Navy Blue Nose Polar Bear Hat Patch

The blue thread on this polar bear's nose is the whole idea: a sailor who crosses the Arctic Circle aboard ship becomes a Blue Nose. The circle sits at about 66 degrees 34 minutes north, and a ship that crosses it enters the realm of Boreas Rex, King of the North. Sailors who have not been north before go through a line-crossing ceremony and come out of it with a certificate and a title they keep. It is the northern counterpart to the Shellback ceremony at the equator. This patch carries the Order of the Blue Nose in the curved-bar shape sailors know from Navy hat patches.

Submarines are the Navy's regular visitors to the Arctic, while surface ships rarely went that far north in the years after the Cold War. When USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) went north for a NATO exercise in late 2018, it was the first U.S. carrier above the Arctic Circle since the early 1990s. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) crossed on October 15, 2019, and held its Blue Nose ceremony six days later. USS Thomas Hudner (DDG-116) held its ceremony in the Canadian Arctic with only 12 of its crew already initiated. USS Ross (DDG-71) spent 13 days in the Barents Sea before heading to Tromso in northern Norway.

The patch is 4.5 inches wide and 3.25 inches tall, with a navy blue merrowed edge around a dark blue field. A gold bar across the top reads UNITED STATES NAVY in blue letters, and a matching gold bar along the bottom reads BLUE NOSE. In the center a gray polar bear walks straight toward you with its head low and its nose stitched in bright blue. A white seal sits on each side of it, the polar bear's usual prey on the ice. REALM OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE runs in white letters across the field at the bear's front paws.

Blue Nose is a title for life, and the certificate usually ends up framed or tucked into a cruise book. The ceremony is part rite and part comedy, with a senior sailor playing Boreas Rex; aboard USS Roosevelt (DDG-80) it was the command master chief. Navy Region Mid-Atlantic once announced that Santa and his elves were born into the Order of the Blue Nose. Behind the humor is real seamanship, because a ship that goes that far north is working in cold water, heavy weather and long stretches of darkness or daylight depending on the season.

Wear it on the front of a ball cap, or mount it in a shadow box next to the Blue Nose certificate. It also fits a jacket or sea bag, and it makes a good gift for a sailor home from a first Arctic deployment. The backing is iron-on, and it can be sewn on as well. A polar bear with a blue nose says the rest.