Albert Bigelow

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 (1906-1993) was the son of Albert Francis Bigelow (1880-1958), and Gladys Williams. He married his first wife, Josephine Rotch, the daughter of Arthur and Helen (née Ludington) Rotch, on 21 June 1929. She, however, had resumed her affair with Harry Crosby within two months of their marriage, and then, on 10 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 10 September 1931 and they had three daughters, Lisa, Kate, and Mary, their youngest, who died when she was seven months old. Albert's father was a partner in the Boston law firm Warren, Hogue & Bigelow from 1908-1914.

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".

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