United States Navy Commander Robert Peary designed Roosevelt specifically for operations in support of his Arctic exploration expeditions.

[3] Roosevelt was a schooner with an ice-strengthened flexible wooden hull sheathed in steel and braced by a unique system of trusses.

[5] She had three masts,[1][2] all of which could carry sails for auxiliary propulsion,[2][3] but relied for propulsion primarily on a powerful 1,000-horsepower (746 kW) compound steam engine – equipped with a special system that allowed it to generate 1,500 horsepower (1,119 kW) for brief periods if she encountered particularly massive ice concentrations[3] – that drove a single, large propeller 11 feet (3.4 m) in diameter[5] on a 1-foot (0.30 m)-diameter shaft[2][5] designed to generate powerful thrust that could push her through drift ice.

[1] She drew considerable attention because of her innovative design[5] and at the time of her construction she was considered the strongest wooden vessel ever built.

[1] Roosevelt withstood a fire, rudder damage, and encounters with fog and icebergs and proceeded northward to Cape Sheridan in the north of Ellesmere Island.

[1] Carried 20 nautical miles (37 km) south, she crashed against an ice foot a few days later, losing propeller blades, her rudder, and her sternpost.

[1] On 30 July 1906, Peary and his party returned to her after a six-month absence, and on 24 August 1906 Roosevelt broke free and turned southward.

[1] In early September 1908 she again made fast to the ice at Cape Sheridan to wait out the winter of 1908–1909 as Peary and his party tried for the North Pole.

[1] Departing Cape Sheridan in February 1909,[1] Peary determined that he had reached the North Pole on 6 April 1909,[3] and he and his party returned to Roosevelt.

[10] In August[7] or November[5] 1910, the Peary Arctic Club sold Roosevelt to Brooklyn, New York, tea, coffee, and sugar merchant John Arbuckle,[1][2] for US$37,500.

[2] On 21 April 1910, the United States Congress assigned the responsibility for the management and harvest of northern fur seals, foxes, and other fur-bearing animals in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, as well as for the care, education, and welfare of the Aleut communities in the islands, to the United States Bureau of Fisheries (BOF).

[2] Exploring cheaper alternatives, the BOF decided the idle Roosevelt would fulfill its requirements and purchased her from John W. Sullivan and Company in 1915 for US$40,000 to serve as its first "Pribilof tender.

[2] While she was lying idle, the eighth annual Convention of the Southern Commercial Congress took place in Norfolk in December 1916, and she and the BOF steamer Fish Hawk participated in it, exhibiting several fishery-related items and devices.

[2] On her return trip in August 1917, she hauled 4,882 sealskins and 606 fox skins to Seattle for rail shipment to St. Louis, Missouri, where they were prepared for auction.

[2] While Roosevelt was quarantined at Unalaska, several cannery vessels carrying workers became stuck in pack ice in Bristol Bay.

[2] On 17 January 1919, a little over two months after the conclusion of World War I, it was reported that Roosevelt needed extensive repairs and an overhaul, and the Steamboat Inspection Service later confirmed it.

[2] Her crew remained aboard her long enough to transfer equipment from her to her replacement, MV Eider, which the BOF had purchased in the summer of 1919 to serve as its next "Pribilof tender".

[1][2][7] After her sale, Roosevelt was resold several times but ultimately was rebuilt and issued a certificate of seaworthiness by the Steamboat Inspection Service.

[2] On a six-day trip from Puget Sound to San Pedro, California, in August 1925, she averaged 8 knots (15 km/h) while towing the ocean-going barge Decula loaded with 2.4 million feet of lumber.

[2] In late December 1931, she was towing the racing schooner Commodore in a violent gale off Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, when her towline apparently parted and her radio room flooded.

[2][13] Her seven-man crew sent out a distress signal before her radio failed, but she managed to reach Neah Bay on the northwest coast of Washington, where she rode out the storm.

[2][13] In what turned out to be her last voyage, she left Seattle on 31 October 1936 bound for New York City, towing the decommissioned 19,250-ton U.S. Navy collier USS Jason.

[2][13] She encountered heavy seas in the Pacific Ocean that strained her aging hull,[2] and a leaking condenser forced her to put into San Francisco for three days for repairs.

[13] With her hull still leaking, Roosevelt arrived at Mount Hope Shipyard in the Panama Canal Zone for repairs on 20 January 1937.