Although the Arctic holds as much as a quarter of the world's untapped oil and gas reserves, drilling there had long been considered too dangerous, too remote, too expensive. A month earlier, the Russian petroleum company Gazprom announced plans to activate its Prirazlomnaya platform, an offshore oil rig 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. This time Willcox was going to the Arctic. Now they were grown up: Anita, 22, was living in Paris, and two weeks earlier he'd driven 18-year-old Natasha to college. It wasn't easy raising daughters on his own: they lived in a cramped apartment above Willcox's parents' house and he'd had to take merchant marine jobs to make ends meet.
He'd been working mostly part time since getting custody of his two girls nine years before. That September day he was looking forward to getting back on the water. If you're inclined to believe that devoting one's life to protecting the Earth is a noble pursuit, you might call him a hero. (He later joked that he felt "like a matador".) For four years in the 1980s, Willcox was the captain of the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace ship, until the night it was bombed by French secret agents and sank to the bottom of a New Zealand harbour. Once, to protest against American nuclear policy, he swam directly into the path of a 3,000-tonne navy destroyer sailing at 18 knots, coming so close he dragged his hand along the hull.
In 33 years he has taken on seal hunters in Newfoundland, whaling ships in Japan and tuna poachers in the South Pacific.
He was headed out to sea to get himself arrested.Īt 61, Willcox is the most senior ship captain at Greenpeace. Willcox had packed for enough of these trips over the years to have it down to the essentials: two pairs of trousers, a couple of sweatshirts, some hiking boots for when it got cold on deck, Crocs for when he was down below, some gym clothes, his laptop, his passport and driver's licence, his seaman's book and enough blood-pressure medication to last him for three months. I n the afternoon of 3 September 2013 Captain Pete Willcox ate lunch at his home in Connecticut, hauled in a fresh supply of firewood for his 93-year-old father and stepmother, and tossed two beat-up duffel bags into a car that would take him to the airport.
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