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Across the Table of Contents Chapter 1.........................................................4 top of the Chapter 2.........................................................7 Chapter 3: The Cold War’s Impact........9 World Chapter 4.......................................................11 The U.S. Coast Guard’s 1957 Chapter 5.......................................................14 Northwest Passage Expedition Chapter 6.......................................................19 Written for the 50th anniversary Chapter 7: The Skippers...........................23 of the expedition and the occasion Chapter 8: The Cutters.............................25 of the decommissioning Bibliography.................................................30 of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Storis By Senior Chief Petty Officer P.J. Capelotti, Ph.D., USCGR USCG Historian’s Office 2100 2nd St. SW., Washington D.C., 20593 (202) 372-4651/53 Layout and Design by PA2 Mike Lutz March 2007 and PA1 David Mosley Chapter 1 “We shall never cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” -T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965) n the morning of Sept. 6, 1957, with the Coast Guard icebreaker Storis and the U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender Spar’s sister buoy tender Bramble. Depart- Spar reached the eastern side ing together from Seattle on July 1, 1957, of Bellot Strait. Lt. Charles V. the three cutters traveled through Unimak Cowing, Spar’s young skipper, Pass on their way to Point Barrow, Alaska, hadO a moment to write a special entry into the where they began their attempt to break vessel’s log. through the historic Northwest Passage. On 1320: Arrived eastern point Bellot Strait Sept. 4, as they passed through a series of having completed transit of Bellot Strait and straits and gulfs named for Norwegian and the Northwest Passage in company with CGC British explorers and royalty, they reached Storis (WAG 38) and CGC Bramble (WAGL the western edge of Bellot Strait, named for a 402) and the HMCS Labrador. 109 days out French naval officer. There they met with the of Bristol, Rhode Island. Canadian icebreaker HMCS Labrador. On the Perhaps at this moment Cowing also took morning of Sept. 6, the four vessels transited the opportunity to enjoy a deep breath. He the 17-mile strait. had brought his buoy tender safely through a mythical passage the pursuit of which had killed scores of sailors and destroyed some of the most famous vessels in the history of 1320: Arrived eastern point exploration. In dry geographic terms, the Bellot Strait having completed narrow waterway of Bellot Strait separates the northernmost point of the North Ameri- transit of Bellot Strait and the can continent with Somerset Island in the Northwest Passage in company with Canadian Arctic. But in terms of human longing, since the time of John Cabot this CGC Storis (WAG 38) and Northwest Passage had been imagined as a CGC Bramble (WAGL 402) shortcut to the riches of the Orient, as a pathway to scientific achievement, as the and the HMCS Labrador. 109 glory road of Arctic exploration, and as the days out of Bristol, Rhode Island. first line of defense for the continent of North America. Spar’s voyage had begun on May 19, 1957, The passage was clear of ice and took only in Narragansett Bay. In little more than two hours. Once on the eastern edge of the three months, the buoy tender had visited strait, the cutters steamed for Lancaster Kingston, Jamaica; Balboa, Panama Canal Sound and as they crossed the Arctic Circle Zone; Acapulco, Mexico; and Long Beach, heading homeward on Sept. 12, congratula- Calif., before joining in Seattle on June 28 tory telegrams rained down on the Coast 4 Guard cutters from admirals and department back in Seattle. ingly sought new sea routes to Asia. secretaries. In addition to their triple feat of circum- For a century after Prince Henry the Eighteen days later, when Spar docked navigation, the three Coast Guard vessels Geography of the Northwest Passage Navigator founded an institute of geographic The Northwest Passage is actually several alongside its home pier in Bristol as the achieved several other firsts during their research at Sagres, Portugal, both Portuguese passageways through the complex archi- first American vessel ever to circle the entire historic expedition. They became the first and Spanish explorers fanned out across the pelago of the Canadian Arctic. According North American continent, another telegram American vessels to make the transit of southern Atlantic, eventually rounding both to Robert K. Headland of the Scott Polar arrived from Dwight D. Eisenhower, the the Northwest Passage; the first vessels the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and Research Institute in Cambridge, England, president of the United States. Within days, to accomplish a convoy through the Cape Horn at the