In 1978, Greenpeace launched the original "Rainbow Warrior", a , former fishing trawler named after the book "Warriors of the Rainbow", which inspired early activist Robert Hunter on the first voyage to Amchitka. Greenpeace purchased the "Rainbow Warrior" (originally launched as the "Sir William Hardy" in 1955) at a cost of £40,000. Volunteers restored and refitted it over a period of four months. First deployed to disrupt the hunt of the Icelandic whaling fleet, the "Rainbow Warrior" quickly became a mainstay of Greenpeace campaigns. Between 1978 and 1985, crew members also engaged in direct action against the ocean-dumping of toxic and radioactive waste, the grey seal hunt in Orkney and nuclear testing in the Pacific. In May 1985, the vessel was instrumental for 'Operation Exodus', the evacuation of about 300 Rongelap Atoll islanders whose home had been contaminated with nuclear fallout from a US nuclear test two decades earlier which had never been cleaned up and was still having severe health effects on the locals.