Pete Willcox

Page - June 23, 2005
"The real tragedy was that Fernando was the only member of the crew with children and he was the one killed by the bomb. Nothing's gonna change that."

Pete Willcox, 2005

Peter Willcox, now 51, has returned to his roots to live on the Connecticut coast in the United States where he grew up. His father lives nearby in the same co-operative housing area he set up in the 1950s, when it was the first multi-racial community in the state. Like his father, he loves sailing and they both maintain modest wooden sailboats down on the jetty by his father's house. Peter has two teenage daughters who live with their mother in Majorca in Spain.

He first combined his love of the sea with environmental education after he was drafted for the war in Vietnam and registered as a conscientious objector. He was assigned to the Clearwater, a vessel that took school students around the coast to learn about sailing and the environment. Then in the early 1980s he got his first job with Greenpeace, as captain of the Rainbow Warrior. Since the bombing, he has been a regular skipper on several Greenpeace boats, including the new Rainbow Warrior's protest voyage against French nuclear testing to Moruroa Atoll in 1991. Greenpeace has asked him to skipper the Rainbow Warrior again this year.

Pete Willcox, Captain of the Rainbow Warrior, 1985