Letters from Java

After the initial oil booms in Oil Springs and Petrolia, many of the experienced oil men were left without employment. While American oil workers were still busy with the recent developments in Pennsylvania, oil exploration companies were directed to the Canadians in their search for drillers to send overseas. Four men from Lambton County were employed by a company in Holland to search for and drill for oil in Java in early 1874. The crew consisted of Malcolm Scott, an oil engineer; William Covert, a scaffold man; Edward Cook, probably a driller; and Joshua Porter, a driller; and they would take with them a Canadian pole-tool drilling rig which had been manufactured in Petrolia by George Sanson and Hector McKenzie. As this first crew of intrepid men prepared to depart for the foreign fields, they were accompanied to the train station in Petrolia (seen below) by their friends and families, and led by the town's band playing "Will Ye No Come Back Again".

Joshua Porter wrote a number of letters to his brother, who passed them onto the local newspaper editor, describing the sights in Java, no doubt playing a significant role in motivating other International Drillers to take up the adventure of oil prospection overseas. One of his letters was published in the Petrolia Advertiser on October 19, 1874 and he writes: "We are located 2,000 feet above the level of the sea in a beautiful country and healthy climate, rather hot days and quite cool nights. Our bamboo houses are comfortable, and servants--two men and a woman-- at 10cents a day each. We could fare very well if our meals were cooked right, that is, such as in our own country. The natives boil their rice and we are contented. Oranges, bannanas [sic], &c., are plenty and cheap."

Over the next several decades, many more International Drillers would write to the Petrolia Advertiser (and later the Petrolia Advertiser-Topic) with tales of the people, animals, and climates that they encountered.