[9] A three-masted ship with two decks, the Juno was a fast sailing merchant vessel that had a sharp keel lined with copper.

[8] John DeWolf acquired partial ownership of Juno and, at age 24 was made captain and supercargo and provided with a crew of 26 men and boys.

After preparing the ship for the long voyage, including a large cargo of trade goods including hardware, rum, tobacco, beads, dried beef, firearms, and cottons,[10] intended for both the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast and the Russians of Russian Alaska, DeWolf left Rhode Island on 13 August 1804.

[12] On 13 November 1804 Juno fell in with the Mary, another maritime fur trading vessel heading for the Pacific Northwest under Captain Trescott of Boston.

[12] On 7 April 1805 DeWolf reached the maritime fur trading site Nahwitti, at the north end of Vancouver Island.

He found the Mary already there, along with another trading ship named Pearl, under John Ebbets, who helped pilot Juno into the harbor.

The local Haida peoples offering sea otter furs for sale, but as at Nahwitti DeWolf found the prices too high.

[8] In May 1805 DeWolf left Kaigani and sailed north to the Russian-American Company (RAC) outpost at Novo-Arkhangelsk, today Sitka, Alaska.

The Mary and Pearl, and three vessels owned by the Lyman family of Boston—Lydia, under Samuel Hill, Vancouver, under Thomas Brown, and Atahualpa.

The various ships were working to transfer crew members and cargos and make repairs so that the Atahualpa could sail to China and then New England.

The Tlingit invited Juno to anchor for trade, but in a way that made DeWolf suspicious and wary to the point where he instructed his crew to be ready for battle.

DeWolf wrote that Baranov welcomed him to Sitka "with that kind of obliging hospitality which made him loved and respected by every visitor".

He arranged to have the Mary take them to sell in Guangzhou (Canton), the only port in China open to Western trade at the time.

The plan involved about 50-60 RAC Aleut and Alutiiq hunters and their kayaks being taken aboard Juno, which would sail to California in October 1805.

These included the nobleman Nikolai Rezanov, Russia's ambassador to Japan, plenipotentiary of Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and part owner of the Russian–American Company, and Georg von Langsdorff, a German naturalist and physician working as a diplomat representing the Russian Empire, and officers of the Russian Imperial Navy including Gavriil Ivanovich Davydov and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Khvostov.

DeWolf, learning how difficult and expensive the new ship's construction would be "jocosely", as he described it, told Langsdorff and Rezanov that he would sell Juno to the RAC.

Baranov reluctantly agreed to provide them with several Alutiiq men and the daughter of a Tlingit clan head to serve as translator.

And that the Tlingit "understand the qualities of a good gun so well that it is impossible to impose a bad one upon them: even the women are accustomed to the use of fire-arms, and often go out on the hunting parties".

While he was there, the food shortage became an emergency and scurvy began impacting work at Sitka, such as the construction of a new ship, dubbed Avos.

The Russians continued to San Francisco, where they were welcomed by Governor José Joaquín de Arrillaga and allowed to acquire provisions for Sitka.

[21][8] By late June, when Rezanov and Langsdorff returned with Juno, DeWolf was becoming increasingly bored and worried about being able to get to Siberia before unfavorable weather would prevent his departure for another season.

DeWolf visited villages in the vicinity of Petropavlovsk and, as his confidence increased, took longer trips around the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Langsdorff recalled the incident in a similar way—that they had run into a whale, which "could have been disastrous if the boat listed or was shaken too hard by the impact, but Captain DeWolf acted quite competently".

[8] In later years DeWolf recounted this story to his nephew Herman Melville, who included it in Moby Dick, Chapter 45, quoting Langsdorff account of the whale.

He later wrote that as an "American captain" traveling to Saint Petersburg "on government business", the local peoples held him in very high regard.

He also ran into his friend Langsdorff, who was on his way to Kyakhta, the only place where China allowed Russia to trade, via a crossing of Lake Baikal.

DeWolf planned to stay in Saint Petersburg until late November, but the outbreak of the Anglo-Russian War between Russia and the United Kingdom hastened his departure.

He adventures made him a local celebrity, and he told his stories to many people over the years until he finally wrote a book about it, titled A Voyage to the North Pacific and a Journey Through Siberia: More Than Half a Century Ago, published in 1861.

[12] After his circumnavigation, DeWolf participated in many other voyages as a businessman, making various international business contracts over a long and successful career.

[23] These trading houses were stocked with goods that were in demand by Native Hawaiians and the growing number of Americans and other foreigners who lived in Hawaii.