Leonid Pasenjuk is a Russian author of long standing, with 28 books to his name. He writes mainly about the Kamchatka peninsula, Cukotka and the Kurile Islands, a region known as "Russian America".

He heard about the Captain Cook Study Unit from member Alexej Tsyrupa (558) when staying on the Kamchatka peninsula.

Leonid has sent me an article which has been published in 1980 in the Russian anthology "Nord-Ost" (pages 128-136) and in a shortened form in the Moscow journal "Wokrug svjeta" (pages 50-52) entitled "James Cook’s Clock". The former was at the time translated into English and annotated by Mr W.E. Ricker, with the intention of publishing it in Canada. Leonid has not heard whether this venture took place, and has not had a reply to his letter sent in 1984 or 1985 to him at: 3052 Hammond Bay Road, Nanaimo, BC Y9T 1E2, Canada.

Does anyone know if the English translation has appeared anywhere?

The article is concerned with the visits, on the Third Voyage, of the ships to Petropavlosk, where first Major Behm and then Captain Shmalev were governor and where they received great assistance from them. It investigates various stories of how a clock was given to one of them, and it’s subsequent travels.

Leonid has sent me a copy of the translation for publication in "Cook’s Log". Can anyone check it for me, or translate the shorter version?

He also has published an article about Gerassim Gregoriev Ismailov, whose meeting with Captain Cook on 14th October, 1778 at Unalaska is described in the journals of the Third Voyage. It was with him that Cook left a letter to the Admiralty, his first chance since leaving the Cape of Good Hope some two years earlier. Can anyone help with it’s translation?

Ian Boreham

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 1516, volume 21, number 2 (1998).