| Summary: | Coast Guard's Role In Alaska Is Varied One. COAST GUARD'S ROLE IN ALASKA IS VARIED ONE JUNEAU, Alaska.—OJ.E)—"Semper Paratus—Always Ready," motto of the United States Coast Guard, is most effectively carried out in the Alaska division of the service. Guardsmen are prepared, day and night, to rush food to starving villages, administer justice in remote communities rescue crews of ice-bound whalers, or tend sick and injured at remote Eskimo outposts. Each of the five coast guard boats cruising in and out of rocky fjords, or through ice floes, is a store, post office, police court, battleship and hospital, all in one. SURVEY The story of Alaska is associated closely with the coast guard fort in 1867, when Secretary of State William H. Seward bought the vast territory, it was the old cutter Lincoln that was sent to survey the new possession. Many thrilling rescues in the far north are part of coast guard history. In 1884 the old cutter Bear saved the lives of General, Greeley and his men—the same general, now 91, who was rewarded this spring by congress for his Arctic explorations. Another dramatic rescue by the Bear was that of the crew of the foundered whaling ship. Napoleon, in 1890. Information of the Napoleon's plight, scribbled in Eskimo on a piece of board, was passed from village to village, until it finally reached the Bear. The coast guard brought the first reindeer to Alaska from Siberia in the nineties, and under its watchful eye the Pribilof island seal herd lias increased by more than 10 times in the past 25 years.
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