About This Artifact
The miner's whale-oil lamp was found during Gilbert Hedden's 1937 excavation of shaft No. 22, the largest shaft ever opened in the Money Pit area at twelve by twenty-four feet. Finn (1994) records that "remnants of much earlier work such as heavy drill casings and a miner's whale-oil lamp were uncovered" during the dig. These items, including pieces of old drill casings and a large section of rusted pipe, appeared at approximately the fifty-foot level. Whale-oil lamps of this type provided a reliable, relatively smoke-free light source and were standard equipment in underground excavations throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Hedden, a successful American businessman from Chatham, New Jersey, conducted one of the most methodical searches in Oak Island history. He spent 1934 researching the island's history, interviewing previous explorers including William Chappell, and examining records of earlier digs before commencing fieldwork. He hired the professional firm of Sprague and Henwood of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who brought a one-thousand-gallon-per-minute electric pump. After re-timbering the Chappell shaft to 170 feet in 1936, they opened the new Hedden shaft in May 1937 and reached 124 feet before Hedden redirected his attention to a treasure map published in Harold T. Wilkins's book Captain Kidd and his Skeleton Island.
The lamp was found amid the debris of previous expeditions that had accumulated in the Money Pit area over the preceding century. At fifty feet, it sat above the flood tunnel level and within the zone where multiple searcher shafts had intersected and collapsed into one another. Its age has not been precisely determined, and whether it belonged to the Onslow Company workers of the early 1800s, the Truro Company men of the 1850s, or another early expedition remains unknown. Its presence alongside drill casings from later operations illustrates the layered stratigraphy of the Money Pit area, where tools and debris from more than two centuries of searching lie intermingled at various depths.
Historical Context
Hedden expedition
Where It Was Found
Found at Hedden shaft (No. 22), approx. 50 ft depth — the original 1795 excavation shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia.
