In February 1958, Albert Bigelow and the crew of the Golden Rule were intercepted by the US Coast Guard five nautical miles (9 km) from Honolulu, Hawaii, as they attempted to sail their vessel into the Eniwetok Proving Grounds, the US test site in the Marshall Islands.
The voyage of the Golden Rule inspired anthropologist Earle L. Reynolds and his family to undertake a similar journey, and on 1 July 1958, their yacht, Phoenix of Hiroshima, entered the test zone at Bikini Atoll.
The Phoenix penetrated 65 nautical miles (120 km) into the test area before the vessel was boarded by the Coast Guard and ordered to sail to Kwajalein atoll, where Reynolds was charged with violating the Atomic Energy Commission's new regulation.
In 1958, a CNVA group from Philadelphia travelled to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to raise consciousness and to convince locals to oppose the construction of Atlas missile sites at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base.
In particular, it was the example set by the voyages of the Golden Rule and the Phoenix that would inspire the first Greenpeace activists to use similar methods in their campaigns to halt nuclear testing at the island of Amchitka, Alaska, and at Muraroa Atoll in the Pacific.