Hugh Nixon Shaw (1812 – February 11, 1863) is an Irish-Canadian oil producer and businessman. Shaw is best known for being misidentified as the discoverer of the Shaw well, Canada's first
oil gusher
A blowout is the uncontrolled release of crude oil and/or natural gas from an oil well or gas well after pressure control systems have failed.'All About Blowout', R. Westergaard, Norwegian Oil Review, 1987 Modern wells have blowout preventers i ...
, on January 16, 1862.
Biography
Hugh Nixon Shaw was born near Dublin, Ireland, in 1812.
At some point, Shaw emigrated to
Canada West
The Province of Canada (or the United Province of Canada or the United Canadas) was a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, in the Report on the ...
and operated a general store in
Cooksville Cooksville may refer to:
Places
;Canada
* Cooksville (Mississauga), a neighbourhood in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
**Cooksville GO Station, a station in the GO Transit network located in the neighbourhood
**Mississauga East—Cooksville, an electo ...
, before moving to
Enniskillen Township sometime in the late 1850s or early 1860s.
Shaw became a successful oil producer, patenting a distilling process that made oil less volatile.
[Armstrong, Robert. (2019]
An Environmental History of Oil Development in Southwestern Ontario, 1858-1885
(PhD Thesis). Western University. p. 66. Shaw defined his process as applying heat and benzol to remove the impurities out of the oil.
Shaw operated a refinery until it burnt down in May 1862.
On February 11, 1863, Shaw died checking the status of one of his oil wells.
According to one of his employees, he asked two workers to lower him into his well to grab hold of a pipe that had gotten loose.
After fixing the pipe and calling out to be hauled back up, Shaw began coughing and fell backwards into the oil well.
An autopsy revealed that Shaw died of
asphyxiation
Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of deficient supply of oxygen to the body which arises from abnormal breathing. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which affects primarily the tissues and organs. There are many circumstances that can i ...
from the poisonous gases inside the well.
Shaw gusher controversy
Contemporary historians and journalists often miscredit Hugh Nixon Shaw as the discoverer of Canada's first oil gusher.
The real founder was
John Shaw, another oil producer in Enniskillen Township.
The confusion over who struck the gusher appears to have arisen from historian Robert Harkness, who claimed in his 1940 publication ''Makers of Oil History: 1850–1880'' that a series of articles in the ''Toronto Globe'' credited Hugh Nixon Shaw with the discovery.
In fact, the articles Harkness cited were written months before the gusher was struck, and only discuss Hugh Nixon Shaw's distillation process.
When the ''Globe'' began reporting on the gusher in January 1862, they identified the discoverer as a "Mr. Shaw, lately of Port Huron, Michigan, a daugerrean artist, and formerly of Kingston West," a description that fits John Shaw, not Hugh Nixon Shaw.
Moreover, on February 5, 1862, the ''Globe'' directly credited John Shaw as the discoverer of the well.
Despite Harkness' error, his research had a significant impact on other historians and journalists, who began citing Hugh Nixon Shaw as the discoverer of the Shaw gusher.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, Hugh
1812 births
1863 deaths
Canadian businesspeople