After spending a year doing humpback whale research on an old square rigger, Willcox saw an ad for mates and engineers on the newly-arrived Greenpeace ship, the "Rainbow Warrior". Given a spot as a possible deckhand, he was promoted to First Mate on his first day. Four months later, when the British captain left the ship to return to his family, he became the skipper. On July 10, 1985, as the "Rainbow Warrior" was at Auckland Harbour preparing to sail in protest French nuclear testing, it was bombed by French intelligence agents and sunk. The incident, which killed freelance photographer Fernando Pereira, caused an international scandal.