Today at ICUJP we heard a presentation Helen Jaccard , a crew member and project manager for the Veterans for Peace Golden Rule Project. I was deeply impressed by how this peace ship has traveled to the Hawaii islands, the East Coast from Florida to the Hudson, and all along the West Coast. This summer the Golden Rule will be heading to the Pacific Northwest. I am including a chapter from my book "Transformative Friends" describing how the Golden Rule got started.
From its first voyage in 1958, and its recommission from 2015 on, the Golden Rule has been a little boat with a big mission: to stop the possibility of nuclear war! Join the Veterans For Peace Golden Rule Project Manager in learning about this boat and how you and others can have hope of eliminating nuclear weapons through taking specific actions.
To learn more about the Golden Rule's travels this summer in the Pacific Northwest, click here:
https://vfpgoldenruleproject.org/
Albert Smith Bigelow, Naval Commander, Pacifist, Skipper of
the Golden Rule
Albert
Smith Bigelow (1
May 1906 - 6 October 1993) 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.
Albert Smith Bigelow was the son of Albert Francis Bigelow
(1880-1958), and Gladys Williams. Albert’s father was a partner in the Boston
law firm Warren, Hogue & Bigelow from 1908-1914.
Albert married his
first wife, Josephine Rotch, the daughter of Arthur and Helen (née Ludington)
Rotch, on June 21, 1929. Within two months of their marriage, however, Josephine
resumed her affair with Harry Crosby, the American heir, bon vivant, poet, and publisher. On the 10th of December that year she
and Crosby were found dead in an apparent murder suicide.
Two years later, Albert
married Sylvia Weld, daughter of Rudolph and Sylvia Caroline (née Parsons)
Weld, on September 10, 1931; and they had three daughters, Lisa, Kate, and
Mary, their youngest, who died when she was seven months old.
Peace
Movement
Prior to his
involvement in the peace
movement,
Bigelow served in the United States Navy during World
War II,
first as commander of a submarine chaser patrolling the Solomon
Islands,
and later as captain of the destroyer escort Dale W. Peterson. On
August 6, 1945, Bigelow was on the bridge of the Peterson as
it sailed into Pearl
Harbor,
when he heard news of the explosion of
the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.
He resigned from the US Naval Reserve a month before becoming eligible for his
pension.
In 1948, Bigelow's
wife, Sylvia, joined the Religious Society of Friends. Bigelow joined in 1955. It was through
the Society of Friends that Albert and Sylvia came to house two of the Hiroshima
Maidens:
young Japanese women, severely disfigured by the effects of the atomic bomb,
who were brought to the United States to undergo plastic surgery in 1955.
Bigelow was humbled by the experience, in particular by his realization that the
two young women “harbored no resentment against us or other Americans.”
Bigelow became involved
with the American Friends Service Committee in the mid-1950s, attempting to
deliver a 17,411 signature petition, opposing atmospheric nuclear tests, to
the White
House via Maxwell
M. Rabb, Cabinet
Secretary.
Repeated attempts to gain an appointment with Rabb were unsuccessful, leading
Bigelow to conclude that other measures must be taken.
On August 6, 1957, on
the 12th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Bigelow and twelve other
members of the newly formed Committee for Non-Violent Action were arrested when they attempted
to enter the Camp Mercury nuclear test site in Nevada, as part of a nonviolent vigil against the testing. The
following day, they returned and sat with their backs towards the site as the
nuclear test took place.
Sailing
the Golden Rule
In February, 1958,
Bigelow set sail for the Eniwetok Proving Ground, the Atomic Energy
Commission's atmospheric test site in the Marshall
Islands,
in the Golden Rule, a 30-foot (9 m) ketch. He was accompanied by crew
members James Peck, George Willoughby, William R. Huntington, and Orion Sherwood. The voyage had been deliberately and
widely publicized, and while the Golden Rule was en route
to Hawaii, the Atomic Energy Commission hastily
issued a regulation banning US citizens from sailing into the Proving Grounds.
When they arrived in
Hawaii, the crew of the Golden Rule were issued a court
summons, resulting in a temporary injunction against any attempt to sail to the
test site. Bigelow chose to break the injunction on May 1, but the Golden
Rule was intercepted by the US Coast Guard only five nautical miles
(9 km) from Honolulu. A second attempt on June 4 was also unsuccessful—the
crew were arrested, charged with contempt of court and sentenced to sixty days
in jail.
