Geography and Travel

Abstract

“GALES, Ice and Men” is the history of what V_J may be the last of the ice ships, the Bear, which had a long and honourable career from 1874, when she was built, to 1935, when she was laid up, perhaps finally. She Was Newfoundland sealer, rescue ship (Greely, 1884), U.S. Revenue Service, with all that that entails in the far north Pacific, U.S. Coast Guard and finally, at the age of about sixty years, one of the ships of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition. The Bear Was built at Dundee and almost certainly in the same yard as the Discovery, although Scott writes of “Stevens's” and Mr. Wead of “Alexander Stephen & Sons”. The two vessels are about the same size, but the Bear was a little narrower and had not Discovery's stern: the former showed perhaps rather better behaviour in dirty weather.

Gales, Ice and Men:

a Biography of the Steam Barkentine Bear. By Frank Wead. Pp. xiv + 240 + 13 plates. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1938.) 12s. 6d. net.