The U.S. Coast Guard
and
Mill Valley Masonic Lodge
Mill Valley Lodge No. 356 has a unique connection with the most famous ship to have sailed in the Revenue Cutter Service, the forerunner of the modern Coast Guard, the Revenue Cutter Bear.
USS Bear
The story of the Lodge's tie to the Bear begins twenty-nine years before the Lodge's 1903 institution when, in 1874, the Bear was built as a sealer at Dundee, Scotland. At two hundred feet long, Bear was heavily built, with six inch thick oak planks, reinforced with heavy steel plating that could take it confidently through the ice. She was rigged as a barkentine, and carried a steam engine. From her launch in 1874 until 1884 she made annual trips to the arctic sealing grounds. In 1884, the Bear had just completed an overhaul when the United States government purchased her for use in an arctic rescue expedition.
The sturdy Bear was hurriedly sailed to New York where she was outfitted for an arctic rescue mission and commissioned in the US Navy. The USS Bear and another sealer purchased for the mission (USS Thetis) had become the last hope for the ill-fated Greely Expedition, which was trapped at Lady Franklin Bay in Northern Greenland. The expedition, under the command of Lieutenant A. W. Greely, had set up a camp to study the winter conditions of the north in 1881. When relief ships failed to break through the ice to reach them in 1882 and 1883, the survivors gambled that a rescue ship would be coming, broke camp, and started trekking south. From August to October 1883 they moved south, then set up camp for the winter. By springtime the food had run out; they were desperate.
On May 4, 1884, Bear and Thetis headed north from Canada, pushing onwards under steam and sail, soon having to battle through pack ice while keeping a lookout for the expedition. On June 22, 1884 Bear and Thetis finally arrived at the expedition's camp. Only Lieutenant Greely and six men remained alive. Bear immediately turned south and raced the men to Portsmouth, NH for medical treatment. The rescue completed, the Navy turned the Bear over to the Revenue Cutter Service for use on the Bering Sea patrol.
From 1886 until 1926, the USRCS Bear was stationed at San Francisco. The United States had only recently purchased Alaska, and while most of the government settled into a pattern of ignoring the territory, the Revenue Service took it upon itself to establish a presence there in the interest of fundamental law and order. At that time there were only one lighthouse and no buoys or beacons for thirty-five thousand miles of jagged, treacherous coast-line.
Several cutters were based in San Francisco and Oakland, but every spring they would make their way up the coast to Washington State before striking out across the open sea for the Aleutians. Bear was the largest of the cutters. It had a crew of nine officers and forty men--most of whom, like their captain, spent their entire careers in the far north. It could do eight knots under sail and more than nine when its steam engines were put to use. Because of her superior size and strength, the Bear was assigned the northern most duty - the Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea and the Arctic Ocean - through uncharted ice-choked seas.
On April 21, 1886, sailing orders were received and on May 2, 1886 the Revenue Cutter Bear steamed out through the Golden Gate bridge, her course set for Unalaska. It was the beginning of a relationship that would last from 1886 until 1926 and make the Bear (and Captain Healy, captain from 1886 to 1895) the pride of the Revenue Cutter Service and heroes to the whaling fleet. The Bear, in short, became a floating government. The Secretary of the Treasury advised Captain Healy to take the census, count ships, seize all vessels in the Seal Islands (St. George and St. Paul) and arrest the crews, arrest any person found smuggling liquor or firearms to the Indians and Eskimos, take soundings, bearing, geodetical and astronomical observations, record the tides and currents north of the Aleutians and escort the whale ships onto Point Barrow. Its Captains, especially Mike Healy, became legendary, acting as judge, doctor, and policeman to Alaska Natives and other people of Alaska.
From headquarters on Unalaska Island, the ships would spend the summer cruising the Bering Sea and Straits, putting in at various places along the Alaskan coast and at the Pribilof and other small islands. These were the prime seal rookeries, and the Revenue Service waged a constant and often unsuccessful battle against illegal seal hunting. The ships would then work their way around the top of Alaska, heading as far east as Point Barrow. These waters had become the principal hunting grounds for the American whaling fleet, which was enjoying its last few years of prosperity. The work was dangerous and unpredictable, with the ice pack never more than ten miles offshore. As the summer advanced and the ice began to move in, cutters and whalers alike would break south, but not always fast enough. Officers like Mike Healy helped pull many ships out of the ice, rescued the stranded survivors, and more than once brought back the frozen bodies of the less fortunate.
For more than 36 years the Bear traveled north into the Arctic each spring and with the coming of winter returned to San Francisco to lay up for the winter. In the Arctic, the Bear acted as a mail boat, supply ship, hospital, police department and court for the isolated northern settlements, in the process becoming an institution of the northern settlements, and, particularly under the command of Captain Michael " Hell Roaring Mike " Healy, contributed greatly to the United States relations with the indigenous peoples (To relieve starving natives, Healy sailed to Siberia, purchased reindeer at his own expense, and transplanted the heard by ship to Alaska to become the nucleus of a herd for food and hides.). The Bear also made important contributions "at home:" her crew played a major role in rescue operations following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. During the decade in which Michael Healy was its captain, the Bear was not merely a useful ship; Bear was, as the official historian of the Coast Guard has said, "a symbol for all the service represents--for steadfastness, for courage, and for constant readiness to help men and vessels in distress."