But while the Golden
Rule was docked in Honolulu, Bigelow and crew had met Earle and Barbara Reynolds. Earle L. Reynolds was an anthropologist who had visited Hiroshima to study
the effects of the atomic bomb on Japanese society. Hearing of the plight of
the Golden Rule, Earle and Barbara were inspired to take their own
nonviolent action, and later that year their yacht, the Phoenix of Hiroshima became the first vessel to enter a
nuclear test zone in protest when they sailed sixty-five nautical miles into
the test area at Bikini
Atoll. Earle
was arrested and sentenced to six months in jail.
In 1959, Bigelow
published a book, Voyage of the Golden Rule which
documented his journey. Bigelow's story would go on to inspire fellow
Quaker Marie Bohlen to suggest the use of a similar
tactic to members of the Vancouver-based Don't Make a Wave Committee (later to become Greenpeace) in 1970.
Bigelow continued to
take part in non-violent protests during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and
was a participant in the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress on Racial Equality in 1961.
In his later years
(1971–1975), he was a trustee to The Meeting School, a Quaker school in Rindge, New Hampshire. [From
an article in Wikipedia.]
The Golden Rule Shall
Sail Again
By Arnold
(Skip) Oliver
Reprinted with permission from © Friends Journal
July 31, 2013. To subscribe: www.friendsjournal.org
“What Golden Rule said was, ‘We are not telling you WHAT
to think, but we are saying, in the most dramatic way we can, that there is a
NEED to think.’” Albert S. Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule,
1959.
Sailors dream of boats.
We conjure up images about the craft that is a thing of utter beauty, sails
perfectly, and will carry us to magical places. Some of these dreams are
readily achievable, while others are less realistic, if not downright quixotic.
This is a story about a sailboat dream that is right up Don Quixote’s alley.
Those of us who dream
about the historic ketch Golden Rule may be a
bit less realistic than most. On the other hand, the Rule has
stirred the imaginations of people ranging far across space and time—from
Hiroshima to Connecticut, and the 1950s up to the present. The boat is unusual,
and her history even more so.
Let’s start with the
history. The Golden Rule was the very first
of the environmental and peace vessels to go to sea. In 1958, a crew of
anti-nuclear weapons activists set sail aboard her in an attempt to interpose
themselves and the boat between the U.S. Government and its atmospheric testing
of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
At that time both the
U.S. and the Soviet Union were conducting aboveground tests of very large
nuclear weapons, which produced readily detectable clouds of radioactive
fallout that wafted around the planet. Radiation contamination began to turn up
in cows’ and mothers’ milk. Public concern grew, and for the first time many
middle-class Americans began to wonder if their government knew what it was
doing.
In 1958, the Golden Rule sailed from San Pedro toward the U.S.
nuclear test zone at Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, but she never made
it that far. She was twice boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard at Hawaii, and the
crew were arrested, tried, and jailed in Honolulu. But, far from being
defeated, their example helped to ignite a storm of world-wide public outrage
against nuclear weapons that resulted in the Limited Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty of 1963, and which has continued down to the present in the many organizations
still working to abolish weapons of mass destruction.
The example set by
the Golden Rule and her crew was also the inspiration
for subsequent environmental and peace voyagers and craft that followed in her
wake including the Phoenix of Hiroshima, and
later Greenpeace and the Sea
Shepherds.
The 50-foot Colin
Archer-style ketch Phoenix of Hiroshima,
whose owners met Albert S. Bigelow and his crew in Honolulu, was the next boat
to carry the mission forward. She sailed to the Marshalls that same year and
successfully entered the test zone in protest. The horrors of nuclear war were
issues close to the heart of the Phoenix’s skipper,
Dr. Earle L. Reynolds. He had been sent to Hiroshima by the U.S. government
after World War II to study the effects of nuclear fallout on the growth and
development of surviving Japanese children, and was deeply affected by the
experience.
The connection to the
environmental organization Greenpeace is direct. At a Vancouver meeting of
activists in the late 1960s, Marie Bohlen, an American inspired by the Golden Rule’s exploits,
suggested a protest voyage toward the U.S. nuclear test site in the Aleutian
Islands. The rusty trawler Phyllis Cormack,
renamedGreenpeace for the protest, soon headed north and Greenpeace was launched.
Just as importantly, the
use of nonviolent direct action as a basic guiding principle of the Golden Rule’s crew would also influence future
generations of activists. The seas of the world have never been quite the same
since.
It is in their memory of
her crew, and the causes that they helped to inspire, that the Veterans For
Peace have vowed that the Golden Rule shall
again ride the waves of peace.
The Original Crew
A former U.S. naval
lieutenant commander, Bigelow was among those most alarmed by nuclear weapons.
