Commission on May 7, 1927, the Coast Guard cutter NORTHLAND (WPG 49), was a cruising class of gunboat specially designed for Arctic operations and built at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry-dock Corp., Newport News, Virginia. Prior to World War II her homeports were alternately San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle. She serve primarily on the Bearing Sea Patrol, where she performed “everything under the midnight sun.”
NORTHLAND departed the West Coast in 1938 on her last Arctic cruise, after which she decommission. In June1939, however, she recommissioned and transferred to Boston, Massachusetts to prepare for the second Byrd Antarctic Expedition. However, with the eruption of war in Europe in September, she was withdrawn from the expedition.