1836 – Two letters from an important naval surgeon describing his return voyage from a diplomatic mission to Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat
China, India, Southeast Asia: 1836. Envelope or Cover. This lot contains two stampless folded letters from Naval Surgeon William Samuel Waithman Ruschenberger, aboard the USS Peacock, sent to his mother in Philadelphia while on the return from a diplomatic mission to Cochin-China (today Vietnam), Siam (Thailand), and Muscat (at the time an Arabian sea power on the Gulf of Oman). Both are in very nice shape.
The first letter was sent from Macao on 22 Jun 1836 via the HMS Horatio to New York where it entered the U.S. mail bound for Philadelphia. It bears a “New-York Ship Nov. 14 [1836]” circular date-stamp and a manuscript “27” postal rate annotation.
The second was sent from the “U.S. Ship Peacock, Off Mazatlan [Mexico], November 10, 1836”. It entered the U.S. mail in at Pensacola, Florida, and bears a near perfect strike of the scarce “Pensa. F.” circular territorial postmark dated “Jan. 16 [1836.]” As Ruschenberger notes in the letter, “Mail is dispatched from this place to Vera Cruz, whence a packet runs to New York. By this route this ought to reach Philadelphia in January 1837.”
The letters read in part:
“I have been to constantly at real hard work in attending, and prescribing for the sick and in breaking up my hospital that I have not been able to write you fully. . .. An accident or rather a disappointment in not meeting Capt. Stirbling affords me the opportunity to write this, and assure you of my excellent health. Our sick list is still large but all are getting well, and as we shall be out of the climate of the East Indies in ten days & once more in the great Pacific Ocean, I hope we shall all do well.
“The papers will show that we buried here the Diplomatist Mr. Roberts & Capt. Campbell – we have lost no men. Mr. Roberts had been ill for 3 years & Capt. Campbell was intemperate & imprudent, or he would have recovered. We sail to-morrow for the Sandwich Islands [Hawaii] and you may expect us at home in April next. I have been in Canton 6 days and made there a number of purchases a silk dress for you &c and some slippers. . .. I pleased the tea-merchants so much by making some phrenological observations on their heads that they presented me with 3 boxes of the very finest tea.
“I have spent all my money [and only have} cash enough to bring me home from Norfolk, but I have a large stock of valuable goods in place of it. This is a secret between us. My journal will be large & my medical book I think will be good too in its time. . ..
“At the Sandwich Islands we found it necessary to visit Monterrey in Upper California [where] we found the temperature cool enough to exhibit a white frost. . .. This to us who have been so long within the tropics was bracing . . . uncomfortably cold.
“Our stay [in Mazatlán] will be but three or four days on our way to Valparaiso, Acapulco, the Galapagos Islands and Callao [Peru’s main seaport}. . . . We shall [not] reach Norfolk much before the first of July 1837. . .. After I get home . . . I shall commence the arduous task of correcting the proofs of my new book, which I [will title], “An Embassy to the Courts of Muscat and Siam, by the author of Three Years in the Pacific.
“It will be superior . . . and interest to “Three Years” and though not larger, will sell I think for three Dollars a copy, for I shall insist upon having in it several maps and plates. It will contain a vast deal of new information on the commerce & scientific matters, but so woven into the work as to prevent it from being dry & uninteresting to general readers. . .. If any of those five hundred cousins of yours come in your way invite them to put down their names for ‘An Embassy’ & opining them the work will be worth their money, and what is three Dollars to a rich relation when given towards helping a poor one.
“I would write you descriptions of several places, but I get so tired if it, in writing for the Embassy that I cannot even bear to repeat it in letters to you, besides a sheet of paper is not large enough to describe a kingdom upon.
“The health of the ship is now restored [and] the commadore thinks I am a wonderfully clever doctor and has so reported to the Secretary [of the Navy].”’. Very good. Item #010646
In an effort to confirm and exploit tales of the Far East’s exceptional bounty of silks, teas, and other riches brought home by whalers, President Andrew Jackson, appointed Edmond Roberts, a distinguished diplomat, as the first envoy to the region. The USS Peacock was his ‘home’ between 1832 and 1836 while he concluded treaties with Thailand and the Sultan of Muscat and Oman. Following their ratification, the ship visited the court of Minh Mang in Vietnam, however Roberts’s negotiations failed. While on the return to the United States where he was to receive an appointment to become the first American ambassador to Edo Japan, he contracted dysentery in Portuguese Macau and died.
Ruschenberger did publish his medical book and narrative of this mission, A Voyage around the World including an Embassy to Muscat and Siam in 1835, 1836 and 1837, and both were well regarded. Later his story of this voyage was merged with Robert’s memoir and published as Two Yankee Diplomats In 1830s Siam.
Ruschenberger went on to a distinguished naval career serving as the fleet surgeon of the Pacific and Mediterranean Squadrons, the hospital commander at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the medical director of the Boston Naval Yard, and the Senior Medical Officer of the Navy.
[For more information, see Ruschenberger’s book, Young’s Two Yankee Diplomats In 1830s Siam by Edmund Roberts and W. S. W. Ruschenberger, and entries at the Ancestry.com and Find-a Grave websites.
We have sold several letters from the Ruschenberger correspondence, this one is the most significant. An exceptional first-person account regarding the first American diplomatic adventure into the Far East with an early description of purchasing goods in China and bartering ‘medical knowledge’ for fine teas.
Price: $1,750.00