Waves of Compassion

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Metcalfe placed newspaper ads in Australia and New Zealand, seeking a sailor with a boat, who would sail to Mururoa. He received over 150 offers, including a phone call from 40-year-old Canadian David McTaggart, in Auckland. McTaggart's 38-foot ketch, Vega, would become 'Greenpeace III.' In April, Metcalfe flew to Auckland and he and McTaggart set out for Mururoa with navigator Nigel Ingram, British seaman Roger Haddleton, and Australian Grant Davidson.

McTaggart, the tenacious seaman, and Metcalfe, the master of media, soon clashed over leadership of the campaign. McTaggart put into Rarotonga where Metcalfe and Haddleton left the boat. Metcalfe met his wife, Dorothy, and went to Paris, where they were met by Greenpeace campaigners Patrick Moore, Lyle Thurston, and Rod Marining. They organized media coverage and demonstrations until the Metcalfes were arrested and deported. Ben and Dorothy traveled to Rome, where the Pope blessed the Greenpeace flag. In France Marining issued a press release saying, 'France is behaving like invaders from Mars, shooting nuclear missiles at Spaceship Earth!' He was grabbed off the street and beaten by French agents who accused him of being 'a Red.'

'No,' said Marining pleading for his life, 'I'm a Green!' Marining's pronouncement, picked up later by Canadian media, was perhaps the first public usage of 'Green' as a political constituency. The 'Ecology Party' was formed in the United Kingdom shortly thereafter, but the world's first 'Green Party,' Die Grunen, was born in Germany a decade later, in 1982. Marining's statement was the first strong kick of the green fetus, struggling to be born in European politics.

McTaggart sailed the Vega into the nuclear bomb test zone and maintained a position 3 miles downwind from Mururoa. The frustrated French navy rammed the Vega, towed her into Mururoa, made minimal repairs, and towed her back out to sea. The Vega hobbled back to Rarotonga for repairs and the French set off their bombs. McTaggart accused the French of high seas piracy and went to France to pursue his case in the courts. When he arrived, he found that his voyage had inspired a groundswell of support.

The War Resisters International and Peace News groups from London organized a London to Paris peace march, which was stopped at the French border by French Riot police. A few of the activists, some of them carrying a 'Greenpeace' banner, slipped into Paris and held demonstrations at the Eiffel Tower and at Notre Dame cathedral. McTaggart received a letter of support from Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. He returned to Mururoa the following year and was severely beaten by French sailors.

McTaggart was killed in an automobile accident in Italy on March 23, 2001. Two months before he died, he commented on his campaign against the bomb: 'At first, the issue for me was that France had the nerve to cordon off 100,000 square miles of ocean. That was an affront to every freedom-loving sailor. The bomb was, of course, an affront to the entire planet. But when the French rammed the Vega, boarded the Vega and beat me up the following year, then blew up the Rainbow Warrior killing Fernando [Pereira, July 1985], well I made a personal vow each time that they would not get away with it. They didn't.'

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