Visit the Land and the People of Alaska!

Photos of Healy Provided by:
Phill McGillivary U.S.C.G.
and PA3 James Dillard
Eighth District Public Affairs

Note that under each picture which shows the initials USRC that this is US Revenue Cutter Service, the precursor to the US Coast Guard, which was then under the Dept. of Treasury, in keeping with interdicting illegal liquor and firearms shipments, and fur poaching, which were among its more important duties a century ago along with lifesaving, whereas the present USCG is under the Dept. of Transportation, reflecting its more modern mission focus, while not neglecting its' continuing role in preventing illegal fishing, and pollution.

The pix shows the BEAR in heavy ice at a location near the coast just south of Barrow, Alaska. Although the ice is heavy, the onset of spring is apparent from the ice lake (or melt pool) in the foreground.
The BEAR was often accompanied by various persons picked up along the Alaska coast, some of then brought their dog teams along. However the BEAR often maintained its own team of sled dogs as CAPT Healy was often called upon to send exploring and rescue missions into the Alaskan interior from the coast. He boarded the dogs with Alaskan locals when the BEAR returned via San Francisco to its' home port in Alameda, California.
US Revenue Cutter Service (USRC) Life Saving Station at Nome, Alaska, a century ago.	The pix of the officer in the rigging of the BEAR was probably from the ceremony for crossing the Arctic Circle, which entitles one to officially become a "venerated Blue Nose".
The picture of the ship's doctor at one of the coastal summer tent dwellings a century ago. The doctor on the BEAR was one of the main providers of medical attention to the coastal natives for several decades. At one point in the 1870's 70% of the adult population of Barrow had contracted veneral disease, and the doctor from the BEAR was the main person responsible for bringing the disease under control after it was introduced by the whalers.
This shows one of the local Inupiat women in western clothes posing aboard the BEAR with a member of the ship's crew and a passenger in local dress, whereon the traditional white vertical bands below the head are intended to resemble walrus tusks.
coastal Inupiat natives in umiaks (walrus-skin boats) embarking on the BEAR	officers of the BEAR on the 1898 whaler rescue mission, which we are revisiting during the exact 100th year anniversary
	the BEAR decked in flags.

This Quest Project Web page
was last updated on Aug 20, 1998.