[Page 355]
175
be a bit worried that my ready money would soon be expended if I continued living in idleness at hotels, even the less expensive ones, or travelling around very much. I followed up advertised positions personally and by letter without success: not being a United States citizen barred me from any employment in the Governmental service.
Then one morning I saw an account in one of the newspapers of the northern voyages of the U.S. coastguard cutter "Bear", then lying at a berth at Oakland across the bay, and shortly to sail for Nome on the west coast of Alaska, via the Aleutian Islands, and later on through the Bering Straits, over the Arctic Circle and along the north coast of Alaska. This former Polar exploration vessel was a forty-five-year old small wooden barquentine with an auxiliary, compound, steam engine driving a single propellor. The crew wore the same uniform as the U.S. Navy and received the same rates of pay. Her normal duties were to chase Japanese seal poachers away from the Aleutian Islands, reaching far across the North Pacific from Alaska, to patrol the Alaskan Coast generally and to carry out accurate hydrographic surveys of parts of this coast on the North. During the Winter months she was laid up in San Solito Bay, just inside the Golden Gate at San Francisco, until it was time to dock, refit and replinish stores, and recruit a crew to go north again.
The newspaper went on to say that the crew was now being brought up to full strength, but there were still vacancies for skilled trades and occupations requiring good education. Interested men were invited to visit the little ship and interview the Executive Officer. So I took the ferry across to Oakland and after inspecting the ship and questioning some of the crew, from the wharf, I was invited aboard by the Executive Officer and found him a very friendly Bostonian, a graduate of the Anapolis [Annapolis] Naval Academy, who spoke more like an Englishmen than a Yank. He was very keen to enlist me on the spot and could have given me a fairly high-ranking job if I had been a United States citizen, but the enlistment was for twelve months, and I