John Q. Lovell took the majority of these photographs while the USS Thetis (a three-masted steam whaler built in 1884) was serving as a revenue cutter in 1899. During this time, the ship and the crew were assigned to transport reindeer to Alaska as part of a project undertaken by the Revenue Cutter Service and the Department of the Interior to help the Indigenous people of the area learn to herd animals for food rather than rely on the traditional hunt. The images depict such subjects as the Thetis and the crew, the headlands of Sitka harbor, views in Sitka, views on board ship, views at sea, Indigenous peoples, and a Russian Orthodox church. Other images show the Thetis before its 1887 departure from New York for San Francisco.