Oak Island Revisited

Since it has come up in some of the comments, and because there is a real interest in the Oak Island treasure hunt, I thought it might be time to revisit all of this. I first became interested in Oak Island in the mid-1960s (which I hesitate to mention since that dates me) when I bought John Godwin’s This Baffling World. It was a compilation of stories of the strange and the weird including the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs but also a section on Oak Island. Later I bought D’Arcy O’Connor’s The Big Dig. And, back in the days before the Internet, I would look up magazine articles using the old method of searching those big index books and then wandering the library stacks looking for the magazines. Today the Internet makes all that easier.

When I wrote Lost Gold and Buried Treasure, I used the material that I had accumulated to that point which was the early 1990s. Because it was a story of a buried treasure, and because there was a great deal of information available, Oak Island became one of the features of the book. That section of the book was published on this blog a little while back with no real updates, though I had been aware of Joe Nickell’s article on “The Secrets of Oak Island,”

But now, with The Curse of Oak Island having run through several seasons on History, I find more people interested in what happened there, or is happening there. Those who read this blog know that I have been less than thrilled with what the Lagina Brothers and their pals have discovered, which, when boiled down to its essence is virtually nothing. They managed to get to the bottom of Bore Hole 10X and found that it was not manmade but a natural formation. Hopes had been pinned on it containing all sorts of things for decades. These included the possibility of a body, a chest, and some sort of support beam all seen through the murky water using a vintage video camera.

Many of these new accounts start the same way as the old. Nickell, in his March/April 2000 article in the Skeptical Inquirer, told us, again, that the story began in 1795 when Daniel McInnis (or McGinnis) claimed he had found some sort of an old tackle block in a tree overlooking a shallow depression in the ground. The next day, McInnis and two friends, Anthony Vaughan and Jack (John) Smith, returned to the island. Believing for some reason that pirate treasure was buried there (and given the account that these were teenagers, I guess you can believe their imaginations ran amok) they began to dig. Some two feet down the found a layer of flagstones and ten feet deeper, a layer of logs.

Richard Joltes, in August 2006, published on the Internet, his findings about this early part of the story which can be seen at:

http://www.criticalenquiry.org/oakisland/index.shtml

He suggested that there is no historical evidence to back up this tale. He said that a search of the local newspapers of the time produced no stories about any of this and that McInnis, in 1795, wasn’t boy in his late teens but a man in his late thirties. He wasn’t a local originally, but had been born in South Carolina and apparently fled to Canada after the Revolutionary War because he had been on the wrong side.

Eventually McInnis and his pals dug down deep enough, finding the wooden logs or planks every ten feet or so, but were eventually forced to give up. It does seem odd that they would have kept at it long enough to dig down thirty feet but according to the tale the earth was soft having been excavated at some earlier time (apparently when the pirates buried their treasure). Nothing else happened for eight or nine years, when they interested, or maybe a group of investors called the Onslow Company got interested, and began an effort to get the treasure believed to be in the pit. At the 95-foot level, they found a stone inscribed with odd symbols which they recovered.

Their attempt to dig deeper was foiled at the that point. They had completed work for the day and when they returned in the morning there was sixty feet of water in the pit. They were unable to reduce the water level and abandoned their effort at that time.

All this is interesting, but, according to Joltes, probably untrue. He wrote that he could find evidence of the three men in the history of the area at the turn of the nineteenth century, but that he found no documentation about Oak Island’s money pit until 1857. A traveler’s diary mentioned that he had visited the site and mentioned some debris. This would suggest some discussion about the money pit prior to that and in 1849, there was note signed giving permission to dig on Oak Island. Not exactly rock solid evidence of the 1795 story, or the Onslow Company’s attempt to get the treasure but certainly a hint of the legend.

I find all that more than a little troubling. While I fell into the category of those other writers Joltes had warned about, that is, using the available sources which all claimed this saga began in 1795, I simply did not have access to the wealth of information available today. While I was forced to go to the library and the one at the University of Iowa is huge with magazines and newspaper files that go back to the eighteenth century, I couldn’t get into other archives around the country where some of this information was hidden. Joltes was able to do that and provided a fresh perspective on Oak Island.

