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The SS ''Bear'' was a dual steam-powered and sailing ship built with six inch (15.2 cm) thick sides which had a long life in various cold-water and ice-filled environs. She was a forerunner of modern icebreakers and had an exceptionally diverse service life. According to the United States Coast Guard official website, ''Bear'' is described as "probably the most famous ship in the history of the Coast Guard."〔http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcHealy/history.asp〕 Built in Scotland in 1874 as a steamer for sealing, she was owned and operated out of Newfoundland for ten years. In the mid-1880s, she took part in the search for the Greely Expedition. Captained by Michael Healy of the United States Revenue Cutter Service (later part of the U.S. Coast Guard), she worked the 20,000 mile coastline of Alaska. She later assisted with relief efforts after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Her services also included the second expedition of Admiral Richard E. Byrd to Antarctica, and again to the southernmost continent in 1941 to evacuate Americans at the beginning of World War II. She later served in patrol duty off the coast of Greenland for the United States Navy. Between some of these missions, she was a museum ship in Oakland, California and starred in the 1930 film version of Jack London's ''The Sea-Wolf''. After World War II, ''Bear'' was returned to use again as a sealing vessel. Finally, in 1963, 89 years after she had been built, while being towed to a stationary assignment as a floating restaurant in Philadelphia, ''Bear'' foundered and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean about east of Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia. ==Construction and sealing career== ''Bear'' was built in 1874 as a sealer at Dundee, Scotland shipyards. Custom-built for sealing out of St. John's, Newfoundland, ''Bear'' was the most outstanding sealing vessel of her day, the lead ship in a new generation of sealers.〔Tod, Giles, M.S., ''Last Sail Down East'', Barre Publishers, (1965) p. 48〕 Heavy-built with six inch (15.2 cm) thick wooden planks, ''Bear'' was rigged as a sailing barquentine but her main power was a steam engine designed to smash deep into ice packs to reach seal herds. At the time of her arrival in St. John's, there were 300 vessels outfitted each season to hunt seals, but most were small schooners or old sailing barques.〔Ryan, Shannon, ''The Ice Hunters: A History of Newfoundland Sealing to 1914'' (1994) Breakwater Books Ltd. ISBN 1-55081-095-2.〕 The new sealing ships represented by ''Bear'' radically transformed the Eastern North Atlantic seal fishery as they replaced the hundreds of smaller sealing vessels owned by merchants in outports around Newfoundland with large and expensive steamships owned by large British and Newfoundland companies based in St. John's.〔("1914 Sealing Disaster", Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage'' )〕 Owned at first by the Scottish firm W. Grieve and Sons, she was acquired in 1880 by R. Steele Junior.〔''Lloyds Register'' 1875-1883〕 ''Bear'' spent a decade sealing from St. John. In 1884, the Steeles sent ''Bear'' back to Scotland for a refit. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「USS Bear (1874)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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