A GREAT RESCUE

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 18 September 1934, Page 7

A GREAT RESCUE

THE GREELY EXPEDITION FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY BEAR OF OAKLAND’S PART. Weather-worn and scarred by many years' of service, the American barquentine Bear of Oakland lies in Dunedin Harbour awaiting the summer months, when she will be headed into the waters of the Antarctic to assist in bringing back to civilisation the Byrd Expedition, now wintering in Little America. There are few more storied ships afloat than this little 60-year-old vessel, and it is now just over a century since she took part in the rescue of the; Greely Expedition in the little-known waters of North Greenland. The relief of Lieutenant Greely 's depleted party in the summer months of ISB4 brought to a close one of the most stirring tales of hardship ever endured by men. Seven survivors alone out of 25 who had made the original party were picked up by the Bear —seven men who had been obliged to wait through the long winter months of 1883-84 when the relief ship, promised in ISB3> failed to reach them. •

Time and again the Bear has played an important part in rescuing isolated exploration and whaling expeditions. In all, there are probably one hundred cases in which she has been instrumental in saving life. There was the tremendous undertaking in 1597 when 265 men were brought back from North Alaska and when eight whalers were ice-bound in the dead of winter off Point Barrow.

HER FIRST RESCUE. The Bear’s first commission as a relief ship was to pick up the Greely expedition. She had been launched in 1874 at Greenoch, Scotland, and till that time had been engaged in whaling and sealing from Dundee, stoutly built of oak and sheathed with ironbark, little different from what she is to-day. At a cost of 100,000 dollars, the United States Government bought her and fitted her out to penetrate the iceheavy waters of Davis Strait and Baffin’s' Bay. The previous year a ship had been promised to bring back the Greely party, but it failed to reach them' or to land supplies at a prearranged point south or Fort Conger, several hundred miles to the north of the spot where the survivors were finally picked up. Lieutenant Adolphus Washington. Greely had been appointed in ISBI to establish at Lady Franklin B;w what was called the American circumpolar station. During the . two years at Fort Conger he carried on extensive explorations of Ellesmere Land and the Greenland coast, and with the assistance of his two lieutenants, Lockwood and Brainard, wrested from Great Britain the record which it had held for many years. Greely reached S3deg. 24 min. north, which bettered the British best by four miles ami, gave the United States a record which was not exceeded for more than a decade. Of the seven men who were | picked up by the Bear and the Thetis one later died from frost-bite. Greely tells in his “Three Years of Arctic Service’’ a moving tale of the miseries he and his companions endured.

TO THE HELP OF WHALERS. Now an American ship, the Bear was commissioned in the Revenue Cutter Service for duty in the Bering -Sea, the Arctic Ocean, and along the Alaskan coast. She figured largely in the •Klondike gold rush, and was also engaged Th keeping a watchful eye upon the movements of whalers in the north. What was perhaps the greatest rescue feat ever accomplished in the Arctic was the 1807 triumph noted previously. The whaling fleets had returned to San Francisco late in the year, bringing with them the serious news that eight of their number had become locked in the ice off Cape North, the remotest part of northern Alaska.

The Bear was. then in Seattle, and was ordered away to the assistance of the isolated whalers. It was the first time that a vessel had headed to the north from a west coast port at that time of year, and the Bear was hurriedly stocked with emergency provisions ond manned by a volunteer crew. For the whole journey she was beset • with countless difficulties, and only after a long and bitter struggle did the rescuing party reach Cape Vancouver. From there three of the company went ashore and started a heart-breaking overland trip of 1200 miles in- the teeth of the Arctic winter. At Cape Prince of Wales, the nearest, point of land to Siberia on the eastern side of Bering Strait, a herd of reindeer was gathered together and driven the rest of th'e way to Point Barrow, a journey through hundreds of miles of barren •wasteland and fastnesses of snow. They made the cruel trek in 120 days —ten miles a day—eventually reaching the starving sailors, who had been driven to the last extremity of boiling down their boot-leather for soup.

The Bear lias figured in many such epic rescues, and has perhaps carried more internationally-fanious men and explorers than any other ship afloat—men such as Stefa nssen, Amundsen, Hrdlicka, and General Funston as a botanist.

VISIT TO WELLINGTON. She arrived at Wellington on January (5 of this year. Having been delayed many days on her long trip from Boston to join the Jacob Ruppert, flagship of the Byrd Expedition, which had already set out for the Bay of Whales. "It was the first time she had ever been in the Southern Hemisphere. As an icepilot she carried Captain B. Johansen, a Norwegian who -has Fad extensive experience in the Arctie and who was ■with Admiral Byrd’s first expedition to the south on the City of . New

York. Lieutenant R. A. .T. English was in command.

After pausing in Wellington only long enough to pick up stores and equipment for the expedition, the Bear sailed in the tracks of the Jacob Ruppert and, after landing her cargo at Little America, returned to Dunedin, where she is now laid up until the summer months. Recently a huge fir log was landed at Auckland and shipped' south to be used as a new foremast on the Bear.

To all intents ami purposes the Bear was rescued from a nautical junk-shop iu act with the Byrd Expedition, for she was retired from the United States Coastguard Service in .1927, and was awarded by Congress to the City of Oakland, California, to be used as a marine museum. She still carries the (31b guns amidships which were installed when she was first transferred to the Revenue Cutter Service. It was not the intention of the Byrd Expedition to make any use of these guns, but it would have required Congress legislation in the States to remove them. So they were left. At the bow remains the small white figure of a bear from which the ship derives her

name.. The. vessel’s bows are more than three feet thick, capable of standing terrific stresses from the ice; in fact, far more suitable for ice navigation than the steamer Jacob Ruppert, a steel ship of 5645 tons. Sixty years old, and in a few months heading once more to the lee Barrier! The Bear of Oakland is indeed one of the most interesting ships afloat, and her story, were it ever completely .recorded, would be one of the epic tales of the sea. There could perhaps be no better tribute to the wonderful wdrk of her Scottish builders.