Greenpeace: An 'insane' Vision That Took Flight 50 Years Ago

"Insane" -- that was teenager Barbara Stowe's reaction 50 years ago when her parents and the other founders of Greenpeace decided that they would send a boat to halt US nuclear tests

Paris, Sept 13 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Sep, 2021 ) :"Insane" -- that was teenager Barbara Stowe's reaction 50 years ago when her parents and the other founders of Greenpeace decided that they would send a boat to halt US nuclear tests.

But their conviction won over Stowe and her brother Robert, who witnessed these pathbreaking meetings in the family home in Vancouver to send a ship to Amchitka in Alaska.

"I have to say that my dad, my parents, the Bohlens, Bob Hunter, Ben Metcalfe, they were visionaries, they were empowered with the idea which is somewhat crazy that a single individual or a small group of individuals can actually effect change that can change the world," said Robert Stowe, a 66-year-old neurologist.

"For them it was partly an issue of the fact they felt they had to take a stand, regardless of whether or not it would be effective.

" On September 15, 1971, a crew of 12 Canadians and Americans who had left their country after the Vietnam war, set out from Vancouver Island in an 80-foot boat called the Phyllis Cormack, which was renamed Greenpeace.

Their mission was to steam to the Aleutian island of Amchitka and protest, or even prevent, the detonation of an underground nuclear test.

The boat didn't make it to Amchitka. US president Richard Nixon delayed the test and the crew were arrested in the Aleutian port of Akutan by the US Coastguard on a technicality.

At this time Greenpeace -- now one of the best known Names worldwide -- was called Don't Make a Wave but a name change was decided at a meeting to flesh out the daring and unprecedented mission to Alaska.