Solid brass masthead light.
Early 1900s, probably a “Perko” Perkins Marine Lamp & Hardware Corp.
Overall Dimensions: 20" H (w/o handle) x 12” deep x 13 ½” wide.
This lantern was hand-formed and soldered. Hinged and vented top. Flat back. No wiring or burner. Clear Fresnel lens, 2 small chips to ribbing.
This lantern has lived a charmed life. It must have been lost overboard a ship in the Los Angeles Harbor. It was then filled up with Mud and sat there until 10 to 15 years ago, when the harbor was dredged and this lantern was some how picked up intact by a 10 ton shovel and dropped on a barge. It then was off loaded with heavy machinery and buried in a field. Why the tracks of a 20 ton bulldozer didn’t flatten it into a pancake I can’t fathom. A scrap guy found it, dug it out of the ground and washed the packed mud out of it. He was on the way to the scrap yard to get the bronze price when I saw him and bought it from him on the spot.