Banishing the demons of war plank by rotten plank

In Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Jane Brax­ton Lit­tle writes about the restora­tion of one of the most sto­ried protest boats of the twen­ti­eth century:

The Gold­en Rule project is an improb­a­ble accom­plish­ment by unlike­ly vol­un­teers. Mem­bers of Vet­er­ans For Peace, they are a mot­ley bunch that might have appalled the orig­i­nal crew, all con­sci­en­tious Quak­ers. They smoke, drink and swear like the sailors, though most of them are not. Aging and per­pet­u­al­ly strapped for mon­ey, the most­ly retired men sought to ban­ish their war-related demons as they ripped out rot­ten wood and replaced it plank by pur­ple­heart plank.

Friends Jour­nal ran an arti­cle by Jane, Restor­ing the Gold­en Rule,  back in 2011 when the VFP vol­un­teers first con­tem­plat­ed restora­tion, and a longer fol­lowup by Arnold (Skip) Oliv­er in 2013, The Gold­en Rule Shall Sail Again. Of course, the cool thing about work­ing at a estab­lished mag­a­zine is that it was easy for me to dip into the archives and find and com­pile our 1958 cov­er­age of the ship’s famous first voy­age.

You ca fol­low more about the restora­tion work on the VFP Gold­en Rule web­site or check out pic­tures from the re-launch on their Face­book page.

Golden-Rule-crew-1958

 

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