Oakland for repairs for the first twenty days of April and left for duty in Alaska following completion of the repairs. For the next three years Unalga rotated between assignments in Alaska and Port Townsend and added the duty of enforcing the Neutrality Act when World War I started in Europe on 1 August 1914. U.S. Coast Guard Alaska patrols On 28 January 1915 USRC Unalga became USCGC Unalga by virtue of the establishment of the United States Coast Guard by merger of the United States Revenue Cutter Service with the United States Life-Saving Service. In February 1915 additional duties were assigned enforcing the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911 which related to prohibited pelagic sealing in the Bering Sea. Patrol work during 1915 and 1916 consisted of summers in Alaskan waters with sealing treaty duties, law enforcement, search and rescue, medical assistance to fishermen and others, and the delivery of mail to remote camps. Winters were spent at various locations along the Pacific Northwest coast doing law enforcement patrol work. In January 1917, Unalga was assigned her first winter patrol in Alaskan waters at the urging of representatives of the fishing industry to provide medical services to crews of fishing vessels as well as search and rescue work in remote waters. She stopped in Sitka, Alaska to investigate reports of a measles epidemic and to take on more coal for her first winter mission into the Gulf of Alaska. Unalga'''s first winter patrol was begun 30 January during a squall with hurricane force winds that iced the cutter over and threaten to sink her with the additional weight. After the starboard whaleboat was smashed by heavy seas and the radio masts snapped from the weight of ice, Captain Frederick Dodge made for the shelter of Yakutat Bay. The cutter was listing starboard at twenty degrees and the crew had to clear ice from the decks and machinery with axes and steam hoses. The crew of Unalga spent the next week repairing damage to the cutter while the surgeon treated the ills of inhabitants of Yakutat and gave the resident missionary a short course in medicine. Each time the cutter would leave the shelter of the bay another gale would appear, but Dodge took care to seek shelter before the cutter was as severely iced as the first time. Unalga was recalled to Seattle on 6 March after steaming