The Bear on the Bering Sea Patrol: A Revenue Cutter That Served All of Alaska

A U.S. Coast Survey field party in Siberia, carried there by the cutter Bear. NOAA.

Hear the rattle of the windlass as our anchor comes aweigh,
We are bound to old Point Barrow and we make our start today …

So wrote an anonymous veteran of the Bering Sea Patrol, which revenue cutters began in 1874 and which the Revenue Cutter Bear sailed every year. Each patrol covered 15,000 to 20,000 miles. Conditions were harsh, stressful and at times deadly — crew members of the Bear lie buried in the Aleutian Islands — and the sailors knew long stretches of boredom broken by moments of terror. Coast Guard historian William H. Thiesen told the Bear's Alaska story.

Seals and poachers

When Alaska became a U.S. territory in 1867, the revenue cutters' main jobs were supporting the U.S. Coast Survey, helping set up a territorial government, and protecting endangered fur seal herds from poachers. Cutters patrolled the Pribilof Islands and seized poaching vessels of every nationality. The Bear enforced sealing rules into the early 1900s, and in 1892 she was on hand when the seizure of British sealing ships nearly led to armed conflict between the United States and Great Britain.

An 1892 chart of the Pribilof Islands with the Bear’s cruising tracks, signed by Captain Michael Healy and his navigator. NOAA.

The whole federal government, afloat

For decades Alaska had no roads or railways, so the cutters were the main federal presence there, and they took on every task. On Captain Michael Healy's 1891 cruise alone, the Bear:

• found witnesses for a murder case;
• ferried reindeer from Siberia to Alaska;
• took Alaska's governor on a tour of the islands;
• carried a U.S. Geological Survey team to Mount Saint Elias;
• brought lumber and supplies for schools in remote places and the Arctic, and delivered teachers to their posts;
• carried the mail;
• enforced the sealing laws and supported a Coast and Geodetic Survey team;
• gave medical help to Native communities, made rescues, and enforced federal law.

In 1908 the Revenue Cutter Service took over enforcing all of Alaska's game laws. Later the Bear also carried the "Court Cruise", bringing judges, public defenders, clerks and marshals to criminal cases around the territory.

Native Alaskans on the Bear’s main deck. U.S. Coast Guard.

"The fire canoe with no whiskey"

The Bear's help reached Native communities in many ways, from better nutrition to cutting off the illegal liquor used to exploit Native people. They called her Omiak puck pechuck tonika, "the fire canoe with no whiskey". And she helped individuals too. As Revenue Cutter Service historian Stephen Evans wrote, "neither class, race, nor creed made any difference to the Bear; degree of stress was the sole controlling factor."

Nome, Alaska, during its gold rush, 1900. Library of Congress.

The Bear's long career ended far from Alaska; her wreck's discovery is told in Finding the Bear.

Sources

• William H. Thiesen, U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area, "Bear — Tamer of Alaska's Wild Frontier," NOAA Ocean Exploration; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Images from NOAA, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Library of Congress; a painting whose artist is not named is left out.