UNITED STATES NAVY BILL

This Bill of Exchange was made out in May 1925 on the USS Preble when it was with the Asiatic Fleet. It was made payable to Captain George B. Landenberger. Capt. Landenberger was commander of the Asiatic Fleet’s Destroyer Squadron. His command ship was the USS Black Hawk.

He received the Navy Cross in WWI for his service as commander of the USS Indiana. He was in charge of the Receiving Station at San Francisco before and after his service in China. He later served as Governor of American Samoa. He died in 1936.

USS Preble was a Clemson class destroyer launched in 1920. It was named for Commodore Edward Preble. It served in the Caribbean and Atlantic until 1921 when it joined the Asiatic Fleet at Chefoo, China. It spent the next several years patrolling from Manchuria to Burma. It participated in escort and patrolling duty on the Yangtze from 1927 to 1929 when it returned to the US and operated out of San Diego and Mare Island. It served in the Pacific during WWII and earned eight battle stars. It was scrapped in 1946.

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The Bill of Exchange was commercially printed and not made by the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It was printed in the 1910s but still in use in 1925. The vignette is lithographed and is based on one of the Florida class battleships, either the USS Florida or USS Utah.

The Bill of Exchange was written for 945 dollars in Amoy currency. The port of Amoy is now the city of Xiamen, China. It lies on the Chinese coast between Shanghai and Hong Kong directly across from Taiwan.

Amoy currency was not a physical coin but a unit of account. It was based on the Spanish Milled Dollar and its value was determined by the Amoy branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. All foreign trade in China was done in silver. Foreign trade dollars including the Spanish Milled Dollar, Mexican Peso, US Trade Dollar and British Trade Dollar were used. All of these were of different fineness and composition. Chinese dollars and subsidiary coinage was introduced in the early 20th Century. The coinage system was very complicated and resorting to Amoy currency as the exchange medium brought stability to commercial transactions.