Prior to his departure for Russia's American colonies, he was married to Elisabeth Theodora Natalie Karoline de Rossillon, daughter of Baron Wilhelm de Rossillon. He traveled to his post early in 1829, by way of Siberia and Kamchatka. After thoroughly reforming the administration, he introduced the cultivation of the potato, opened and regulated the working of several mines, and urged upon the home government the organization of a fur company. He promoted investment, and sent out missionaries. He began a survey of the country, opened roads, built bridges and government buildings. He made geographical and ethnographical observations, which he embodied in a memoir to the navy department. Recalled in 1834, he returned by way of the Isthmus of Panama and the United States, where he visited several cities. Admiral Wrangel was promoted to rear admiral in 1837, and made director of the ship-timber department in the navy office, which he held for twelve years. He became vice-admiral in 1847, but resigned in 1849, and temporarily severed his connection with the navy to assume the presidency of the newly reorganized Russian-American Company. Wrangel had been a member of the board of directors of the Russian-American Company from 1840 to 1849. In 1854 he re-entered active service and was made chief director of the hydrographical department of the navy He was the Minister of the Navy 1855–1857. Retirement and death Wrangel retired in 1864. He opposed the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. Wrangel wrote the book Journey along the northern coastline of Siberia and the Arctic Ocean and other books about the peoples of northwestern America. He lived in his last years in Ruil (Roela in Estonian) in the eastern part of Estonia. He had bought the manor in 1840. He died in Dorpat, Livonia. Writings An account of the physical observations during his first journey was published in German (Berlin, 1827), and also in German extracts from Wrangel's journals, Reise längs der Nordküste von Sibirien und auf dem Eismeere in den Jahren 1820-1824 (2 vols., Berlin, 1839), which was translated into English as Wrangell's Expedition to the Polar Sea (2 vols., London, 1840). The complete report of the expedition appeared as "Puteshestvie po severnym beregam Sibiri, po Ledovitomu Moryu, sovershennoe v 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823 i 1824 godakh" (2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1841), and was translated into French with notes by Prince Galitzin, under the title Voyage