southern tip of South Ameri- seven different routes connect the Atlantic Bramble returned to its homeport in Miami passage; and Bramble and Spar became ca. As Spain and Portugal appropriated these and Pacific oceans via these ice-clogged seas. as the second American vessel around the the first buoy tenders (and the only southern routes to the Spice Islands of Asia, In the century since the Norwegian explorer continent. Storis completed the expedition American buoy tenders) to make the other European nations looked north for new Roald Amundsen accomplished the complete — and became the third — when it moored Arctic voyage. maritime routes to these same riches. transit during 1903-1906 more than 100 voy- The first explorer after the Vikings to ages have been made through these passages search in this northerly direction was Italian by vessels from 18 different nations. navigator Giovani Caboto, who sailed from Even to reach the entrance to the North- Bristol, England, in May 1497 under the name west Passage requires a difficult and danger- John Cabot. After 35 days at sea searching ous feat of navigation. From the east, the way for a Northwest Passage to China, Cabot found is challenged by thousands of enormous ice- his way blocked by the Canadian coastline. No bergs. These bergs, broken from the glaciers contemporary sources have survived from his of Greenland in the east and Baffin Island in voyage, but it is thought that he spent about a the west and reaching 300 feet in height, drift month along the coast of northeastern North southward through Davis Strait. From the America before returning to England. west, vessels reach the passage through the Cabot tried again a year later, but he and Bering Strait, where the mass of the polar ice most of his fleet vanished from the seas and cap leans its bulk on the north coast of Alaska from history. By the time his son Sebastian and blocks any passage for much of the year. Cabot tried unsuccessfully to locate the pas- sage 10 years later, it had become clear that a new and enormous continent lay between Pursuit of the Northwest Passage The Icelandic Sagas record that a Norseman Europe and Asia. For the next hundred years, named Erik the Red, banished from Iceland navigators like Martin Frobisher, John Davis, by criminal troubles, sailed with 25 ships William Baffin, Robert Bylot and Henry Hud- from Iceland to the southwest coast of Green- son all probed the straits and bays that now land in 985 a.d. There he and the crews of are named for them. the 14 ships that survived the journey made Often the price they paid for this lasting a new home near the present-day airfield at fame was shipwreck, mutiny and death. Narsarssuak. From this small colony, Erik’s Humphrey Gilbert, an avid colonizer and son Leif made the first exploratory expedi- half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, wrote a tions along the northeast coast of North book on the mythical passage, then drowned America. Over the next five centuries, Norse in 1583 returning to England after trying to mariners would probe along the coasts of find it himself. When Hudson’s Bay proved present-day Canada and perhaps as far south to be an ice-filled trap rather than a passage as New England, New York and New Jersey in to the east, Henry Hudson himself, his young search of timber and new waterways to take son, and seven crew members were set adrift them even further west. during a 1611 mutiny. When William Baffin’s It is not known how much knowledge of explorations convinced him that no northern these early voyages survived into the world of passage to the east existed, interest in the the Renaissance. But in the mercantile world arctic waned for nearly two centuries. Ironi- of the late 1400s and early 1500s, after the cally, Baffin’s discovery of Lancaster Sound conquest of the Middle East by the Ottoman would become the main portal to the North- Turks had closed overland trade routes from west Passage, and one the U.S. Coast Guard 5 Europe to Asia, European nations increas- would use 350 years later. 6 Franklin’s wife Jane. Unsuccessful in find- Freed from the ice in July 1941, Larsen ing any trace of Franklin, Bellot instead eventually sailed to Gjøa Haven on King Wil- discovered and traced a narrow channel of liam Island and continued eastward against water that separated Boothia Peninsula — the thickening ice. Trapped again at Pasley Bay, Chapter 2 northernmost point of land in North America St. Roch grounded on a submerged shoal and and the place where the Royal Navy located barely escaped from being crushed. Reaching the North Magnetic Pole in 1831 — with Som- what he thought would be the safety of Bellot “Make voyages! erset Island. The leader of the Prince Albert Strait in summer 1942, Larsen found his ship expedition, William Kennedy, named this nearly crushed again by ice racing through - Attempt them! strait after Bellot.

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