1 page + stampless address leaf.
To Gilbert Thompson, Chief Engineer of US Navy, Washington, D.C. Forwarding a $60 claim for the model of a Steam Engine, made by Crook “to your order last summer, to be taken to China”. Jabez B. Crook is famous among connoisseurs of antique American fishing tackle for the fine bamboo-rods and reels he produced at his sporting goods store in New York from the 1840s until his death in 1884. But this letter is testament to his earlier skill as a machinist, producing a model of such quality that it was intended as a diplomatic gift to the Emperor of China. When Massachusetts Congressman Caleb Cushing was appointed the first US “Envoy Extraordinary” to imperial China in the hope of “opening” that country to American commerce, Cushing, thinking to impress the Chinese with new technological marvels like the telegraph, daguerreotype and steam engine, enlisted John R. Peters, Jr., a brilliant young engineer, to accompany his mission to “exhibit the finest fruits of American mechanical ingenuity before the Chinese”. It was probably while preparing for the voyage in the summer of 1843 that Peters commissioned Crook’s model of the steam engine, perhaps placing his order through Thompson, a lawyer who was the Navy’s “Chief Engineer” only because his father, a Justice of the Supreme Court had once been Secretary of the Navy. There is no record of what became of the Crook model in China – or if Crook was ever paid for his work. Cushing, after arriving in Canton, was denied an audience with the Emperor, instead meeting with his emissary to negotiate the first US treaty with the Chinese (see next entry) – possibly oiled by this first presentation of American technology to reach the Asian mainland.