The Cutting-Edge Technology of an Arctic Expedition

At 8:30 a.m., as the fog raised in the harbor, a strange craft was seen approaching the revenue cutter. It proved to be the coast survey steamer, Carlisle Patterson. This vessel belongs to the Treasury Department. She sailed on the 8th of last month from San Francisco, bound to her field of duty, the coast of Alaska, for the purpose of taking up and continuing the surveys left two years ago by the steamer Hassler. She put into Esquimalt, B. C., on the 1st instant, where she obtained the services of Pilot Edwin Francis, who will take the vessel from here up and through the inside channels as far as Port B. C. The Patterson was built expressly for service in Alaskan waters. The work she is about to take up will occupy years of interrupted labor, as six months only of each year is the weather favorable for observations. Ensign Niblack will take views with the photographic instrument of all headlands, islands, glaciers and other wonders of that country. The Patterson was built by James H. Leary, of Williamsburg, N. Y., for $79,100. She is 175 feet long, 27 feet 9 inches beam, of 400 tons; a propeller, rigged as a three-masted topsail schooner. Her engine is a compound one. She is furnished with two launches, one of which is designed for rough water, the other for harbor use. There are several sounding machines worked by steam, one of which has made the deepest sounding that was ever taken in the Atlantic. The quarters for officers and crew are airy, roomy and elegant in finish and detail, reminding one of the thousand staterooms of our trans-Atlantic steamers.