The History of the MY Arctic Sunrise

The Arctic Sunrise joined the Greenpeace fleet in 1995 using a company called Arctic Sunrise Ventures Ltd. We knew the ship's Norwegian owners would never willingly sell the boat for it to be used by Greenpeace!

The MY (Motor Yacht) Arctic Sunrise has a chequered past. The ship was built in 1975 for commercial seal hunting and then acquired by the French government as a supply vessel, for their Antarctic oil and mineral exploitation. The ship's first contact with Greenpeace was in 1986, in Hobart, Tasmania, when a volunteer scaled the mast, unfurled the Greenpeace flag and locked himself in the crow's nest. When Antarctica was named a world park, the French had little use for the ship. So when the ship joined the Greenpeace fleet it was renamed the Arctic Sunrise. Since then it has been making up for past misdeeds!

As an icebreaker, the Arctic Sunrise has a rounded hull and no keel. It is designed to lift out of the ice instead of being crushed by it. So it has spent most of its life sailing the icy polar seas. In 1997 it became the first ship to circumnavigate James Ross Island in the Antarctic, which previously was an impossible journey until a 200m thick ice shelf connecting the island to the Antarctic continent collapsed. This was just one of the many signs of climate change which the Arctic Sunrise has helped document.