Commodore Ellsworth Price Bertholf
Ellsworth Price Bertholf, USRCS, USCG, was the first Commandant of the United States Coast Guard.
Bertholf was born on April 9th, 1866, in New York City, the son of John Jay Bertholf and Annie Francis PRICE. He joined the Revenue Cutter Service in 1885, and in the winter of 1897-1898, as a Second Lieutenant on the hazardous Bering Sea Patrol, Bertholf volunteered for an arctic rescue mission aboard the USRC Bear.
When the ice off the coast of Alaska became impassable, he joined First Lieutenant David H. Jarvis, and Dr. Samuel J. Call, on an overland expedition from Tanunak, Alaska, on the Bering Sea, to Point Barrow, the northernmost point in Alaska (a trip of over 1,600 miles along a route never before attempted, even under the best of conditions). Upon their successful arrival, in March of 1898, they rescued over 200 American whalers in danger of starvation, whose fleet of eight whaling vessels had become trapped and damaged in the Arctic ice.
In the winter of 1901, the Department of the Interior asked him to travel to Siberia to purchase larger and hardier reindeer for the natives of northern Alaska. Traveling alone from Petrograd to Irkutsk, and from there across northern Siberia by sledge, he found and purchased an appropriate herd, and brought them by ship to Alaska.
Upon being promoted to captain in 1907, he returned to the USRC Bear as its commander during its Arctic duties from 1908 to 1910.
| SHANTY OF THE BERING SEA PATROL
To cruises o’er the ocean wide; But they cannot compare with me, For I have sailed the Bering Sea. While though you’ve weathered fiercest gale And every ocean, you have sailed; You cannot a salty sailor be Until you've sailed the Bering Sea.
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"'Coast Guard' was the logical name for both the old Revenue Cutter Service as well as the new combination...", and, as the new commandant, he was invaluable in implementing the successful merger of the two services.
He retired in 1919, and became first vice-president of the American Bureau of Shipping in New York City. He was a member of the Order of the Midnight Sun, the Lotos Club, and the Explorers Club of New York, the Press Club of Washington, and the Army and Navy Club of San Francisco.
He died in New York City on November 11, 1921.
Learn More About
The Bear
Letter from the Secretary of Treasury on Bertholf's Career.
Letter Awarding Lt. Bertholf the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.
New York Times Article on Lt. Bertholf's Siberian Reindeer Expedition.
MILITARY.COM Article on Bertholf's Career.
Bering Sea Patrol Veteran Association Website.
E. P. Bertholf's Article on the Point Barrow Expedition, Harpers Magazine, 1899.
Arlington National Cemetery writeup
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