User:Cuprum17/David H. Jarvis

The Cutter is named after Captain David H. Jarvis of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. Captain Jarvis served aboard cutters HAMILTON, RUSH, and BEAR. He devoted the majority of his career to pioneering and developing maritime activities in the Bering Sra off if Alaska's northwest coast. While assigned to the BEAR, he led the famous three man expedition to save 300 whalers stranded off Barrow Point, Alaska. Trapped by ice, the harsh environment, and a dwindling food supply, the whalers had little chance of surviving. Through the relentless artic winter, Captain Jarvis' expedition drove a herd of reindeer across 1,500 miles of Artic ice and snow to rescue the starving whalers. For his heroism, he was awarded a special Congressional Gold Medal. (CG)

In 1897-1898, First Lieutenant David H. Jarvis, Second Lieutenant Ellsworth P. Bertholf and Dr. Samuel J. Call, all of the cutter Bear, drove a herd of reindeer, in winter’s brutal grip, from Teller, Alaska, on the Bering Sea, to Point Barrow. Here, they provided food for a fleet of whalers frozen in the ice. (CG)http://www.uscg.mil/history/articles/h_alaska_and_hawaii.asp

The men who landed near Cape Vancouver that cold and stormy December 15th in 1 897 were well-chosen for the awesome task that lay ahead. In command was the brilliant, soft-spoken First Lieutenant David H. Jarvis, top man in the cadet class of 1883. Second Lieutenant E. P. “Bully” Bertholf, later Commandant of the Coast Guard, was named as assistant to Jarvis. They were well matched despite their vastly different personalities.

(Officers of the Overland Expedition, left to right: 2d LT E.P. Bertholf; Surgeon S. J. Call; 1st LT D.H. Jarvis.)

Slight of build, Jarvis was a veteran of eight years in Alaskan duty as well as several years in the small boats of the Life Saving Service on the Atlantic Coast. Jarvis had unusual executive talents which particularly fitted him for all expedition wherein a lapse of judgment could cost the lives of some 300 men. Perhaps the most important of Jarvis’ qualifications was his fluent command of the Eskimo tongue, without which the expedition could scarcely hope to succeed. Bertholf, himself an able young officer, possessed an abundance of energy and strength vitally important in travel by sled over rough terrain. Third member of the BEAR’s landing party was Dr. S. J. Call, a familiar figure on Revenue Cutters in Alaska. Call was an able ship’s physician whose medical skill would certainly be needed by any survivors at Point Barrow.

Dire omens abounded on the day of the landing, December 15, 1897. Captain Tuttle had followed the instructions, laying a course for Norton Sound. Heavy ice was encountered much sooner than expected, driving the BEAR south to Cape Vancouver, some 700 miles south of the point Secretary Gage had selected originally. The landing itself almost ended in disaster as wind-lashed water and rapidly running ice threatened to swamp the boats carrying men and equipment ashore. While Jarvis and his men fought for their lives, the BEAR’s crew struggled to avoid unmarked shoals in little more than four fathoms. By dusk the expedition was safely ashore and the BEAR steamed out to sea not to be seen again by these men until eight months later. Jarvis, Bertholf, and Call were now committed to a harrowing 1,500-mile journey through the Alaskan wilderness at top speed in temperatures as low as -60° surrounded by the gloom and dark of the long Arctic winter. Eskimos warned against the attempt as most unwise even without the hundreds of reindeer Jarvis hoped to acquire along the route. Yet this expedition had to go out: the President himself had asked that it be done.

During tile next hundred days Jarvis and his companions endured almost every hardship known in the Arctic. Traveling in the winter darkness across sea ice or frozen tundra, over mountain passes and snow sometimes too soft to bear the load, these determined men never allowed their own comfort or safety to interfere with the mission. At times the ice was dangerously soft. Occasionally visibility was so poor that the party came close to plunging over hidden cliffs. Blizzard after blizzard hindered their movement, sometimes forcing them to hole up huddling in some abandoned hut or in a tent. The cold was incredible. On the other hand, just above St. Michael (200 miles northwest of Cape Vancouver) the temperature rose capriciously, leaving almost bare the undulating gravel and boulder surface of the tundra. It was in such circumstances that Mate Tilton, one of two men sent from the stranded vessels at Point Barrow, was found struggling toward St. Michael seeking help for the stranded whalers.

