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engine the ability to plow through ice. But the real secret? Look at that prow!” It was treble thick, fortified by oak and ironwood, and capable, said the proud marine architects who devised it, “of breaking its way through any ice it faces.” At that moment, at the beginning of the Bear’s life at sea, it was thought that the ship would serve some routine purpose, but later, when it was dragooned into a rescue operation, it achieved fame on front pages across the world: the American arctic explorer Adolphus Greely had gone bravely into the northern waters of the Atlantic, lost his ship in a crushing ice pack and nineteen of his men in the ensuing attempt to walk back to civilization. All rescue efforts by normal ships having failed, the Bear was purchased by the American government for the huge price of a hundred thousand dollars and hurried to the supposed scene of the disaster. Now an entirely different kind of ship was in the arctic, and its double-stout construction enabled it to break its way through ice fields that no other could have penetrated and, to great acclaim, to rescue Greely and six other survivors. In the aftermath, while the world was applauding this extraordinary ship, someone had the clever idea of transferring it to the revenue cutter service in Alaska, where it would be most useful. Around the Horn it went in November 1885, arriving in San Francisco after only eighty-seven days at sea. By chance, when the Bear docked, Captain Mike Healy was available for a new command, and without much forethought he was given this well-regarded ship which already had a reputation as exalted as his own. It was a remarkable wedding of man and machine, for when he moved his gear into the captain’s quarters and arranged a perch for his parrot and a hiding place for
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James A. Michener (Alaska)