In 1945, he had had a moment of epiphany when he heard the news of the nuclear
destruction of Hiroshima. “It was then,” he recalled, “that I realized for the
first time that morally war is impossible.” Later, in the 1950s, he joined the
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and adopted their principles of
nonviolence.
Bigelow had also been
deeply affected by his family’s experience hosting several of the “Hiroshima
Maidens,” women who had come to the U.S. for medical treatment after being
terribly injured in the nuclear blasts over Japan in 1945. Bigelow firmly
believed that the nuclear arms race was nothing more than a “race to
extinction” that had to be stopped.
Deciding that action was
called for, he and others joined the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear
Policy (SANE) in 1957. At first, SANE went through normal channels, petitioning
the U.S. Government and requesting meetings with officials. When that strategy
brought no result, it was decided that more direct action was called for. Thus
was born the voyage of the Golden Rule, and the
age of the modern protest vessel.
In keeping with their
Quaker beliefs, Bigelow and the others came up with what was then a novel
approach: they would sail a small craft into the test zone in the Marshall
Islands, risking their own lives to do so. At the same time, they determined
that their protest would not be done in secret, but in the full light of day;
and that a basic principle of their actions should be the fullest respect for
the humanity of their opponents. In January of 1958, they wrote President
Eisenhower of their plans.
“How do you reach men,”
Bigelow wrote, “when all the horror is in the fact that they feel no horror? It
requires, we believe, the kind of effort and sacrifice that we now undertake.”
It is easy to focus on
Bigelow when describing the voyage of the Golden Rule. He was,
after all, the author of the book by that name. But he would have been the
first to point out that the other crew members were noteworthy in their own
right, and that was indeed the case.
William Huntington was
an architect, a Quaker, an international aid official with the American Friends
Service Committee, and a Quaker representative to the United Nations. He had
been a conscientious objector during World War II and was an experienced sailor.
George Willoughby was also a well-known peace activist, a nonviolent war
resister who seemed always to be at the center of the action. He went on to
co-found Peace Brigades International and the Philadelphia-based Movement for a
New Society, dedicated to nonviolent social transformation.
At 28 years of age,
Orion Sherwood was the youngest of the Golden Rule’s crew,
and the only Methodist. Prior to that, he had been a teacher at a Friends
school in Poughkeepsie, New York. Known for his gentle disposition, he was also
a graduate engineer, and had studied for the ministry. After the voyage, he
returned to teaching at a Friends school in New Hampshire.
James Peck, although not
a Quaker, had been a long-time practitioner of nonviolent direct action, a
conscientious objector in World War II, and a fierce advocate of racial
equality. He fought for civil rights for African Americans while in prison during
the war, and in the U.S. Navy and merchant marine. In 1938, he was a founder of
what would later become the National Maritime Union. Peck joined the crew in
Hawaii.
Both Peck and Bigelow
later were among the original 13 Freedom Riders who in 1961 risked their lives
to desegregate interstate public transportation in the American South. Peck was
savagely beaten by a Ku Klux Klan mob, and Bigelow placed his own body between
a mob and John Lewis, absorbing some of the blows intended for the man who
would later become one of Georgia’s U.S. representatives. Lewis recounted the
story at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. In 1961, “Albert Bigelow and
I tried to enter a white waiting room, we were met by an angry mob that beat us
and left us lying in a pool of blood. Some police officers came up and asked us
whether we wanted to press charges. We said, ‘No, we come in peace, love, and
nonviolence.’”
Bigelow appears to have
been the only member of the Golden Rule’s crew who later remained passionate about the sea
and sailing. Returning home to Cos Cob, Connecticut, he became a painter along
mostly nautical themes. A number of his works are among the holdings of the
Mystic Seaport Museum. He continued to sail and teach the sport. In 1993, the
Southern Massachusetts Sailing Association established an award in his honor,
to the junior sailor with an “enthusiasm for fair sailing.”
The Boat is Lost Then Found
The nonviolent action
group sold Golden Rule in Hawaii late in
1958. Her whereabouts after that are somewhat unclear until she later turned up
in Eureka, California, in a state of bad neglect—so much so that she finally
sank in a storm in 2010. She was raised from the depths by shipyard owner Leroy
Zerlang.
Zerlang has had a
lifelong love affair with Humboldt Bay’s history and its classic wooden boats.
Among his many projects are the local maritime museum, and its 100-year-old
tour boat Madaket which, built in 1910,
is the last of the Humboldt ferries and the oldest passenger vessel in
continuous service in the United States. Zerlang also takes in strays at
the boatyard including dogs and cats, a horse, Gilou the goat, and even the odd
political scientist (that would be me). He has a gruff exterior, beneath which
lies an equally gruff interior. Although not much of a peacenik, he is coming
around.
