Uriel Sebree - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Uriel Sebree was born in Fayette, Missouri, on February 20, 1848, to Judge John Sebree, called "one of the prominent citizens of old Howard County" by the Jefferson County Tribune, and his wife. Uriel was the first of two sons. His brother, Frank P. Sebree, became a lawyer. Uriel entered the United States Naval Academy on July 3, 1863, during the American Civil War. After his graduation in 1867, his first assignment was on board the USS Canandaigua. Over the next few years Sebree won repeated promotion: to ensign in 1868, master in 1870, and lieutenant in 1871. In 1873 he transferred to the ironclad USS Dictator.

One episode in Sebree's early military history which influenced his later career was his participation in the second Polaris rescue mission. The Polaris expedition was an 1871–72 exploration of the Arctic that had aimed to reach the North Pole. The expedition was troubled from the start: its leader, Charles Francis Hall, died in mysterious circumstances before the end of their first winter. The following year, the Polaris remained trapped in ice and unable to return home. During a violent storm, the crew was separated into two groups: a small group of explorers was stranded on the now-crippled Polaris and the remainder were marooned on an ice floe. These latter 19 survivors were discovered by chance and rescued by the civilian whaler USS Tigress. Because of the Tigress's success the Navy chartered the ship, temporarily rechristened her the USS Tigress, and used her to launch a rescue attempt to locate the remainder of the crew. For this attempt the ship would be commanded by a group of eight navy officers, led by Captain James A. Greer, although much of the original civilian crew was retained. Lieutenant Sebree was one of the officers chosen for the mission.

This rescue mission was the first official United States military expedition to the Arctic; previous expeditions, including that of the Polaris itself, had been led by civilians. The Tigress sailed from New York on July 14, 1873, traveling first to St. John's, Newfoundland and then to Godhavn and Upernavik in Greenland before following the coast further north. The crew searched North Star Bay, Northumberland Island, and Hartstene Bay before discovering the first sign of the Polaris crew: a camp on Littleton Island where they had wintered, now occupied by Inuits. The missing men, the rescuers were told, had constructed makeshift boats salvaged from their destroyed ship and traveled south. Acting on this clue, the Tigress searched the Baffin Island coast to Cumberland Sound, and then the Greenland coast from Ivigtut to Fiskenæsset and the Davis Strait, before returning to St. John's for fuel. Once there, they learned that the Polaris survivors had been rescued by a British ship and that their search was over. After returning to New York the Tigress was transferred back to civilian use.

After this expedition, Sebree was assigned to the screw frigate USS Franklin where he remained for three years. In 1878, he was assigned to work with the United States Coast Survey on board the A. D. Bache. The following year he was given his first two commands: the Silliman and then the Thomas R. Gedney, both ships of the United States Coast Survey. He remained on the latter ship for nearly three years before being assigned to the USS Brooklyn in 1882. In 1883, he was given his first command of a Navy ship, the USS Pinta, with orders to sail to Alaska.