Bering Sea Patrol

Bering Sea Patrol in 1895, the Revenue Cutter Service officially established a Bering Sea Patrol under the command of Captain Calvin L. Hooper. Because the cutters became the only government known to those who lived in the Bering Sea and coastal arctic regions, they came to perform other duties as well, including rescue missions. Perhaps the most unusual duty performed by the Bering Sea Patrol was the Court Cruise. A cutter would transport a judge, a public defender, a court clerk, and a Deputy U. S. Marshall to hear criminal cases at various places; those cases often involved poaching, murder, assault with a deadly weapon, arson, and selling liquor to the native peoples in the region. Once the cutter, now turned into a floating jail, had left its prisoners at Valdez, it returned to the Bering Sea Patrol Headquarters at Unalaska for reassignment. After World War II, light aircraft were able to reach many isolated villages that had previously only been accessible to ships, and the duties of the Patrol became law enforcement and conservation missions. On September 4, 1964, the U.S. Coast Guard changed the Patrol's name to the Alaska Patrol, officially ending more than ninety years of duty.