So given that
background, it should hardly be surprising that when the badly neglected Golden Rule sank in a storm in 2010 off Zerlang’s
boatyard, he decided to raise her and find people who would restore the boat to
her former glory. After doing some research on the boat’s background, he was
startled to learn that the Golden Rule had
played an important role in the history of the Cold War. He put some feelers
out and was contacted by the Smithsonian Institute, several historians, and
finally by Veterans For Peace.
One day in 2010,
longtime Veterans For Peace activists (and non-sailors) Fredy and Sherry
Champagne wandered into the Zerlang boatyard. They had heard something vague
about a peace boat in need of restoration at that location. Fredy swears that,
when he put his hand on her keel, the boat spoke to him, asking for another
life. Wandering over to a somewhat puzzled looking Zerlang (they had never
met), Fredy and Sherry asked whether he would provide yard space and
facilities if the Veterans For Peace did the restoration. They shook hands on
the spot, and thus began the revival of the Golden Rule.
In an eerie coincidence,
the Phoenix of Hiroshima was also discovered sunk and
neglected in California waters in 2010. She was at the bottom of the Sacramento
River, gutted and mastless, discovered as a result of an ad on
Craigslist (Free: 50-foot yacht!). The Reynolds family and others are organizing
an effort to raise and restore the boat.
The Restorers
The Golden Rule restoration team is an eclectic mix of
sailors, shipwrights, historic boat lovers, and peaceniks.
The project’s master
shipwright is David Peterson, widely acknowledged to be the most talented
wooden boat restorer on Humboldt Bay. He advises boatwright Breckin Van
Veldhuizen, a recent graduate of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding
near Port Townsend, Washington. Although a stranger to anti-nuclear activism,
she loves sailing and working with wood and boats. To her, the three words that
every woman should most want to hear are, “Let’s go sailing!”
The swizzle that stirs
the Golden Rule Project cocktail is Navy veteran Chuck
DeWitt, the restoration coordinator. DeWitt puts countless hours into making
sure that the necessary tools and supplies are available to the team working on
the boat. He is also involved in fundraising and publicity. Among his other
pursuits are volunteering for the Humboldt Baykeepers in their efforts to
preserve and protect coastal resources, and taking part in a weekly Veterans
For Peace vigil outside the Humboldt County courthouse in Eureka on Friday
evenings. He’s been doing that for nearly ten years, having been outraged by
the events leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Former high school
all-American linebacker, Mike Gonzalez of Trinidad began volunteering in
mid-2012. As a talented wood sculptor and sailor, he brings much-needed skills
to the project. If you ask him why he volunteers, he responds that he is a big
believer in “peace, love, and freedom,” and that to him sailing and theGolden Rule embody all three. He dreams of sailing
out of Humboldt Bay on a new mission of peace.
The Golden Rule’s welding and metal fabricating are ably
handled by Dennis Thompson, a retiree from the military who lives aboard Andromeda, a 44-foot steel-hulled sloop that he built
and welded by himself.Andromeda is docked at the
city marina in Eureka.
As of this writing
(April 2012) the restoration is moving ahead briskly. Volunteers and
shipwrights are on the job almost daily. The hull has been replanked and
faired, coated with primer, and is nearly ready for final painting. A new
Yanmar diesel engine has been purchased, and a new prop, shaft, and bearing box
are on-hand and ready to install. A new stainless-steel fuel tank has been
fabricated and installed. Fore and aft bulkheads are in, and the cabin roof and
decks are complete.
The wooden spars (main
and mizzen mast, booms and gaffs) are being built, and the rudder and
tiller are being restored. The interior is starting to go in, along with the
electrical system. Captain Zerlang is even building a small foundry to make a new
ship’s bell and other hardware. While much remains to be done, tremendous
progress has already been made.
There is a good chance
that the re-launch of the restored Golden Rule will
take place in 2013. As date of the completion of the restoration project
approaches, the excitement at the boatyard is palpable.
The Original Boat
The Golden Rule is a Hugh Angelman and Charles
Davies-designed Alpha-30 ketch. The hull was constructed in Costa Rica, and the
final build was by Les Marsh’s “Posami” company in San Pedro around 1957. In
his book, The Voyage of the Golden Rule,
Bigelow described the boat as a “character vessel,” with a “jaunty, rakish
look.” She is a ketch with a gaff-rigged main and masts raked sharply aft. The
engine was a 25-horsepower “Atomic 4,” a name that gave rise to humorous
consternation among the anti-nuclear crew.