Tilton pronounced the proposed reindeer drive an impossible scheme. Pushing, pulling, and straining, the sleds moved on, at times slowly, at other times making up to fifty miles in a day. Once Jarvis became lost in a fierce blizzard. A blinding snow almost ended the expedition as the guide groped for the trail on hands and knees. On another occasion the party was saved only by the instinct of the reindeer when even the Eskimo guide had lost the way. Time after time tile hospitality of poor, isolated Eskimos kept alive the men of the expedition and thereby the only chance of the icebound men at Point Barrow.

An excerpt from the journal kept by Jarvis best conveys an adequate notion of the suffering endured by the rescue party:

“I thought the ice we recently passed over had made a rough road, but this was even worse, for here were all the crushings of the straits shoved up against the mountains that ran abruptly into the sea, and over this kind of ice we had to make our way. Darkness set in long before we had come to tile worst of it, and a faint moon gave too little light for such a road. It was a continuous jumble of dogs, sleds, men, and ice--particularly ice—and it would be hard to tell which suffered most, men or dogs. Once, in helping the sled over a particularly bad place, I was thrown eight or nine feet down a slide, landing on the back of my head with the sled on top of me. Though the mercury was 30° below. I was wet through with perspiration from the violence of the work. Our sleds were racked and broken, our dogs played out, and we ourselves scarcely able to move, when we finally reached Mr. Lopp’s house at the cape (Prince of Wales).”

Cape Prince of Wales was 500 miles north of St. Michael and here it was that Jarvis succeeded in persuading both the missionary W. T. Lopp and “the Eskimo known as Charlie (Artisarlook)” to lend their valued herds to the government to help in the reindeer drive. A herd of about 400 reindeer was assembled and moved under dreadful conditions toward Point Barrow still 800 miles distant. Jarvis and his men suffered from extreme and mounting fatigue in this second half of the journey. Blizzards, drifting snow, rough terrain, and biting wind turned the expedition into a nightmarish ordeal. Nevertheless, Jarvis remained determined and grimly stoical:

“A philosophical common sense is a great help in living in the Arctic, as elsewhere. If you are subjected to miserable discomforts, or even if you suffer, it must be regarded as all right and simply a part of the life, and like sailors, you must never dwell too much on the dangers or suffering.” (CG)http://www.uscg.mil/history/articles/johnson_overland_expedition.asp

David H. Jarvis

David Henry Jarvis was appointed to the Revenue Cutter Service in 1881, and served until his retirement as a captain in 1905. He spent the majority of his career in Alaska and the Bering Sea. His most famous adventure came during an expedition to save the men of a whaling fleet that had become trapped in the ice off Point Barrow, Alaska, during the winter of 1897-1898. Jarvis, then a first-lieutenant, led a three-man rescue team consisting of Second-Lieutenant Ellsworth P. Bertholf and Doctor J.S. Call of the U. S. Public Health Service, with a herd of about 400 reindeer across 1,500 miles of tundra and pack-ice to Point Barrow. They arrived after a journey of 99 days and thereby saved over 300 men from starvation. They had completed the longest rescue mission ever undertaken in Coast Guard history. On 28 June 1902, Congress, in response to a request from President William McKinley to recognize officially what he called a "victory of peace," awarded Gold Medals of Honor to Jarvis and the other two members of what became known as the Overland Relief Expedition. (CG) http://www.uscg.mil/history/faqs/vip.asp

By 14 December 1897, it was clear that the Bear had come as far north as she could go. Approximately 85 miles off Cape Nome, the ice was so thick that she was forced to turn back. But before she returned, the Bear landed an over-land party on Nelson Island, near Cape Vancouver. It consisted of' First Lieutenant D. H. Jarvis, Second Lieutenant B. P. Bertholf, and Surgeon S. J. Call, all of the Revenue Cutter Service. Equipped with dog teams, sleds, and guides, Jarvis and his companions set out for Point Barrow. Before them lay a 1,600 mile journey through frozen, trackless wilderness. But the "Overland Expedition for the Relief of the Whalers in the Arctic Ocean" as it was ponderously called, became one of the great epics of the north.

During the exhausting journey, Jarvis and Call collected a herd of nearly 450 reindeer. Driving the herd ahead of them in the face of icy winds the party reached Point Barrow about three and one-half months after being put ashore by the Bear. To the despairing whalers, the arrival of the relief party was nothing short of a miracle. Healy's foresight had paid off. (CG) http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Bear1885.asp

(CG) Tower, Elizabeth A. "Captain David Henry Jarvis: Alaska's Tragic Hero - Wickersham's Victim." Alaska History 5 (Spring 1990), pp. 1-21.