The Overland Relief Expedition was planned by the Secretary of the Treasury and Bear left for the Bering Sea facing the Arctic winter, a feat that had not been attempted before.

[15] Bear turned back and wintered over in Unalaska awaiting the spring thaw while the rescue party gathered dog sled teams and acquired the necessary number of reindeer.

Because of a lack of trained dogs, Jarvis instructed Bertholf to continue searching the Inuit villages for sled teams while he and Call went ahead to Cape Prince of Wales where there were large numbers of domesticated reindeer.

His next assignment was as executive officer of USRC Manning at Bremerton, Washington where he took part in the Bering Sea Patrol, participating in law enforcement, rescues and hydrographic surveys.

As a new commanding officer, Bertholf had to deal with the international shipping community and assist vessels entering the harbor with finding the proper berth as well as enforcing anchorage and port regulations.

[5] During the short assignment, Bertholf was able to use his experiences at the Naval War College in fleet training exercises with several other USRCS cutters in the Atlantic Ocean.

[23] He reported aboard Bear as it was finishing a maintenance overhaul at Mare Island in December 1907 and he was required to move her to another shipyard in Oakland, California to have repairs completed.

He was expecting to get underway in the spring for the annual Bering Sea Patrol; but instead received orders to escort the Great White Fleet into San Francisco Bay.

Thousands of people came to the port call ceremonies and Bertholf and his crew had the responsibility of keeping hundreds of small craft out of the way of the battleships and cruisers as they made their way to moorings.

[24] Bear, like all of the cutters on the Bering Sea Patrol, had dealt with the problems of pelagic sealing for years by other nations ships in the coastal waters of Alaska.

After the trial, Bear was tasked with hauling the prisoners to jail in Valdez, Alaska and didn't make a return to its homeport in Sausalito, California until late November.

Other assignments during the three-year tour of duty that Bertholf commanded Bear included hydrographic surveys, shipwreck rescues and transporting 143 destitute men and women from Nome to Seattle.

[27] His dismissal from the Naval Academy was the lone black mark against him; however, his Congressional Gold Medal and service as commanding officer of Bear were all points in his favor.

An endorsement by Walter Eli Clark, the district governor of Alaska, and Franklin MacVeagh, Secretary of the Treasury, finally helped him secure the nomination to the post.

[32] The report stated that the military responsibilities of the RCS should be turned over the Navy and other civilian duties should be shared by several other agencies for a savings of one million dollars a year.

Secretary of the Treasury MacVeagh disagreed with the conclusions in the Cleveland report and directed Bertholf to meet with Sumner Kimball, the head of the USLSS to come up with a plan to merge the two services.

[33][34] In April 1912 the RMS Titanic, a British passenger ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank with great loss of life.

Because the Navy didn't want the non-military duty, the RCS was tasked with the job of insuring that icebergs were tracked each spring and notices radioed to maritime traffic in the North Atlantic.

This additional responsibility coupled with the changing of presidential administrations and the beginning of World War I made the Bertholf-Kimball proposal look attractive to President Woodrow Wilson and he sent word to Congress that he wanted the legislation passed that would create the U.S. Coast Guard.

[39] The pay and rank differences between Navy and Coast Guard personnel were also a continuing problem for Bertholf during this time and were not completely solved during his tenure as Captain-Commandant.

Projects that he had direct supervision over during the war included setting up land communications between shore installations on the Eastern seaboard,[41] enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917;[42] port security, and establishment of a Coast Guard aviation branch.

[46] Since the officers of the two services had worked well together during the war, the Navy saw the opportunity to solve their manpower problems by absorbing the Coast Guard and its personnel leaving to the Treasury Department only the vessels necessary for customs duties and enforcement of navigation laws.

[52] Following his retirement from the U.S. Coast Guard in June 1919, Bertholf moved to New York City and became a vice president at the American Bureau of Shipping, becoming an influential figure at the institution.

He died of a heart attack at his residence at the Bretton Hall Hotel in New York City on 11 November 1921 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.