Name | Golden Rule |
Port of registry | United States |
Route | San Pedro, CA to Honolulu, HI (1958), Humboldt Bay, CA to San Diego, CA (2014, 2017) |
Builder | Hugh Angelman, Charles Davies |
Launched | 1958, 2010 |
Completed | 1958, 2014 |
Maiden voyage | 1958 |
Out of service | early 1970s, 2010-2015 |
Fate | restored/ relaunched |
Status | on peace mission for nuclear disarmament |
General characteristics | |
---|---|
Class and type | Alpha |
Length | 30 ft at waterline |
Beam | 12 ft |
Draught | 5 ft |
Sail plan | fore-and-aft gaff rig ketch |
Speed | 8 kts maximum |
Golden Rule is the first boat to engage in environmental direct action in the world. [1] It is currently operated by Veterans for Peace. In September 2022 it launched an 11,000 mile Great Loop voyage to promote nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. [2]
The boat was designed by Hugh Angelman and constructed from 1956 to 1958 in Costa Rica. She was originally constructed with sapele and purpleheart. Restoration has been done using, among other south American tropical woods, Hymenaea courbaril.
In 1958, four men associated with the Quaker religion sailed toward Enewetok atoll in the Marshall Islands aboard Golden Rule with the goal of preventing atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. The US Coast Guard stopped the vessel in Honolulu, arresting her skipper, Albert Bigelow, who once served as lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. Different people owned the vessel throughout the years. She sank twice: once in the early 1970s and again in March, 2010. She has been restored since. In July 2015, she had relaunched from Humboldt Bay, California, her present home dock. She continues to sail on a peace mission to promote non-violence and to spread an anti-nuclear message to the general public. Her stops are accompanied by public events to inform the public. In the summer of 2017, she sails from Eureka, California down the full length of the California coast to San Diego with visits up the Sacramento River to the state capital. [3] [4] [5]
The Golden Rule was rebuilt between 2010 and 2015 by a team led by Veterans For Peace. It has since sailed up and down the West Coast of the US, to Hawai’i and back.
Vets for Peace began a project in September 2022 to sail a "Great Loop" from Minnesota down the Mississippi to the Gulf, up the east coast and through the Erie Canal , through the Great Lakes, to end in Chicago in September 2023. . [6]
Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Historically, arms control may apply to melee weapons before the invention of firearm. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants through international treaties and agreements, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.
A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a Dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s the "peace sign", as it is known today, was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a superposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814).
The Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) was an American anti-war group, formed in 1957 to resist the US government's program of nuclear weapons testing. It was one of the first organizations to employ nonviolent direct action to protest against the nuclear arms race.
Albert Smith Bigelow was a pacifist and former United States Navy Commander, who came to prominence in the 1950s as the skipper of the Golden Rule, the first vessel to attempt disruption of a nuclear test in protest against nuclear weapons.
The second USS Sacramento (PG-19) was a gunboat in the United States Navy.
USS Mariano G. Vallejo (SSBN-658), was a Benjamin Franklin-class fleet ballistic missile submarine, was named for Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890), a key proponent of California statehood. The boat's service extended from 1966 until 1995.
The first USS Henderson (AP-1) was a transport in the United States Navy during World War I and World War II. In 1943, she was converted to a hospital ship and commissioned as USS Bountiful (AH-9).
USS Jeffers (DD-621/DMS-27), a Gleaves-class destroyer, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Commodore William N. Jeffers.
USS Lucid (AM-458/MSO-458) is an Aggressive-class minesweeper acquired by the U.S. Navy for the task of removing naval mines that had been placed in the water to prevent the safe passage of ships. She was launched soon after the Korean War, sailed on five Western Pacific (Westpac) cruises and served four tours in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Lucid was decommissioned at the end of 1970 and placed in mothballs after only 15 years of service, as the Vietnam War was winding down and there was no longer a need for a large fleet of minesweepers. She was purchased by civilians and served as a houseboat for ten years, before being sold again in 1986 and used as a warehouse by a scrap metal dealer on Bradford Island, in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The scrap metal dealer was murdered in 2004 over a property dispute, and in 2005, Lucid was acquired by a foundation seeking to save a ship of its class. In 2011, the ship was moved to the Stockton Maritime Museum to be restored for use as a museum ship. Lucid is the last Aggressive-class minesweeper afloat in the United States.
