As a sea captain at the helm of Greenpeace protest ships for decades, it takes a lot to rattle Peter Willcox. In a seafaring career that has taken him across 400,000 miles of ocean, the American sailor has had his ship blown up, dived in front of a moving destroyer and confronted naval warships, all to protect the environment. He was in charge of the original Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace flagship, when it was sunk by the French secret service. But perhaps the most life-changing event came when he and 29 fellow campaigners sailing on the Arctic Sunrise were thrown into a Russian jail in September 2013, threatened with lengthy prison sentences for protesting against Arctic oil drilling. Yet now he brushes off the dangers he faced even in those desperate times, joking that life in detention helped his health.
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