Pacific Station (1857–1868)

Alert spent the first 11 years of her life on the Pacific Station, based at Esquimalt at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, Canada. Alert Bay, British Columbia is named after the ship, and nearby Pearse Island, at the north entrance to Johnstone Strait, is named after Commander William Alfred Rumbulow Pearse, her commanding officer.^[6] During this period it returned to Plymouth between October 1861 and May 1863 for a refit. Her service on the Pacific station was the type of work for which her class had been designed—the policing of Britain's far-flung maritime empire.

A photograph exists of Alert at Esquimalt, British Columbia from 1867, and it is further attested to by the following extract from The Colonist newspaper:

"The 'Alert' Taken! – On Wednesday, H.M.S. Alert was taken without resistance on the part of her officers and crew, who are believed to have lent themselves to the plot. The ship was lying at anchor in Esquimalt harbour when the affair occurred, and the time chosen by the enemy was noon-day. The captor was Mr. Robinson the Photographer, and the only weapons he used in effecting his object were a Camera, and a bit of glass."

— The Colonist, 5 July 1866^[7]

Alert paid off at Plymouth on 30 May 1868 and was placed in the Steam Reserve.

Arctic exploration (1874–1876)

In 1874, Alert was taken in hand for conversion to the role of Arctic exploration. Her single-expansion engine was replaced with an R & W Hawthorn compound-expansion engine, it was re-boilered to 60 pounds per square inch (410 kPa), her armament was reduced to four guns and her hull was strengthened with felt-covered iron. Above the waterline it was sheathed with teak, and below it, Canadian elm and pitch-pine. The modifications caused her displacement to increase to 1,240 tons.^[5]

The British Arctic Expedition was commanded by Captain George Strong Nares, and comprised Alert (Captain Nares) and Discovery (Captain Henry Frederick Stephenson). The expedition aimed to reach the North Pole via Smith Sound, the sea passage between Greenland and Canada's northernmost island, Ellesmere Island. Contemporary geographers proposed that there could be an Open Polar Sea, and that if the thick layer of ice surrounding it were overcome, access to the North Pole by sea might be possible. Ever since Edward Augustus Inglefield had penetrated Smith Sound in 1852, it had been a likely route to the North.

Despite finding heavier-than-expected ice, the expedition pressed on.^[8] Leaving Discovery to winter at Lady Franklin Bay, Alert pressed on a further 50 nautical miles (93 km; 58 mi) through the Robeson Channel, establishing her winter quarters at Floeberg Beach.^[8] Spring 1876 saw considerable activity by sledge, charting the coasts of Ellesmere Island and Greenland, but scurvy had begun to take hold, with Alert suffering the greatest burden.^[8] On 3 April the second-in-command of Alert, Albert Hastings Markham, took a party north to attempt the Pole. By 11 May, having made slow progress, they reached their greatest latitude at 83° 20' 26"N.^[9] Suffering from snow blindness, scurvy and exhaustion, they turned back.

The expedition was rewarded on its return; Nares was knighted, Markham was promoted to captain.^[3] The geography of northern Canada and Greenland is dotted with the names of those connected with the expedition: Nares Strait, Nares Lake, Markham Ice Shelf, Ayles Ice Shelf, and Mount Ayles. The northernmost permanently inhabited place on earth, the settlement of Alert at the northern point of Ellesmere Island, was named for the ship.

Survey (1876–1884)

Alert recommissioned at Chatham on 20 August 1878^[5] under the command of Captain Sir George Strong Nares for a survey of the Strait of Magellan. On 12 March 1879 Captain John Maclear took command,^[5] and under him she went to Australia Station and the Pacific. She was employed in surveying, but the presence of Doctor Richard Coppinger, her surgeon, ensured that she also made a huge contribution to the field of zoology. Coppinger, who had also served in the Arctic expedition, was an accomplished naturalist^[10] and his collections from the period 1878–1882, which included indigenous cultural artifacts purloined, as he admitted, from Mutumui sites on Clack Island,^[11] added 1,300 species to the National Collection.^[12][13] Alert paid off at Sheerness on 20 September 1882.^[5]

Loan to the US Navy (1884)

Adolphus Greely led the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition to the Arctic in 1881. Two supply ships failed to reach his party, and a relief expedition in 1883 also failed to extract the team. The US Navy put together a further relief expedition in 1884 under Captain W. S. Schley, and Alert was offered. She was loaned to the US Navy under the command of Captain George W Coffin on 20 February 1884, and was used to set up supply dumps to support USS Bear in the extrication of Greely and his men.^[3]

Two members of Greely's expedition, Lieutenant James B. Lockwood and Sergeant David Legge Brainard had achieved a new record of 83° 30'N,^[14] just 4 miles (6.4 km) closer to the Pole than Markham had achieved in 1876. Lockwood and 19 other members of the expedition died; Greely, Brainard and four others survived.

Loan to the Canadian Government

In September 1880, the United Kingdom transferred its rights of Arctic sovereignty to Canada. From 1884 to 1886 the Canadian Marine Service of the Department of Marine and Fisheries sent an expedition to Hudson Bay to establish observation posts and to estimate the length of season for ice-free navigation. A former lieutenant of the Royal Navy, Andrew Robertson Gordon, was placed in command, and a suitable ship was sought. Having finished her work with the US Navy, Alert seemed the ideal vessel for the task. She was sailed to the Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax and transferred by the senior naval officer to the marine agent of the Department of Marine and Fisheries.^[3]

"The Alert was a screw steamship, barque rigged, of about 700 tons gross . . . constructed as to be capable of resisting great ice pressure, and her engines being only 50 nominal horsepower, the screw is small . . . so that in every way she was well adapted for the work of the expedition."

— Andrew Robertson Gordon^[3]

In 1886 she carried Captain Markham, who had been second-in-command of Alert during the 1876 Arctic Exploration, and now represented the interests of a railway company interested in building a line from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay. Captain Markham left the ship at York Factory, Manitoba and returned by the Hayes River canoe route.^[15]

After the last Hudson Bay expedition in 1886, Alert was reconfigured as a light-house supply vessel and buoy tender. Her topmasts and yards were removed, and a wheelhouse was built abaft the remains of the main mast. She worked at first in Nova Scotia, but as her wooden hull showed signs of deterioration, she was moved to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, sailing out of Quebec.^[3] Thirty years after her launch little was left of her original appearance; in essence she was now a small, old, low-powered steamer showing the scars of hard labour and many an ungainly conversion. Nevertheless, she continued to give useful service until the last decade of the nineteenth century.