USS Aurelia (AKA-23) was an Artemis-class attack cargo ship in service with the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946. She was scrapped in 1972.
USS Sphinx (ARL-24) was laid down as a United States Navy LST-542-class tank landing ship but converted to one of 39 Achelous-class repair ships that were used for repairing landing craft during World War II. Named for the Sphinx, she was the only US Naval vessel to bear the name.
Fri, a New Zealand yacht, led a flotilla of yachts in an international protest against atmospheric nuclear tests at Moruroa in French Polynesia in 1973. Fri was an important part of a series of anti-nuclear protest campaigns out of New Zealand which lasted thirty years, from which New Zealand declared itself a nuclear-free zone which was enshrined in legislation in what became the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. In 1974, coordinated by Greenpeace New Zealand, the Fri embarked on a 3-year epic 25,000 mile "Pacific Peace Odyssey" voyage, carrying the peace message to all nuclear states around the world.
USS Linnet (AMS-24/YMS-395) was a YMS-1-class minesweeper of the YMS-135 subclass built for the United States Navy during World War II.
Anne Rudin was an American politician who served as the 51st Mayor of Sacramento from her election in 1983 until she stepped down, after declining to seek a third term in 1992.
The USS Hampden County (LST-803) was an LST-542-class tank landing ship built for the United States Navy during World War II. Named after Hampden County, Massachusetts, she was the only U.S. Naval vessel to bear the name.
George Willoughby was a Quaker activist who advocated for world peace, and conducted nonviolent protests against war and preparations for war.
Earle L. Reynolds was an anthropologist, educator, author, Quaker, and peace activist. He was sent to Hiroshima by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1951 to study the effects of the first atomic bomb on the growth and development of exposed children. His professional discoveries concerning the dangers of radiation later moved Reynolds into a life of anti-nuclear activism. In 1958 he sailed with his wife Barbara, two of his three children and a Japanese yachtsman in the Phoenix of Hiroshima, a ketch he had designed himself, into the American nuclear testing zone in the Pacific. In 1961 the family sailed to the USSR to protest Soviet nuclear testing. During the Vietnam War Reynolds and his second wife, Akie sailed the Phoenix to Haiphong to deliver humanitarian and medical aid to victims of American bombing.
The Phoenix of Hiroshima was a 50-foot, 30-ton yacht that circumnavigated the globe and was later involved in several famous protest voyages. Between its launch in 1954 and its sinking in 2010, the Phoenix carried a family around the world, was used to make protest voyages against nuclear weapons, was declared a Japanese national shrine, and ended up offered free on Craigslist, gutted and stripped of masts, phoenix figurehead and every identifying mark but the words "Phoenix of Hiroshima."
Steamboats operated in California on San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, and Sacramento River as early as November 1847, when the Sitka built by William A. Leidesdorff briefly ran on San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento River to New Helvetia. After the first discovery of gold in California the first shipping on the bays and up the rivers were by ocean going craft that were able to sail close to the wind and of a shallow enough draft to be able to sail up the river channels and sloughs, although they were often abandoned by their crews upon reaching their destination. Regular service up the rivers, was provided primarily by schooners and launches to Sacramento and Stockton, that would take a week or more to make the trip.
The Golden Hinde is a full-size replica of the Golden Hind. She was built using traditional handicrafts at Appledore, in Devon. She has travelled more than 140,000 mi (230,000 km), a distance equal to more than five times around the globe. Like the original ship, she has circumnavigated the globe.