Gonna tell you a story 'bout the Rainbow Warrior
Sailing high on the Bering Sea.
She was launched as a trawler in the middle '50s,
And she's sailing for the liberty
Of the whales and the dolphins and the birds of the sea
Being killed by a portion of humanity,
And she won't back down or turn around
'Til the nations of the world agree on
Chorus:
Greenpeace, greenpeace.
Green is the middle of the rainbow.
Peace is a harmony around the Earth.
Greenpeace, greenpeace.
Well, red and orange and yellow and green
And blue, purple, indigo.
We can stop all the killing
If we'd just be willing
To let all the animals know
That we really do love them so.
Buddle lup bup bup bup bup bup bup
Buddle lup bup buddle lup bup.
Now the grey whale's one of the peaceful creatures
Of this planet we live on here.
And it summers up north and it winters down south,
Over eight thousand miles each year.
And it knows know hate, and it loves its mate.
Over miles it is able to communicate,
And it eats baleen-strained plankton green
From the water so blue and clear.
For the better part of a hundred years
we've been taking the grey whale's life.
And we spilled their blood with the harpoon gun,
And we ripped their flesh with a knife.
And we lit our lamps and we made perfume,
And we gave no thought to their impending doom
'Til the IWC in '48 put a ban on all this strife.
Chorus
Well, there's just three countries that still are guilty
Of turning our oceans pink.
And the Soviet hunters are using their slaughtered
Whales to feed their mink.
And they kill the mink just to make fur pelts
Which in turn are converted into coats and belts,
And nobody bothers to ask the whale or the mink
If they think this stinks.
It is here we encounter the Rainbow Warrior
With its dedicated crew.
They set out from Nome for the Russian Coast
In the midnight twilight blue.
To the shore they sped with their rubber rafts,
And their only weapons were the photographs
Of the mink farm and the whaling station
And the Inuit working crew.
Chorus
So they talked to the workers and they shot more film,
But they soon ran out of luck.
All five were taken by a squad of soldiers
In a Soviet army truck.
Then the second mate tried to save his crew,
But in quite short order, he was captured, too,
And the gunboat chased the captain off
In a race that was nip and tuck.
Then the first mate took the film in a raft
And tried to sneak to Nome,
But the Russian 'copter descended on him
And plucked him out of the foam.
Still the Rainbow's crew hauled the raft aboard,
And they found where the mate that film had stored,
And they made it back to Alaska
Where the truth could be made known.
Chorus
Well, the next five days were a trial of fire
For the Greenpeace activists.
They were told they might spend one to three years
Under the Soviet fist.
But they did what they could to keep their spirits up;
They even drank vodka from a Russian cup,
And the East and the West got a little bit closer
Under the Arctic mists.
Now, friends, this tale has a happy ending
'Cause the captives were released
Safe and sound to the deck of the Rainbow Warrior,
And the ship then sailed due east.
And the world heard the message on the news that night
About the captain and crew and their lonely fight
To stop the killing and make things right
So the world can have greenpeace. Sing it!
Chorus
Dedicated to those brave people on this mission of peace:
Peter Willcox, captain of the Rainbow Warrior
Jim Henry, first mate, captured
Pat Herron, second mate, captured
David Rinehart, captured
Chris Cook, captured
Barbara Higgins, captured
Nancy Foote, captured
Ron Precious
Richard Dawson