Photographing the Officers--Bering Sea 1899, 1899, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Photo of the officers aboard a ship--most likely the George W. Elder. Page 154 of a photo album documenting the Harriman Alaska Expedition, Volume 2. This image is part of a series of photographs taken by various members of the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899, which was cosponsored by Edward Henry Harriman, president of the Union Pacific Railroad and the Washington Academy of Sciences. Originally conceived by Harriman as a big-game hunt, the enterprise was transformed into a scientific expedition upon the advice of Clinton Hart Merriman, chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey..