FAMOUS SHIP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 4, 5 January 1934, Page 12

FAMOUS SHIP.

BEAR OF OAKLAND.

GREELY RESCUE RECALLED.

CREW MOSTLY VOLUNTEERS.

(By Telegraph.—Otvd Correspondent.) NAPIER, this day. Episodes famous in American history are either directly linked or indirectly associated with the Bear of Oakland, the supply ship of the Byrd expedition to the Antarctic, which left Napier yesterday afternoon for Wellington. She is indeed a famous vessel. Outstanding in the ship's career was the expedition organised for the relief of the Greely expedition, the seven surviving members of which she rescued on the north-west coast of Greenland after tliey had spent nearly three years in the Arctic. Disease and the shortage of supplies had reduced the party from over twenty to seven, I and the survivors were on the point of starvation when the Bear rescued them. On that occasion she was commanded by Lieutenant W. Schley, of the U.S. Navy, who afterwards won fame at the battle of Santiago during the Spanish-American war. After this venture she was transferred to the Revenue Cutter Service for duty in the Behring Sea, the Arctic Ocean, and along the Alaskan coast. She figured in the Klondike gold rush and was also engaged in keeping an eye on the whalers in the north. What was perhaps the greatest rescue feat ever accomplished in the Arctic, and in the dead of winter, occurrer. during the return of the whaling fleets to San Francisco late in 1897 when word.that eight of their number, with 265 men aboard, were locked in the ice off Point Barrow, the farthest north point of Alaska. The Bear was then in Seattle, and was ordered away to the assistance of the. ice-bound whalers. It was the first time that any vessel had ever headed to the north from a west coast port at that time of year, and the Bear was hastily stocked with .emergency provisions and manned by a volunteer crew. Boot Leather For Soup. Following a bitter struggle she .finally reached Cape Vancouver. From there three of the company went ashore and started a heart-breaking overland journey of 1200 miles in the teeth of the Arctic winter. At Cape Prince of Wales a herd of reindeer was gathered together and driven the rest of the way to Point Barrow. They made the cruel trek in 120 days—ten miles a day— eventually reaching the starving sailors, who had been driven to the last resource of boiling down their boot leather for soup. The Bear has figured in many such rescues, and has carried more internationally famous explorers and men of science than perhaps any other ship afloat —men such as Stefansson, Amundsen, Hrdlicka, and General Funston as a botanist. Six years ago, when the Bear was retired from her Coastguard service, she was awarded by the United States Congress to the City of Oakland, California, to serve as a marine museum. Subsequently she was bought by Admiral Byrd, and alterations were made to her to suit the requirements of the expedition. Accommodation on deck and below was improved, but her oak hull, sheathed with ironbark as a protection against ice, remains the same as when she was launched at Greenock, Scotland, in 1874. She was originally built for whaling and s.ealing out of Dundee, and served in this trade for twelve years. Of the 34 members of the present crew, nearly 30 are volunteers, whose remuneration amounts to one cent per month, though they are provided with a spending allowance while the vessel is in port. The explanation is that the majority are young men, many of them college graduates, who have chosen to volunteer with 'the expedition rather than spend months of idleness in their own country while- it offers them no prospect of work. Before the ship sailed yesterday, the Mayor of- Napier, Mr. C. O. Morse, , and several councillors paid an informal call ■upon the captain, Lieutenant R. J. English, wishing him and his party every succesa in the Antarctic.