The Curse of Oak Island on History

(Blogger's Note: Please take a look at the follow up articles on this blog. Beginning in January 2015, look for The Curse of Oak Island - An Expanded History.)

History (formerly the History Channel where they once actually examined some history) just finished its run of documentaries titled The Curse of Oak Island. This is the Nova Scotia location where it is alleged that pirates… or Knights Templar ... or Roger Bacon ... or some unknown person or persons buried something of great value centuries ago.

For those who don’t know, sometime in the late 18^th century, three teenage boys exploring Oak Island found a place where it seemed something might be buried. They dug down, found a layer of wooden planks, tore them out and dug some more finding additional layers of planks every ten feet or so. They never managed to dig deep enough to find out what was hidden there. They only had hand tools and physical strength to do it. Over the next 200 or so years, dozens have attempted to get to the bottom of what was termed the money pit. Somewhere around the 90 foot level, the pit began to fill with water, stopping the attempts to dig deeper. It was cleverly booby-trapped and has defied modern technology to recover the treasure.

The rising and falling level of the water in the pit seemed to be related to the tides and that led to the discovery of a tunnel system that fed the sea water into the money pit blocking attempts to dig lower. Under the beach sand in a cove, a layer of coconut fiber was found which seem to have been used to keep the sand from packing and to keep the booby trap viable. A similar tunnel was found on the other side of the island as well, meaning it was a complicated system of traps.

Various companies and consortiums have attempted to excavate the money pit over the years, some of them reaching down some 200 feet. Cameras have been lowered and video has been made. A few links of gold chain have been recovered, and even at today’s prices, it didn’t amount to much.

Six people have died during these operations and the legend has it that seven must die before the money pit will yield its treasure.

In the 1980s a corporation was formed to finally get to the treasure. They had some ten million dollars pledged for the operation, but the stock market collapse ended the attempt. From that point not much had been done, at least as far as I know.

The latest attempt, reported over a series of programs for History, wasn’t much more successful than all those other tries and certainly didn’t add much to our knowledge of the money pit. Rick and Marty Lagina, who managed to gain control over much of the island, were behind this latest attempt. They screwed around showing us the same scenes over and over, they put a camera down one of the drill holes and claimed they had found an ax, a box, and a body, though it was difficult to make those things out. And that was similar to something that had been done decades earlier.

They then went to one of the beaches that seems to be somewhat artificial and that has that layer of coconut fiber under the sand. When first discovered decades earlier, it had been dated to sometime before the money pit was discovered. Now there were new samples of the fiber that were tested using better equipment and methods. This time it was dated to sometime in the 13^th or 14^th century, which is interesting but not proof of much of anything. We already knew that it was old.

The Lagina Brothers talked to a fellow who using an original folio of Shakespeare and a link to a constellation which was then applied to Oak Island fit into the discovery of some apparently artificially places stones. It seemed to be a stretch to me. Going from the work of Shakespeare to a constellation then then onto some landmarks on the island was a few too many leaps of logic. I’m not sure what they were trying to prove and thought of this as oat meal… meaning that it was filler to expand the series one more episode. It was just too much of a stretch.

Anyway, one of the points of this guy’s heavenly system seemed to be hidden in a swamp and they decided that they needed to drain the swamp, something no one else had ever thought of, which, of course, didn’t surprise me. So away they went, draining the swamp but having to comply with environmental regulations about how it could be done. They never did manage to completely drain it, but they did seem to remove quite a bit of water leaving a muddy quagmire that they seemed only too happy to muck about in (yes, I used that term on purpose).

They spent time using metal detectors and then diving into the mud. They spent a lot of time pulling vegetation out of the mud, found some flat stones, and then a copper coin. They were able to learn that it was an old Spanish coin which, when all is said and done, this was their big discovery. One Spanish coin that was neither gold nor silver but copper which is something, I suppose.

In the end, they found nothing that wasn’t already known. They didn’t add to our knowledge of what might be hidden on Oak Island, though I am becoming convinced that there is nothing there to be found. Maybe there was once, but whoever buried probably retrieved it.

But, what the heck, it’s the money of History and the Lagina brothers and if they want to spend their money on this quest, then more power to them. I wish them well, I hope to learn what they find if anything, and wonder if they’ll be back for a new season. If not, it’ll be just one more on-going mystery that isn’t all that important.