Alexander Hamilton Rice Jr.

Alexander "Ham" Rice is the scion of the Rice family, which has been a mainstay of Massachusetts since the 1620s. A respected surgeon, Rice spent 1914-1917 as part of the Ambulance Américain in Paris, first as part of the surgical staff and later as director of a Paris hospital. Once the United States entered the war, he returned and enlisted in the Naval Reserve, teaching navigation at the Reserve Officer Training School at Newport, Rhode Island.
Before and after the war, Rice has made multiple expeditions into the Amazon basin, earning reknown as the world's foremost authority on that river. His latest expedition, in 1919-20, used the ex-Belgian royal yacht Alberta. He was accompanied on that voyage by his wife, the socialite and survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, Mrs. Eleanor Elkins Widener Rice.