Lefebvre Navy Deck Watch

This historically important chronometer deckwatch is one of the first group of six torpedo boat watches purchased by the US Navy on March 31, 1899. Lefebvre had been supplying watches to the French Navy and these watches had passed the French Hydrographic Office chronometer standards before being offered to the US Navy where they were subsequently tested at the Naval Observatory in Washington DC and on board two US torpedo boats: the USS McKinsie and the USS Winslow. These watches had to be regulated to a high degree of accuracy and thoroughly tested before being put into service. No. 1095 was subsequently assigned to the USS Cushing, the oldest torpedo boat in the fleet, which served in the Spanish-American War and off the Atlantic coast until after World War I.

The watch comes with a substantial number of documents obtained from the National Archives including copies of the preliminary purchase agreement, the original invoice showing the serial number of the watch, testing results from the US Naval Observatory, a transfer document from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard indicating the assignment of the watch to the Cushing, an archival photograph of the Cushing with a synopsis of itÃfÆ'ââ,¬Â¢s history, etc. Discussions with restorers and curators of the primary Naval and nautical museums throughout the country, as well as the Smithsonian and Greenwich, indicate that this is probably the sole surviving example of these original chronometer watches purchased by the Navy.