Warship Wednesday, November 14
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk/dieselpunk navies of the 1866-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, November 14
Here we see a painting depicting the beautiful 198-foot United States Revenue Cutter Service Cutter Bear as she appeared around the 1890s. Built as a ocean-going sealing ship by Alexander Stephen & Son, Dundee, Scotland in 1874 (for which she was used for a decade as the SS Bear), she was bought by the US government in 1884 for use in the Arctic. Her Scottish builders had always meant for her to work in thick ocean ice chasing seals and as such she had a 6-inch thick oaken hull, sailing barquentine rig and steam auxiliary engines. Under the USRCS, and then after 1916 the USCG, the Bear served for 40 years as virtually the sole US government ship of any kind along the lawless 20,000 miles of Alaskan Territory coastline. Every year she would sail the Alaskan coastline during the spring and summer, returning to the piers of San Fransisco in the winter, refitting, and doing the same thing the next year.
She found the remnants of the Greely Expedition, helped assist the people of San Fransisco after the 1906 Earthquake, ran down poachers and smugglers, waved the flag in every inlet of the territory, protected the Gold Rush prospectors, and saved countless lives. In 1926 the Coast Guard laid her up but she was she spent the next 15 years used as a museum ship, a prop in movies, and by Admiral Byrd in one of his arctic expeditions.
On 11 September 1939, (ten days after Hitler marched into Poland) she was called back to service and, with a Navy crew (as the USS Bear, AG-28), sailed Greenland/Iceland waters in search of German weather stations and raiders during World War Two. She even captured an armed German auxiliary trawler at gunpoint. Not bad for a then-68 year old ship. She was decommissioned, 17 May 1944, and placed in mothballs. The Navy sold her in 1948 and she was used again as a sealer for another decade (as the FV Arctic Bear) then laid up once more.
Seen in WWII in USN service, note the J2F Duck Seaplane on her stern and stepped masts. Disregard the Norwegian armed trawler in the front. In her 89-year life, she served five in the Navy (including WWII), 42 in the Coast Guard (including WWI), and almost 30 years as a sealer, tramp cargo ship, floating museum, and relic.
In 1960 a Philadelphia businessman bought her to use as a restaurant, moored alongside the venerable ex-USS Olympia in downtown Philly. However, the old girl wasn’t putting up with that shit and on the tow down from Canada, she slipped her towline and took a plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean off Sable Island, the Graveyard of the Atlantic in 1963 where she remains today.
Her captain in the old days, Michael “Hell Roaring Mike” Healy, is remembered in the name of the USCGs newest cutter, and the Bear herself is the name of the lead ship of the 270-foot Medium Endurance Cutters commissioned in the 1980s.
Specs:
Displacement: 703 tons
Length: 198.5 ft (60.5 m)
Beam: 30 ft (9.1 m)
Draft: 18.8 ft (5.7 m)
Propulsion: 300 ihp compound steam engine, 1 screw
Range: Limited only by water and provisions
Complement: 51
Aircraft carried: Carried Barkley-Grow seaplane on Byrd Expedition III, 1942-44 one J2F-1 seaplane
Armarment (1885-1926) 3 x 6-pound rapid-fire guns, (1941-44) Unknown but photos show covered machine guns and/or cannon, probably 12.7mm or 20mm.