So, what have we learned about the beginning of the legend? Well, the initial story might not be accurate. There are no records that exist prior to 1849, and it was later that newspaper accounts began to tell the story of the 1795 find. They mention some of the evidence, such as the log platforms and that during drilling at the site in the 1840s, a bit of gold chain of three links and a tiny bit of parchment with two letters on it had been recovered. Unfortunately, these discoveries were not documented at the time though Dan Blankenship is suggested as the owner of the parchment. The gold links seem to be gone.

That there is nothing about the money pit prior to that 1849 entry is worrisome. That this is no documentation to support the idea that there were log platforms in the pit is worrisome. That the layer of flag stones found a couple of feet below the surface of the ground is interesting until you learn that in 1975, working some 3000 feet north of the island there was a rock layer not unlike that allegedly found in 1795 (yes, I see that 1975 and 1795 are sort of the reverse of one another) covering a cavern below, suggesting the same kind of geological formation around the money pit rather than a layer of stone put there by the pirates.

Nickell, among others, suggest that natural phenomena might account for the suggestion of the log platforms. He thought that wave action along the island might have deposited logs, covered them, and then did the same thing again and again. I’m not happy with that explanation and think that if the original legend is nothing more than legend, then the most likely explanation is that there were no log platforms. Again, no documentation exists to prove that there were these log platforms.

As for that stone with a strange inscription, as I have said before, the stone disappeared before anyone managed to photograph it. We are left with the legend of the stone, but nothing to document it, and according to Joltes, that story might have been invented in the early twentieth century. He wrote, “In the earliest manuscripts (circa 1860) it is simply called a stone bearing ‘marks’ was found and that no one was able to decipher them or understand them. Somewhat later documents state that ‘one wise man’ or ‘a professor at Dalhousie (college) claimed a translation of either ‘ten feet down, two million pounds’ or ‘forty feet down, two million pounds are buried.’”

You have to wonder what sort of pirate, or anyone else for that matter, would carve a stone and bury it above a treasure telling you how much deeper you must dig. Once the stone was found, wouldn’t that just inspire the finder of digging deeper… or maybe cause investors to shell out more cash because there is evidence that something valuable is buried.

Joltes noted that there were “no sketches, descriptions, photograph, rubbings…” that are dated before the twentieth century. He noted that the 1893 prospectus contained nothing like that about the stone, but if it existed, it would be a wonderful tool to induce investors to provide financing. Joltes seems to suggest that the first time the symbols were published was in 1951. However you slice it, there is no good documentation for the symbols on the stone, and while many seem to have translated the inscription in the world today, there is no real evidence that the description of that inscription is accurate or that the symbols were actually on the stone.

You might say that for me the final straw was the diver who made it to the bottom of Bore Hole 10X. Since Dan Blankenship made that video in the 1970s, it has been played and replayed, suggesting that something truly manmade was at the bottom of the hole. I didn’t know that he had found the drill site by using divining rods. However he determined the site, it seemed to produce results until the diver reached the bottom. It was a natural formation and there was no body, no chest and nothing to suggest it was anything other than a natural formation.

Given all this, most of which is ignored by the treasure hunters on the History show, I would suggest the Lagina brothers scrap their plans for next summer. They’re wasting their money because if they are attempting to learn the true nature of the secret of Oak Island, I think we already have it. There is no treasure hidden there. It is a legend that seems to have been invented a couple of hundred years ago and kept alive by all those who have dug up the island. I understand the Lagina’s reluctance to give up on an adventure they have dreamed about for decades and there is History footing some of the bill, but they’re not going to find any treasure. Maybe just proving there is nothing at the bottom of the money pit except some broken dreams will, in the end, be enough for them but I wonder if it is worth the price.

The Curse of Oak Island: An Expanded History - Part One

Longer ago than I care to admit I bought a book entitled This Baffling World (for those who care the copyright was 1968 and it sold for $6.95 in hardback… I think I bought it in 1970). It contained a section on Oak Island and that is where I first learned about the Money Pit. There are very few cases where the exact location of the treasure is known. Most of the time, it is a shipwreck where the depth of the water, or the shifting of the silt on a river bottom has created problems for those trying to recover the loot. In one case, on Oak Island, the exact location of the horde is known down to the millimeter. Everyone knows precisely where the treasure is, even how deep it is buried, but no one knows how to get down to it or rather, I suppose, we should say that it was once known to the millimeter and people didn’t know how to retrieve it.

