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."
Construction and launch
Named for the mythological bird which rises from the ashes of its own destruction, the Phoenix was built near Hiroshima and launched May 5, 1954. It was designed by Dr. Earle L. Reynolds (1910–1998), an anthropologist who had been sent to Hiroshima by the National Academy of Sciences to research the effects of the first atomic bomb on the physical growth and development of surviving Japanese children (1951–1954). In Oriental mythology the Phoenix is a bird which appears only in time of universal peace. Dr. Reynolds patterned the 50-foot (15 m), double-ended ketch on the Colin Archer design used for sturdy Norwegian fishing vessels. The boat rose symbolically from the ashes of the city destroyed by the first atomic bomb but it also rose, over the period of a year and a half, from the small unprepossessing shipyard of Mr. Yotsuda in Miyajimaguchi, across the Inland Sea of Japan from the famous Miyajima Shrine. Until approached by Reynolds, Yotsuda had only built sampans and was struggling to recover financially from the second World War. The boat was originally constructed entirely of native Japanese woods. (In 1956, the mainmast became infested with borer-type insects and was replaced in Auckland with one of native New Zealand kauri pine.) It was double-planked, mahogany over hinoki (cypress). The hull was hinoki above the water line, sugi (cryptomeria cedar) below. The cabins below decks consisted of mahogany, camphor, cherry, chestnut and Japanese cabinet woods.
Voyage around the world, 1954–1958 When Dr. Reynolds finished the first three years of what was intended to be a longitudinal study interrupted by a one-year sabbatical, he and his family (wife Barbara Leonard Reynolds, second son Ted, 16, daughter Jessica, 10, and three Hiroshima yachtsmen) sailed the Phoenix around the world. Ted navigated the 30-ton vessel, using calculations from sun shots made with a hand-held sextant. The trip extended past the one year allotted and for a number of reasons, Reynolds did not resume his job in Hiroshima.
The first leg of the circumnavigation, from Japan to Hawaii, took 48 days, most of which were rough and stormy. It was followed by ideal sailing weather to and through the South Seas: Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, Tahaa and Bora Bora in the Society Islands; Rarotonga, American Samoa, Fiji. From there they sailed to New Zealand (Auckland and Wellington); Australia (Sydney, the Great Barrier Reef, Cairns); Indonesia (Bali, Java). They weathered a typhoon off the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, touched in at Rodrigues and Mauritius and changed course to round the tip of South Africa (Durban, Cape Town) rather than go through the Mediterranean during the Suez Crisis; Brazil (Fortaleza); the east coast of the United States from New York, then south to the West Indies. They went through the Panama Canal to the Galapagos Islands, where they traded six packages of instant powdered milk, one can of shortening and two bottles of hot pepper sauce for a Galapagos tortoise, 11x11 inches across the shell, naming him Jonathan Mushmouth. (They had a legal permit issued in Ecuador, to take "two of every kind" of animal from the islands.) Years later they gave Jonathan to the Hanshin Zoo in Osaka, Japan, the zoo's first Galapagos tortoise. The Reynolds family expected Jonathan to outlive them but he died in the 1980s.
Hijacking of the Valinda In the Galapagos the Phoenix just missed being hijacked by escaped convicts. The Historical Chronology of the Galapagos, 1535–2000 records that in February 1958, "The Phoenix, with Earle Reynolds, his wife Barbara, their children, Jessica and Ted and a Japanese crewmember arrived at Wreck Bay." They went on to Academy Bay where they found the French yacht Cle Du Sol, and just missed a previously arranged meeting with the American yacht Valinda. Convicts living in the penal colony on Isabela Island were asked to prepare a celebration on February 12 but on the 9th they revolted with stolen weapons and took the guards prisoners. The convicts boarded two fishing boats, the Teresita and the Ecuador. At Punta Moreno they took possession of the Viking. They then went to Santiago Island where they captured the Valinda belonging to William Rhodes Hervey Jr. They reached the continent on the 17th and abandoned ship at Esmeraldas but were eventually captured by the police. The Phoenix and Valinda had scheduled a rendezvous in James Bay on San Salvador Island on February 16. The Phoenix was there and waited all day but the Valinda never showed up. Months later, Earle read in a back issue of Life Magazine that the Valinda had arrived in James Bay the night before ("while we were all asleep aboard the Phoenix, five miles away around the point") but was then hijacked by the 21 escapees from the penal colony who forced the crew to sail to Ecuador. Unaware of their close call, the Reynoldses proceeded on to the Marquesas and back to Hawaii. Two of the three Japanese men flew back to Japan from Panama. First mate Niichi (Nick) Mikami remained with the Phoenix. After 645 days, 1222 ports and 54,000 nautical miles (100,000 km), the Phoenix once again sailed into Honolulu harbor.
Voyage to protest nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, 1958
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