Guide to the Captain Charles Bates photographs
1979
Collection number: HMC-1467.
Creator: Bates, Charles L.
Title: Captain Charles Bates photographs.
Date: 1979.
Volume of collection: 103 MB.
Language of materials: Collection materials are entirely in English.
Collection summary: Images of Western Alaska and aboard the North Star III taken by crew member.
Biographical note:
Charles Bates was born in 1952 in Vancouver, WA. He earned his 3rd Mate’s Oceans unlimited tonnage license at the California Maritime Academy in 1978. Upon graduation, he registered with the Masters, Mates, and Pilots maritime union to work aboard ocean-going ships. After Bates was fired by a captain for missing sailing time despite the ship sailing early, Seattle union boss Rupert Soriano hired Bates to sail on the U.S.M.S. North Star III along the coast of Alaska in 1979. Bates left the ship in Kivalina and went on to work for the Alaska ferry system for the next twenty-one years.
The North Star III was a diesel-powered Victory Ship built in 1945 and originally commissioned as the Emory Victory. It was a cargo ship with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Alaska Native Service to bring items to remote areas of Alaska. The cargo consisted of palletized household merchandise such as appliances, food, fishing and hunting equipment, skiffs, tools, gasoline in 55-gallon drums, large bottles of propane (stowed outside on the aft deck on a special rack), and heating oil stored in the ship’s tanks. The ship also carried four landing craft [LCMs] on deck that were used to transport the cargo between the ship and the villages. The cargo service guaranteed a fixed cost for shipping from Seattle whether or not the cargo could be delivered directly or, if because of ice conditions, the cargo had to be offloaded at Seward, taken to Fairbanks by rail, and flown out to the villages.
Collection description:
This collection contains 23 digital images taken by a third mate aboard the U.S.M.S. North Star III in 1979. They depict Unalakleet, Pt. Hope, Little Diomede, Stebbins, Teller, cargo and equipment aboard the boat, and crew members. There are also images of residents in those villages, the landing craft used to deliver cargo, and the North Star’s delivery schedule.
Arrangement: The collection’s digital files are named and ordered as described by the creator.
Digital materials: The digital contents of this collection are available. For information about obtaining digital copies, please contact Archives and Special Collections.
Rights note: The Archives holds copyright to this collection.
Preferred citation: Captain Charles Bates, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.
Works used in preparation of inventory:
Newell, Gordon and McCurdy, H.W. The H. W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, WA: Superior Pub. Co., 1966.
Related materials: The creator donated a small notebook of hand-drawn chartlets of villages to which the North Star delivered via the LCMs to the Western Alaska Pilots Association in Dutch Harbor.
Acquisition note: Captain Charles Bates gifted this collection to the Archives and signed a deed of gift in 2024.
Processing information: This collection was described by Becky Butler Gallegos in 2024. File names were changed to the Archives’ standards; original file names are indicated in the container list. Descriptions and portions of the biographical note are provided by the creator.
Location of originals: The creator retains the original 35mm slides from which the digital images were scanned.
