht owned and operated by Greenpeace and intended for use in their activities such as environmental protests and scientific excursions. She was christened on October 14, 2011, and has replaced Rainbow Warrior II after further upgrades and maintenance of the older ship had been shown to be impractical.
The Arctic policy of Russia is the domestic and foreign policy of the Russian Federation with respect to the Russian region of the Arctic. The Russian region of the Arctic is defined in the "Russian Arctic Policy" as all Russian possessions located north of the Arctic Circle. Approximately one-fifth of Russia's landmass is north of the Arctic Circle. Russia is one of five littoral states bordering the Arctic Ocean. As of 2010, out of 4 million inhabitants of the Arctic, roughly 2 million lived in arctic Russia, making it the largest arctic country by population. However, in recent years Russia's Arctic population has been declining.
Jon Hinck is an American environmentalist, lawyer and politician. From 2006 to 2012 he served as a member of the Maine House of Representatives, representing House District 118, part of Portland, Maine. From 2013 through 2016, Hinck held an at-large seat on the Portland, Maine City Council.
Save the Arctic is a Greenpeace campaign to protect the Arctic, principally by preventing oil drilling and unsustainable industrial fishing in the area completely, surrounded by an Arctic-Environmental economics-Zone. The campaign, begun in 2012, calls for a sanctuary in the uninhabited high seas area around the North Pole, similar to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. The campaign aims to begin this process by prompting a United Nations resolution on protection for the Arctic. Due to Russian invasion in Ukraine, world's 13% oil reserves could be a melting point in the Arctic.
On 18 September 2013, Greenpeace activists attempted to scale the Prirazlomnaya drilling platform, as part of a protest against Arctic oil production.
Grace O'Sullivan is an Irish politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the South constituency since July 2019. She is a member of the Green Party, part of the European Green Party. She previously served as a Senator for the Agricultural Panel from 2016 to 2019.
Stephen Gregory Sawyer was an American environmentalist and activist. He served as a leader of Greenpeace for nearly 30 years, including two decades as executive director. While on a mission to stop French nuclear testing in French Polynesia, he survived France's bombing of the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior, which occurred on his 29th birthday.