Model ship, the USS Boxer
Maker: Artist Unknown, Inuit
Medium:Walrus ivory, baleen
Geography: Alaska, U.S.A.
Date: 1920-1959
Dimensions:26 x 29 x 6.5 cm
Object number: 2009.128.1.1
Credit Line: Phillip A. Chester Collection
DescriptionUSS Boxer was constructed at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, New Hampshire, and commissioned in May 1905. Initially rigged as a brigantine - foremast with square-rigged sails and mainmast with fore-and-aft sails - it was a training vessel and sailed out of the Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In May 1920, USS Boxer was decommissioned and transferred to the United States Bureau of Education to transport school supplies north to Alaska. In turn, on the behalf of Aboriginal herders it carried reindeer carcasses south that were sold in the continental United States.
