Jacob von Staehlin was a German historian and writer. Educated at Leipzig, he performed as a flautist under the direction of Johann Sebastian Bach and became friends with the composer’s sons. In 1735, he travelled to St Petersburg, where he remained for the rest of his life. He held numerous positions at the Russian Court, including serving as tutor and later librarian to Peter III from 1742 and retained royal favour following the accession of Catherine the Great in 1762. He also served as secretary and professor of poetry and rhetoric at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and published fortnightly in the city a German-language periodical that helped to introduce Enlightenment ideas into Russia.

In 1774, von Staehling published a compilation of information regarding Russian exploratory voyages in the northern Pacific Ocean. Under the auspices of Matthew Maty (1718–76), secretary of the Royal Society and librarian of the British Museum, this English translation of the work was issued the same year.

The account claimed to contain detailed reports made by Russian navigators during expeditions to Kamchatka and the Bering Strait sponsored by the Russian Admiralty in 1764–7 and those of promyshlenniki (self-employed Russian and Siberian fur traders) in 1765–7. Notably, the map he included in the volume depicted a large island ‘Alashka’ off the eastern coast of Siberia, separated from the North American mainland by a large strait. This sparked great interest in London, where the quest for the Northwest Passage was regularly discussed among intellectual circles. The possibility of a large strait leading to the Arctic west of North America raised hopes that future searches for the Passage could be undertaken from both sides of the continent.

Of the 35 subscribers to the English edition, 30 were Fellows of the Royal Society and included figures such as Benjamin Franklin; Joseph Banks; Constantine Phipps; Alexander Dalrymple; Daniel Solander; the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne and Sir John Pringle, the Society’s President. However, unknown to Maty and the rest of the Royal Society, von Staehlin’s original account had been undertaken without any collaboration between the Russian Admiralty and the Academy of Sciences. This meant that while he was able to draw on accounts of voyages he had had no access to navigational charts from Vitus Bering’s (1681–1741) two voyages in 1725–31 and 1733–43 nor those of successive expeditions to the region, and much of the map was conjectural.

When James Cook (1728–79) reached the Northwest Coast of North America on his third voyage to the Pacific (1776–80) with secret instructions to search for the Passage, von Staehlin’s map determined the route that the Royal Society had plotted for him to follow. On 4 September 1778, while traversing the coast and believing that he had missed an opening near Prince of Wales Cape, Cook noted he ‘was at a loss to reconcile Mr Staehlins map with my own observations’. Twelve days later, after becoming convinced that von Staehlin’s map was wrong, an irritable Cook abandoned his search for the Passage and made for Hawai’i.

Main reference: James K Barnett & David L Nicandri (eds), Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage (Anchorage, 2015)