D'Wolf, John:

$30,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

A VOYAGE TO THE NORTH PACIFIC AND A JOURNEY THROUGH SIBERIA MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY AGO. The Thomas W. Streeter-William S. Reese copy. This is a presentation copy, inscribed on the titlepage: "To the Dorchester Antiquarian Society with the regard of John D'Wolf." This copy has the bookplates of the Dorchester Antiquarian Society and Thomas W. Streeter on the verso of the front wrapper, and of William S. Reese on the interior of the clamshell case. According to Sabin, only one hundred copies of this book were printed.A very rare Pacific voyage account by an uncle of Herman Melville. As a young man, in 1805, Captain D'Wolf sailed the Bristol brig Juno via Cape Horn to Sitka, sold her to the Russian governor there and returned with Langsdorff via Siberia. It was on the newly acquired Juno that Rezanov sailed to San Francisco in early March 1806 to buy supplies for the Russian settlers. "One of the rarest of Pacific voyages....After staying with Governor Alexander Baranov, of the Russian American Company at New Archangel [Sitka], D'Wolf, an uncle of Herman Melville and mentioned by him in MOBY DICK and REDBURN, accepted Baranov's [i.e., Rezanov's] invitation to accompany him across Siberia to St. Petersburg, with Baron Georg von Langsdorff. In his narrative, D'Wolf expresses the opinion that he was the first American to make the journey" - Hill. "From our point of view it is fortunate that D'Wolf published this account as it gives many interesting and important details regarding

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