USS Bear was a dual steam-powered and sailing ship built with six-inch (15.2 cm)-thick sides which had a long life in various cold-water and ice-filled environments.

Her services also included the second expedition of Admiral Richard E. Byrd to Antarctica, and again to the southernmost continent in 1941 to evacuate Americans at the beginning of World War II.

Finally, in 1963, 89 years after she had been built, while being towed to a stationary assignment as a floating restaurant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bear foundered and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean about 100 nautical miles (190 km; 120 mi) south of Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.

[5] Heavy-built with six-inch (15.2 cm) thick wooden planks, Bear was rigged as a sailing barquentine but her main power was a steam engine designed to smash deep into ice packs to reach seal herds.

At the time of her arrival in St. John's, there were 300 vessels outfitted each season to hunt seals, but most were small schooners or old sailing barques.

Cruising to Alaska for her last patrol in the 1926 season, on her return to Oakland that November she was replaced by a new cutter, USCGC Northland and ownership was transferred to the city for use as a large barquentine-rigged museum ship,[11] Bear starred as the sealer Macedonia in the 1930 film version of Jack London's The Sea-Wolf.

Cruzen would rise to the rank of rear admiral and commanded the U.S. Navy ships which participated in a large Antarctic expedition named Operation Highjump in 1948.

In early 1941, USS Bear assisted in the evacuation of the members of the Antarctic Expedition, as international tensions rose in the months that led up to America's entrance into World War II.

Bear arrived at the Mikkelsen Islands, just north of the Antarctic Circle, on 16 March 1941, and its crew helped to build an adequate airstrip to evacuate personnel and equipment from the expedition base in the area.

After the capture, on 12 September 1941, of the German-controlled Norwegian sealer Buskø, which was used as a supply ship for secret weather stations, by USCGC Northland; Bear towed the prize to Boston.

[17] Bear had the distinction of being the oldest U.S. Navy ship to be deployed outside the continental United States during World War II.

[22] Finally, a search conducted from 14 to 28 September 2021 by elements of NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard in cooperation with various academic researchers confirmed that a wreck discovered in 2019 on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean in Canada′s exclusive economic zone approximately 260 nautical miles (482 km; 299 mi) east of Boston and 90 nautical miles (167 km; 104 mi) south of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, Canada, was that of Bear.

[22][23] On 14 October 2021, NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps Rear Admiral Nancy Hann announced the discovery in a press conference held on a pier in Boston adjacent to the Coast Guard icebreaker USCGC Healy (WAGB-20).

There is a large detailed scale model of Bear on display in the Stockton Center for International Law, part of the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.