The story begins, for us, in October 1795 when three boys rowed across Mahone Bay to land on the shore of tiny, and at the time, heavily wooded Oak Island. Anthony Vaughan, Dan McGinnis and Jack (John) Smith decided to look around before eating their lunch. They found a clearing where a single oak towered over the open area. They noticed that a limb had been sawed off, that the stump showed evidence of ropes and tackle, and directly below it was a circular depression about twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. To the boys it looked as if something had been buried there long before or that is how the legend began.

Or, the story might have begun as early as June 1795. D'Arcy O'Connor reported in The Big Dig: The $10 Million Search for Oak Island's Legendary Treasure, that John Smith purchased Lot 18 on June 26, 1795 for something like twenty bucks... well not exactly that, but it shows how land values have increased (and given what has been recovered so far, that might be the real source of treasure). Lot 18 is, of course, the location of what was to become known as the Money Pit.

The boys knew that pirates had once roamed the area or so they had been told by their elders. They thought of buried treasures, chests filled with gold, and pots of gems collected from around the region or maybe from around the world. There were stories of lost treasures in the area and it might even be said that Captain Kidd was the man who buried the treasure on Oak Island. The boys believed they might have found one of his hidden caches.

The next day, the boys returned to the island, but this time they brought shovels and picks so that they could become rich. As they began to dig, they realized that someone else had dug there sometime before. The shovels slipped into the earth easily suggesting a hole or chamber that had been filled in. That would suggest that whatever was hidden there, hadn't been there long, certainly no more than a decade or two, at least to their way of thinking.

Only two feet down, they ran into the first real proof of something extraordinary. They found a layer of flagstones, which later investigation suggested had come from the Gold River, about two miles up the coast on the mainland. Someone had brought them to Oak Island, or so it seemed.

Ten feet down they came to a layer of oak logs. They broke through it, but found nothing below other than more dirt. They continued to dig and according to some sources they discovered a boatswain's whistle and a copper coin dated 1713 though some say they found it thirty feet down. Sure that they had were on the site of a buried fortune, they continued to dig.

At twenty feet, they hit another layer of oak logs. They broke through it quickly and were once again disappointed because they found only more dirt. They noticed that that the sides of the pit were of made of hard clay that showed pick marks, while the dirt in the center was soft and easy to dig through. Below that wooden platform, the ground had settled leaving a two foot gap.

At thirty feet they found another layer of logs but below found only more dirt. At this point they knew that the task would require expert help. They had dug down as far as they could without some kind of assistance and it seems amazing that they had managed to dig a hole so deep.

On the mainland, they failed to find the help they needed, because the farmers and fishermen already had enough work to keep them busy. Besides, many of those living on the mainland had seen strange night lights on the island for many years and they were afraid of what might be hidden there. Or they were afraid of those who might be watching. Either way, they weren’t all that interested in digging a hole for a rumored treasure when winter was approaching and they needed to prepare for that.

Smith, who later married, moved onto the island, where he would farm for many years and where he could keep an eye on the money pit. His fellow treasure hunter, McGinnis also farmed on the island. Both hoped to one day solve the mystery and be wealthy by recovering the treasure that just had to be there.

Syndicates Enter the Search

Nothing happened after the initial interest in 1795 until Simeon Lynds heard the story of the pit and the wealth it promised. He was so excited by what he learned that he formed a company, the Onslow Group, to excavate the Money Pit and that was financed by thirty fellow businessmen.   They began their assault on the Money Pit in 1803. Their first task was to dig out the debris that had fallen into the pit in the eight years since the boys had been there. In short order they were down to the thirty foot level reached by the boys and by the middle of the summer, had dug out another sixty feet reaching down nearly ninety feet.

Every ten feet, according to the legend and the records left, they hit a layer of logs, but now they began to find other debris as well. Some of the log layers were reinforced by charcoal and putty and a strange fibrous material that was later identified as coconut husks. The closest coconut tree is more than fifteen hundred miles from Oak Island.

At ninety feet, on the log layer, they workers found a stone slab that legend suggests contained a strange inscription of symbols and dots. The slab was described as about two feet long, fifteen inches wide and ten inches thick. It weighed about 175 pounds eventually found its way into the publishing industry where it was used in a way that probably eroded the inscription if there actually have been one. It disappeared in sometime after 1919 without anyone photographing it.