Container list:
| Item | Original file name | Description | Date |
| 1 | Ship North Star III LCM Norton Sound | I was standing on the beach at Golovin Alaska with a duffle bag of all my worldly possessions and waited for the landing craft . . . | 1979 |
| 2 | Ship North Star III Norton Sound | . . . to deliver me to my “new” ship anchored in Golovin Bay. | 1979 |
| 3 | North Star III Nordberg Diesel | The North Star III had a 9 cylinder Nordberg Diesel . . . | 1979 |
| 4 | Ship North Star III Third Engineer Kim Estes On Throttle of NS III | . . . with a manual throttle that was controlled in the engine room by a licensed engineer . . . | 1979 |
| 5 | Ship North Star III Telegraph | . . . who received engine orders from the bridge via the Engine Order Telegraph. | 1979 |
| 6 | Ship North Star III 1979 Unalakleet Children plus Water tank | In addition there were special cargos such as large community water tanks. | 1979 |
| 7 | Ship North Star III LCM Damaged Cargo From Near Sinking Nome | 1979 | |
| 8 | Ship North Star III Bow Bering Sea | The ship also carried four landing craft on deck . . . | 1979 |
| 9 | Ship North Star III Bering Sea Looking Astern | . . . that were used to transport the cargo between the ship and the villages. | 1979 |
| 10 | Ship North Star III LCM Launch | Each landing craft weighed 39 tons and were launched using the ship’s 50 ton cargo booms. | 1979 |
| 11 | Ship North Star III LCM Arctic Fox Cargo on the Beach | Two of the LCM’s were used to haul dry cargo. Cargo was offloaded ashore using a small bulldozer and/or converted front-end loader with a forklift attachment. The two cargo LCM’s were named “Arctic Fox” and “Waffle Bottom” (because the bottom looked like a waffle from pounding on the rocks). | 1979 |
| 12 | Ship North Star III LCM Oil Boat 2nd Mate Bill Riedl | The other two LCM’s were for delivering heating oil. They had a cargo tank, pump, and hoses to transfer the heating oil into the village storage tanks. One was named the “Blue Max”, I don’t recall the name of the red LCM in the photo. | 1979 |
| 13 | Ship North Star III North Star Sailing Schedule | A schedule was developed and published so the villages knew when to expect the arrival of the ship. | 1979 |
| 14 | Ship North Star III Radio Operator Roger Darby | In addition, the radio operator would maintain radio contact with the villages to update them on the ship’s progress. Roger Darby was “the voice of the North Star III” for many years and was famous throughout the region though he very rarely set foot ashore. | 1979 |
| 15 | Ship North Star III LCM at Point Hope | Cargo operations consisted of anchoring the ship in front of the village as close as safely practicable. The ship kept a library of ledger notebooks where local knowledge from past voyages were recorded. Also, there was a small notebook of hand drawn chartlets for the villages for the LCM’s to use to navigate. Once the ship was anchored the crew went on cargo watches of 18 hours work with 6 hours rest. The LCM’s would be launched and tethered to the ship, the hatches would be opened, and the palletized cargo was discharged onto the two dry cargo boats. The oil boats would connect a hose to the ship and fill their tanks. The boats would run back and forth between the village and the ship until all the cargo for that location was delivered. | 1979 |
| 16 | Ship North Star III Unalakleet Norton Sound | Once the cargo boat landed and dropped its bow ramp, the forklift/loader would remove the cargo and carry it above the tide line. The oil boats would have to sit on the beach for extended periods of time to pump out their cargo. The landing locations differed in beach material, depth of water to the beach, and exposure to the open sea. | 1979 |
| 17 | Ship North Star III Browerville Near Barrow | 1979 | |
| 18 | Ship North Star III LCM Little Diomede Village | 1979 | |
| 19 | Ship North Star III LCM Little Diomede Cargo | The landing site at Little Diomede for example consisted of large boulders, and machinery could not be used to offload so the villagers had to form a “bucket brigade” and offload the boat by hand. Little Diomede was particularly difficult due to the weather, exposure to the open sea, and the rocks. | 1979 |
| 20 | Ship North Star III Teller Alaska 1979 | The North Star III would transport villagers to and from the mainland to the island. They would camp in Brevig Mission near Teller, the LCM’s would ferry the villagers to the ship, and hopefully, the conditions would permit them to disembark at Little Diomede. If it was too rough, the ship returned to Brevig Mission and the villagers disembarked and waited for another attempt at a later date. | 1979 |
| 21 | Ship North Star III Stebbins Cargo For Yukon River | As mentioned earlier, the oil boats had to spend a lot of time on the beach to pump out their cargo. This left them exposed to the elements and many times the surf conditions would cause the boats to “broach” sideways on the beach. The boats essentially became a breakwater and surf would break onto them in a spectacular display of spray and white water. The cargo boats would then have to be employed to rescue the oil boats by backing in through the surf, tossing a line to the oil boat, and pulling it off the beach. Sometimes the bulldozer had to be used in conjunction with the LCM to push the boat back into the sea and refloat it. Cargo operations at Stebbins consisted of mooring a barge alongside and pumping the heating oil into the tanks while the dry cargo was loaded onto the deck. A tugboat would then take the barge up the Yukon River and deliver to the villages upriver. | 1979 |
| 22 | Ship North Star III Seattle Dock | At the end of the ice free season, the ship would return to its berth in Seattle Washington located up the Duwamish River where it would spend the winter preparing for the next summer’s sailing | 1979 |
| 23 | Ship North Star III Walrus | 1979 |