In 1785, the Russian government of Catherine II commissioned a new expedition in search for the Northeast Passage, led by English officer Joseph Billings, who had previously sailed with Captain Cook, and the Russian officer Gavril Sarychev as his deputy. This enterprise operated till 1795.
Though considered a failure because the expenditures outweighed the results, it nevertheless had a substantial record of achievement. Accurate maps were made of the Chukotka Peninsula in Eastern Siberia, the west coast of Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands. Members of the expedition landed on Kodiak Island and made an examination of the islands and mainlands of Prince William Sound.
Billings was to illustrate works devoted to the great moral questions of his day; perhaps his dedication to these reform issues was awakened at the chapel.
Billings was omnipresent in the lives of mid-nineteenth-century Bostonians of the middle as well as the upper class.
Billings had illustrated some of the Waverley novels in the mid-1850s, although not apparently this one (see appendix B); perhaps he was drawn to the vicinity by its associations as well as such picturesque views as he was to record.
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