About This Artifact
A small instrument identified as a boatswain's whistle was found near Smith's Cove in 1885. Made of bone or ivory, it is consistent in form with the call whistles used by naval officers and ship's crew from the medieval period onward to issue commands aboard sailing vessels. The whistle came to the attention of Mary B. Steward, a New York financier who backed the 1932 Oak Island expedition, and she arranged for it to be examined by several institutions including the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The museum identified the whistle as most likely Scandinavian in origin and made from walrus tusk ivory. Walrus ivory was a primary trade commodity of the Norse North Atlantic world, actively traded from Greenland during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when Norse settlements there were at their peak. If the identification is correct, the whistle would represent one of the earliest artefacts on Oak Island and one of the few with a direct link to Norse or Viking activity in the region. The only verified Viking settlement in North America, L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, lies 625 miles northeast of Oak Island and was active around 1021 AD.
Doug Crowell and Emiliano Cataldi presented the whistle's history to Rick and Marty Lagina during Season 12 as part of a broader discussion of Norse activity in North America. The team decided to bring the whistle and other artefacts with possible Scandinavian connections, including an arrowhead reportedly recovered by Robert Dunfield and a decorative lead piece, to L'Anse aux Meadows for comparison with the nearly eight hundred artefacts recovered at that site. The whistle remains one of several Oak Island finds that predate both the Money Pit's discovery and the arrival of British settlers in the Mahone Bay area.
Historical Context
Historical finds; Season 12 revisited
Where It Was Found
Found at Smith's Cove — the north shore of Oak Island where the flood tunnel system was discovered.
