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John C. Cantwell (1859-1940) and the Kobuk (Kowak) river, Alaska.

Article Excerpt
The year 2009 is among our most famous anniversaries: it represents both the 200th year since Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th since Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species. Interestingly, it is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of Captain John Cassin Cantwell, one of the earliest explorers of Northwest Alaska.

John Cassin Cantwell, born on 9 January 1859, was only eight years old when Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. Little did he know that this new territory and its waters would come to dominate his life. He was born into a well-educated, politically oriented, military family that earlier had emigrated from Ireland. His father, who had a law degree from Harvard, was a colonel in the Army and the author of a number of books on law and history. The family being Catholic, it is not surprising that young John was sent to a Roman Catholic seminary in Ireland. According to his grandson, John's "education was designed to make him a priest--all of the years in Ireland he was unhappy and vowed that he would return to the U.S.A, ... which he did. Having a fine education he wanted to be a sailor" (Burnham Cantwell, pers. comm. 1982).

Following through on that desire, Cantwell enlisted at age 20 in the United States Revenue Cutter Service (USRCS) with the intention of becoming a career officer. After serving for a year as a seaman, he took and passed a competitive examination that in turn led to a commission as Third Lieutenant on 5 July 1882. The USRCS, an arm of the Treasury Department, had been formed in 1790 to collect customs along the coasts of the newly formed United States of America. Until 1863, it had officially been known as the United States Revenue Marine. Although in 1915 it was merged with other marine-related services to become the U.S. Coast Guard, it was the USRCS that dominated the government's marine and riverine activities in Alaska, especially those in the Bering Sea, during the early days of Cantwell's career.

The sine qua non of the Service was the cutter, originally a small, single-masted, lightly armed ship that was fast and especially useful in coastal waters. Through the years cutters were continually modified, and by the time of Cantwell, many were steam-powered.

After a couple of years sailing with cutters along the East and Gulf Coasts of the United States, Cantwell was sent to San Francisco in 1884. There he was assigned to the cutter Thomas Corwin under the command of Captain Michael A. Healy (after whom the present USCGC Healy is...

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