Being home ported in San Francisco enabled an enduring tie to be forged between this famous ship and Mill Valley Lodge. One of the USRCS Bear's crewmen was a Mason and belonged to Mill Valley Lodge No. 356. During one of his summer's on the Bearing Sea Patrol, he passed his leisure time turning a piece of the Bear's heavy sail canvas, some thick line, and seal or reindeer leather into a piece of paraphernalia for his Masonic Lodge to use when conferring the Third Degree. We can only surmise that with each stitch our brother sewed through the leather and heavy sail canvas, he must have reflected with pleasure on his own degrees and thought too of the men who would follow him into the Lodge. We can only wonder if, as he whiled away the hours in the Arctic frontier working on his project for his Lodge in Mill Valley, he ever considered the object he was making would still be in use almost 100 years later.
In 1915 the Revenue Cutter service became part of the Coast Guard, and Bear became USCGC Bear. During WWI she worked for the Navy, but went back to Bering Sea patrol after the war. Bear was deemed obsolete in 1921, but no replacement was available, so she served on. In 1924 she was trapped in ice, pushed ashore in a storm, and reported to be destroyed, but she was eventually hauled off with little damage. 1926 marked Bear's 36th and final voyage into the Bering Sea. In 1928 the new cutter Northland was commissioned, taking over Bear's duties. After being decommissioned, ownership was turned over to Oakland, and Bear became a museum near her old winter home of San Francisco. During her brief retirement, Bear became a movie star: Bear playing the part of Death Larsen's sealship "Macedonia" for the 1930 movie "The Sea Wolf".
Not long after being retired, Admiral Byrd requested the City of Oakland to auction the ship, which he then purchased to replace his old City of New York for his next expedition to the South Pole. Bear was renamed Bear of Oakland sailed for Boston to refit. The old barkentine sailed from Boston on 25 September 1933 in company of the steamer Jacob Ruppert, bound for New Zealand. On the way she weathered many severe storms, one of which forced her into port and into drydock for repairs. She finally arrived at Wellington, NZ, on 6 January 1934.
Bear was pushed to her limits on her three Antarctic expeditions under Adm. Byrd. In 1939 President Roosevelt commissioned Admiral Byrd to lead an expedition to Antarctica to lay claim to previously unclaimed territory there. Bear was overhauled to serve as the flagship of the expedition; she was joined by Northland. Bear received new diesels engines and new spars before she sailed south on 22 November 1939. She arrived off Antarctica on the 31st of December. During the next few weeks she set new records by pushing through the ice to points never before reached. At one point she was trapped and nearly crushed, only escaping because her spotting aircraft found a lead through the ice. Again Bear spent the winter in New Zealand, returning to pick up the expedition in late December 1940.
The Bear was again pressed into duty by the Navy in World War II. Due to a shortage of patrol ships she rejoined the Navy as a Greenland patrol ship. Her rig was cut down to two pole masts; she became a motor vessel. On the Greenland patrol she made the first US capture of the war: the German ship Busko, captured while setting up a radio station to assist U-boats. Bear served until new vessels were available to replace her; she was then laid up at Boston.
After WWII Bear was offered for sale, and was purchased by Frank M. Shaw of Montreal for $5199.00. He renamed her Arctic Bear. In 1948 she was towed to Canada for reconversion to her original sealing role, but this plan fell through. Arctic Bear was abandoned in the mud at Halifax. In 1962 she was purchased and converted to a restaurant/museum ship for use at Philadelphia; her original name was restored. In March 1963 the tug Irving Birch towed her from Halifax, bound for Philadelphia. A few days out a gale struck, parting the towline. Bear's foremast collapsed, poking a hole in her hull, and she slowly filled and sank. She went down early in the morning of March 19, 1963, 250 miles east of Boston.
For their many daring exploits, the Bear and her crew have been enshrined in the memory of the Coast Guard. In 1995 the Coast named its new polar-class icebreaker after the Bear's most famous Captain, "Hell Roaring" Mike Healy. Naming a ship after any officer is uncommon. Usually, Coast Guard cutters are named not for people but for things. "Healy was considered the best skipper in the Arctic, I think he’s a good role model for kids. He wasn’t perfect but he was a strong individual" said Robert Browning, Chief Historian for the Coast Guard.
Mill Valley Masonic Lodge is very proud to have received a piece of the legendary Bear's sail. The memory of the Bear and the exploits of her courageous crew are fitting examples for all the generations of Mill Valley Masons who have since used the sail, of our brother Mason's practicing out of their Lodge those virtues - steadfastness, for courage, and for constant readiness to help men in distress - as inculcated in Lodge.
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