Curse of Oak Island, Part II

I first became interested in the mystery of Oak Island when I lived in Texas and read a book about several different mysteries. One of them was Oak Island. Later I read another book, The Big Dig, by D’Arcy O’Connor which filled in details and since it was a decade newer, provided more information.

It all started at the end of the eighteenth century when three teenage boys found something strange on Oak Island and were inspired to dig to see what was buried there. They did find something that looked like flagstones which they pulled up, then found, every so often, a layer of logs. Using only shovels and picks, they only managed to dig down some thirty feet before they gave up.

Since that time others, always with newer and bigger equipment tried to dig deep enough to retrieve the treasure, whatever it might be. One of those groups tripped a booby trap that filled the pit with water. Others tried to sink parallel holes to defeat the trap creating such a mess that the original pit can’t be located with any degree of accuracy today.

Six people have been killed in these attempts to solve the mystery, and those digging today, on History’s Curse of Oak Island make light of that, even offered up the possible sacrificial lamb for the necessary seventh victim while sitting around a table in a Nova Scotia bar discussing this whole thing. Yeah, I found that a little less than funny but I’m probably in the minority there.

Last season they seemed to screw around, spend a pile of money and accomplish almost nothing. They found an old Spanish copper coin, which they used to open the new season. That means they took it to Miami (really? Miami? They couldn’t find someone in Nova Scotia to tell them what it was…?). He cleaned it, found a date that he interpreted as 1652 which pleased them. They showed this to Dan Blankenship, who has been hanging around Oak Island looking for the treasure for fifty years. Blankenship was quite excited and said that it was the most valuable thing that had been found. Tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions, all for a copper coin that I could buy on EBay for less than fifty bucks. Not exactly an Earth-shaking discovery.

This season seems to be more of the same and is even more boring than last. The guys sit around a table in their “war room” and discuss things while waiting for the government to approve their permits to drain the swamp. They take off on a trip to some stone site 46 miles from Oak Island to look at a petroglyph that supposedly has a connection to Solomon’s Temple and that might explain what is hidden in the money pit. Of course it is all a diversion because there is nothing new to report.

Now they have found a second coin, found basically on the surface, that is so badly degraded that they aren’t sure exactly what it is, but that excites them because they believe it is another ancient Spanish coin. If it is, then that is an interesting discovery, but then, they didn’t pull it out of the money pit either.

In fact the only thing of value that has ever been pulled up by all those people who had dug all those holes is a small gold chain of only three links. There probably isn’t an ounce of gold in it, meaning it is, as of today, worth less than 1200 bucks… and that is not to mention that some dispute it actually came from the money pit.

I get it that they have to make a show, and since it is a series, they have to make several shows, but so far this season, it just hasn’t been all that great. I keep falling asleep and then have to look at it online to be sure I didn’t sleep through something interesting or important.

And next week, they apparently find another coin, which might be gold but I have to wonder how it is that all those other people over all those centuries have been wandering around on the island and they best they can come up with is a short, gold chain. Nobody had found anything that resembled minted coins from the days of pirates until these guys get there and then they don’t find them in the money pit.

The subject matter, meaning the mystery of Oak Island, can carry this thing for a while, but if they don’t do something more spectacular than scuba diving in five feet of muck, a computer display that suggests that might be gold or silver hidden underneath the swamp, and newspaper articles that show the Canadian government might hold out their hands for part of anything recovered, this is just going to fizzle out.

Oh, I’ll continue to watch but I fear that this is going to end like all those others… searching for Bigfoot but they never finding it, chasing UFOs where they find a planted button on what was once the Brazel ranch, and now Oak Island… a treasure that is just out of reach and they’ll somehow just miss getting it.