A ship promoting peace, which is currently docked in Buffalo, will be making its way to Dunkirk on Wednesday.

Veterans For Peace have recovered and restored the original peace ship, the Golden Rule, that set sail in 1958 to stop nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, and which inspired the many peace makers and peace ships that followed.

The reborn Golden Rule is sailing once more, to show that nuclear abolition is possible, and that bravery and tenacity can overcome militarism.

The Golden Rule crew spreads the word about the continuing dangers of nuclear power, and the poisoning of the air, water and soil from the entire nuclear cycle, from uranium mining to the disposal of nuclear waste.

“There is lots of excitement and many people are stepping up to help make the Golden Rule voyages successful,” said Helen Jaccard, Golden Rule Project Manager.

On Sunday, the ship sailed into Buffalo and was featured in a number of events that continue through tonight. It will then head west on Wednesday and arriving in Dunkirk before the evening.

It will leave for Erie on Thursday morning and arrive in the Pennsylvania city in the afternoon.

According to Veterans for Peace, 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. A week into the voyage the starboard jaw of the gaff broke. The repair was done, but a gale, the worse in 20 years, quickly followed.