90s
1990-95 Ships: solo
In service: 1990-95 Built: 1976 Type of ship: Former ocean-going tug Length: 65m Max. speed: 14 knots Crew: 12, max. 38 Solo was first presented to the public in 1991, when she launched an information tour visiting numerous ports in the Netherlands and Belgium. She also carried out successful campaigns against Norwegian whaling in 1992 and 1994, participated in a UK toxic tour and travelled to Novaya Zemlya in the Russian Arctic, where she highlighted 30 years of irresponsible dumping of nuclear waste. In 1992, together with the Moby Dick, she tracked the Akatsuki Maru, which was shipping plutonium from France to Japan. In 1993 she assisted in an attempt to save birds and seals contaminated by oil from the wreck of the tanker Braer, which had stranded on the Shetland Islands. In May 1994, she managed to delay two UK Trident missile test-firings off the Florida coast. In early 1995 she again chased the Akatsuki Maru and its shipload of plutonium. Her final action for Greenpeace was on her return from Japan, when she arrived to assist the Altair, a motor vessel chartered by Greenpeace in the campaign against Shell’s dumping of the Brent Spar oil platform in the Atlantic. Since September 1995 the Solo has operated as a floating station under the control of the Dutch Coast Guard. Her present name is De Waker.
image 1 Solo crew and journalists, 1994 image 2 In the North Atlantic, shadowing the plutonium ship Akatsuki-Maru on its voyage from France to Japan image 3 The Greenpeace helicopter ‘Tweety’ on the deck of the Solo image 4 Solo in the Bay of Biscay, 1994, where she confronted driftnet fishing All images © Greenpeace / David Sims
98 THE GREENPEACE chronicles