The St. Lawrence Island famine killed around 1000 people on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea off the Alaskan mainland during the years 1878–1880. Possible causes may have been overfishing, disease, or negative aspects of settler contact.

The Thomas Corwin was a revenue cutter of the United States Revenue-Marine and United States Revenue Cutter Service and subsequently a merchant vessel. These two very different roles both centered on Alaska and the Bering Sea. In 1912, Frank Willard Kimball wrote: "The Corwin has probably had a more varied and interesting career than any other vessel which plies the Alaskan waters."