Like all sailboats,
the Golden Rule design was the product of compromises,
with its particular limitations and flaws. Bigelow noted that it had been built
with coastal cruising in mind; and the built-in ice chest, large cockpit, and
sink were not ideal for blue water passages. The long bowsprit added looks and
character to the boat, but entailed additional risk to the crew.
More seriously, the
gaff-rigged mainsail could not be permanently stayed aft, which resulted in a
slack forestay and mediocre sailing to windward. The rig’s design made it
difficult to stay the masts to the rear, and serious chafe issues were the
result. Somehow, during construction, limber holes had not been drilled in the
bilge frames, which meant that standing water became trapped, and the boat
could not be pumped dry. In spite of these issues, Bigelow called the Golden Rule a “stout and able vessel” that served
them well.
The End of the Beginning
The restoration of
historic sailing craft is new to Veterans For Peace, and we are still working
to get our minds around the idea. But to this nonviolent group, the Golden Rule is such an important symbol of
resistance to war that we believe she is worthy of preservation. Thus,
the Golden Rule restoration was adopted as a national
project of Veterans For Peace in 2012.
With the able help of
many volunteers and supporters, the goal is to refloat the Golden Rule in 2013 and launch a ten-year voyage
in opposition to war and militarism, as well as to illuminate a key chapter of
American history.
After all, if one is
going to dream of boats, why dream small? Among other peace- and
justice-oriented goals, part of the mission of Veterans For Peace is to work to
abolish war as an instrument of U.S. national policy. For the Golden Rule Project, these two dreams are
irrefutably intertwined.
The website at VFPGoldenRuleProject.org has information on where
to donate, other items that are needed, and updates on the progress of the
restoration. This is a report on the launch, which took place on June 20, 2014.
· On June 20, hundreds
of spectators watched Golden Rule splash into Humboldt Bay from Zerlang &
Zerlang Boat Yard in Samoa, CA, where she has been lovingly restored by
Veterans For Peace and other supporters for the past five years.
· Especially honored at
the event were Leroy and Dalene Zerlang, owners of the boat yard and Chuck
DeWitt, Restoration Coordinator. Without their tireless efforts, this would
never have happened.
· Special guests
included
· Orion Sherwood, the
only surviving member of the original crew, who rodeGolden Rule with his
hat waving across the bay to the Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center
· Sally Willowbee,
daughter of original crew member George Willoughby
· Kitty Bigelow Benton,
daughter of original captain Albert Bigelow
· Shigeko Sasamori, Hiroshima
survivor who along with 24 other “Hiroshima Maidens” came to the US for
reconstructive surgery and inspired generations of Quakers and other friends to
work for a world where NEVER AGAIN will atomic weapons be used
· Jessica Reynolds
Renshaw, original crew member of Phoenix of Hiroshima, who along with her
parents and two brothers completed the journey that Golden Rule started – into
the nuclear bomb test zone at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. The family
later sailed to Russia to protest against their nuclear bomb testing.
· Hundreds of supporters
greeted Golden Rule when she arrived at the Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center in
Eureka.
· We heard from Robert
Gould of Physicians For Social Responsibility about the dangers of radiation
from all sources along the nuclear path – from uranium mining, nuclear weapons,
nuclear power plants, and the waste produced all along the way.
· Mary Sweeters of
Greenpeace talked about how Golden Rule was the inspiration for the founders of
Greenpeace and other boats now involved in non-violent direct action for
nuclear abolition, peace, and a safe, clean environment.
· Ann Wright, a retired
Colonel who resigned her post with the State Department in protest of the Iraq
War, sent a message of solidarity from Greece, where she is preparing for Gaza
Flotilla 3 to stop Israel’s blockade of Palestine.
· There were oral
histories given by
· Shigeko Sasamori,
Atomic bomb survivor and Hiroshima Maiden
· Orion Sherwood,
original Golden Rule crew member
· Bradford Lyttle,
Pacifist and a fundamental member of the Committee for Non-Violent Action that
started the original Golden Rule project
· Jessica Renshaw and
Ted Reynolds, daughter and son of Earle and Barbara Reynolds whose whole family
sailed in their boat, Phoenix of Hiroshima, not only to the Marshall Islands
nuclear test area but also to Russia to protest nuclear testing there
· David McReynolds of
War Resistors League and close friend of crewmen George Willoughby and Jim Peck
· Kitty Bigelow Benton,
daughter of Captain Bigelow of the original Golden Rule crew.
· Sally Willowbee,
daughtrer of crewman George Willoughby of the original Golden Rule crew.
Plans are under way to
sail the Golden Rule to ports along with West Coast and beyond, demonstrating
for an end to war and militarism. The spirit of Albert Bigelow and the Golden Rule lives on!