Some sixty years later, about 1865, a professor claimed to have finally decoded the message on the stone. It said, "Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried." The code wasn't particularly clever and it's not explained exactly why it took so long to decipher but the reason might be an attempt to raise money for another try at getting the treasure. Descriptions of the stone have been reported in all the early accounts of the Money Pit, and hundreds, if not thousands, were reported to have seen it so there is no doubt that such a stone did exist; it’s just the inscription that is in dispute.

They pulled the slab out of the pit, broke through the wooden platform and kept on digging. The pit had originally been dry, but now water was beginning to seep into it. The workers were taking out almost as much water as dirt, but no one was concerned about it at that time. They probed the bottom with a metal rod, and at ninety-eight feet, hit something that a few thought might be a chest. With darkness coming, however, they were forced to stop work for the night. Remember this was in a world that didn’t have electric lights and without light there wasn’t much they could do.

When they returned the next morning they found the pit now filled with water. They began to bail, working steadily until sometime around noon. After several hours they noticed they were making no real progress. The water level had not been lowered at all. With this failure they abandoned the efforts for the year. It was late summer and the men had to return to the farms and fields. The company officers planned to return the following year and finish their quest for treasure.

In 1804, they returned and confirmed that it was impossible to bail out the pit. They decided to dig another hole, not far from the original pit and then tunnel over to the Money Pit. They thought would defeat the water by sneaking up on it from another direction.

They dug down more than one hundred fourteen feet and then began to tunnel. Before they could break through to the Money Pit, the ground began to seep water slowly and then began to flood. The men were forced from the new pit as the wall between their pit and the old collapsed. Soon the water stood at the same level in both pits. With that, they were forced to abandon their attempts. They realized that no amount of bailing would ever drain the pits. The treasure, which they were sure was still down there, and not very far away, was just out of their reach.

Smith, who still lived on the island, went back to farming. At some point he filled in both the pits. Although there were local legends about the treasure, and it seems that almost everyone in Nova Scotia was aware of the stories, no one could think of a way to defeat the booby traps that protected the Money Pit.

The Search Continues

In 1849 another corporation was formed to try to recover the treasure. Called the Truro Company, they thought that they could get down to the treasure. Dan McGinnis had died, but both Smith and Vaughan were still alive. One of them, probably Vaughan, showed the Truro Company engineers where the original Money Pit had been.

Once again they began to dig. In less than two weeks there were down about eighty feet. At that point, the water began to seep in again, and the workers were forced out. In an hour or two, the pit was again filled to the same level as before. The Truro Company was forced to abandon the attempt, but returned a few days later to erect a platform about thirty feet down, just above the water level. From there, using an auger, they explored, as best they could, what lay at the bottom of the pit. They confirmed a layer of wood at 98 feet that was five inches thick just as the early Onslow Company had found. Below that was an open space and then came the interesting discoveries.

According to a letter sent by Jothan (yes, that is the correct spelling) B. McCully he said:

...the auger dropped 12 inches and then went through four inches of oak; then it went through five inches of metal in pieces, but the auger failed to take any of it in except three links, resembling an ancient watch chain. It then went through eight inches of oak, which was thought to be the bottom of the first box and the top of the next; then 22 inches of metal, the same as before [meaning loose], then four inches of oak and six inches of spruce; then into clay seven feet without striking anything else...On withdrawing the auger, several splinters of oak, such as might come from the side of an oak stave, and a small quantity of a brown fibrous substance, closely resembling the husk of a coconut, were brought up.

For the first time there was real evidence that something had been hidden at the bottom of the Money Pit, and, that it was still down there. The gold chain links suggested a treasure, as did the loose metal, possibly coins or maybe jewelry. They were unable to recover anything else from the Money Pit, but the findings did excite them.

With these results, the Truro Company drilled several addition holes in the bottom of the pit but didn't find anything else as intriguing. Or rather something was found, but the two men who knew what it was never reported publicly on it. They took it away.

John Pitbladdo was the foreman on that crew. He inspected the bit and the core samples each time they were brought to the surface. John Gammell, a major shareholder in Truro, visited the site one afternoon and saw Pitbladdo slip something from the drill bit into his pocket. Gammell asked what it was but Pitbladdo said he would provide a full report at the next shareholders meeting. He didn't want to provide one man with an advantage over his fellow stockholders he said. He left it at that, but it wasn’t the stockholders he was worried about. It was something or somebody else.