Curse of Oak Island - A Mid-season Analysis

I have found the new season of The Curse of Oak Island to be a crashing bore. I haven’t posted much about it because I keep falling asleep in the episodes. I have tired of the artificial crisis of the week, the over the top claims and the failure to really find anything of significance no matter how many times they tell us they have found something of significance.

You all must remember that in the first minutes of the first episode they came to the washed-out road and wondered if they had lost the whole season because the road provided the only dry land access to the important locations on the island. Of course, they repaired the road and we all knew that was going to happen. If they couldn’t repair it, we’d have had a one hour special rather than the opening of the season.

Look what has happened since. Well, the government, either in Nova Scotia or the Canadian government, was going to shut down the operation. They feared, apparently, for the archaeological integrity of the island. Without a trained archaeologist on site, they weren’t going to allow the search for the treasure to continue. I wondered if the archaeological integrity hadn’t been compromised sometime in the last 220 years. Everyone one and his brother or sister (yes, my hyperbole) has been digging on the island. It would seem that anything that might have had any significance had already been destroyed, moved, broken, discarded, hidden or completely compromised.

But, of course, they found a suitable archaeologist who was approved by the governmental agencies and is now another person who has begun to fed at the trough known as Oak Island. Oh, don’t misunderstand. I’m sure the man is highly qualified and knows what he’s doing, but I’m not sure that he is all that important.

This whole program, meaning The Cures of Oak Island, is so important to Nova Scotia that they’re not going to stop the production. Millions of dollars are at stake, millions have been brought into the local economy and people are coming for tours of the island and tales of the treasure. Of course the government is not going to shut the thing down and stop the floor of dollars.

So, what have they found this season?

Well, Rick, who was suffering from Lyme Disease, another of the problems over blown this season (and, again, don’t get me wrong, the disease is serious), but Marty showed up to tell him they had found the Money Pit. It sounded like a dramatic announcement It had been teased in the trailers for the season. Now they were close to the treasure, but all it really meant was that Marty believed they had found the original hole dug back in 1795. Didn’t mean there was any treasure to be found, only that they had found, well, an old hole, which meant very little in the overall picture.

The guys with the metal detectors, who seem to be doing the most important work here, found the barrel of a gun. Before the commercial break, we got a glimpse of it, and by the sight on that barrel, it was clear to me that it had been modeled after the Colt Peacemaker, first produced in 1873, which meant its relevance was limited. Back from commercial and we learn that it was the barrel from a cap pistol made in the 1950s, so the relevance is further reduced. It might have belonged to Ricky Restall, youngest son of Robert Restall. For those who don’t know, Restall and his oldest son, Robert, Jr., died on Oak Island in a tragic accident that took two other lives, Karl Graeser and Cyril Hiltz.

Just to recap this tragic tale, Robert Restall had arrived on the island in the late 1950s sure that he could find the treasure. He brought his family with him and they spent their summers in their effort to recover what had been buried in the Money Pit. On August 17, 1965, about two in the afternoon, Restall told his wife, Mildred, that he had to go into town. He’d work for another hour or so and then return to clean up for the trip.

Restall, climbing down into shaft that he had been working in that day, fell into about four feet of water that had collected on the floor of the shaft. His older son, saw his father lying in the water and began to climb down to help him. He too lost consciousness and fell into the water. Moments later, Graeser, one of Restall’s backers and a marina operator from Long Island, arrived, saw the trouble and climbed down to assist. Behind him was 16-year-old Cyril Hiltz. Both of them lost consciousness and fell into the shaft. The final person to fall into the water was 17-year-old Andy DeMont.

By now there were calls for assistance and a group of tourists on the island, including a fire fighter, Edward White, ran to help. White apparently realized there was some sort of gas in the shaft. White tied a rope around his waist, and had others lower him into the shaft. He was able to pull the unconscious DeMont out of the water, but White was beginning to lose consciousness as well. He tried to find the others but failed. DeMont, and White were pulled out and given artificial respiration, regaining consciousness.

The other four did not survive. The autopsy suggested they had all died by drowning, which, given the circumstances, makes some sense. They all fell, unconscious, into about four feet of water.

This didn’t stop others, over the years, from attempting to find the treasure. Of course, all those attempts have failed, but none seem to have been as well financed and equipped as that begun by the Laginas boys. They keep digging and drilling and finding little bit of this and a piece of that. These have been promoted with great fanfare, but mean little to the overall solution. A bit or two of pottery, found far below the surface, seemed to suggest something to the Laginas and others, though I’m not sure what. Had the land been undisturbed, had there not been two centuries of people digging up that one end of the island, it might have been significant, but without some sort of context, it seems, to me, to mean little.

When we get right down to it, and which is the reason that I haven’t posted much of anything about this season is because it mirrors the last few seasons. Discoveries touted as important, but really, in the end mean little. The pieces of the cap gun were returned to Rick Restall, and seeing him and his sister certainly put faces on some of the tragedy of the island. And, we have learned a great deal about the history of the island, but nothing that gets us any closer to the treasure.

Yes, I will continue to watch. But I fear, at this point, it is a lost cause. The treasure, if there ever was one, was removed long ago, probably before the boys began digging in 1795. The little bits and pieces of history found on the island have almost nothing to do with the actual treasure and is more probably debris from all the searching that has been going on for centuries. I wish them luck, but according to those celebrity net worth pages I looked at, the Laginas have millions already and this is more a love of adventure than anything else. *

*I know that some of those celebrity net worth pages are completely wrong. I don’t know how they obtain the figures but it seems to be guess work at best.

The Mystery of Oak Island Solved by Joy Steele

While the Laginas begin to power up for a new assault on the treasure hidden beneath Oak Island, a new theory about the Money Pit has been revealed. Joy Steele, in her book, The Oak Island Mystery Solved, has provided an interesting idea. According to her, there is no treasure, never had been, and the alleged Money Pit is nothing more than a tar kiln, used in the early 18^th century to produce material to repair ships. And, given what has been found on the island by the Laginas and some of those others, this does make some sense.

According to the history, back in the early eighteenth century, the British received their naval stores from Sweden which apparently included tar. But that supply was cut off and the British looked to their colonies in the new world to replace that source. They induced colonists in the Carolinas to create the tar kilns because of the dense pine forests (Can you say Tar Heels?). It would seem on my quick research that they built dozens of these kilns in the Carolinas, but it seems they also built them up and down the east coast of North America.

The question becomes, “Would they have built tar kilns on Oak Island?”

I have learned that pine trees are considered resinous trees, but oaks are not. They don’t produce resin when cut or “injured” which makes them good for furniture, cabinets and fire wood. Pines do produce the resin which can be rendered to tar which makes them bad for furniture and fire wood.

Would the British have established a camp on Oak Island and used it to produce tar? Well, oak trees aren’t any good for that, but there are pine trees in Nova Scotia. Would Oak Island have been a place where the British would build these kilns even if the pine trees were not in abundance on the island?

We know there was a British camp on the island. That was established by those guys the Laginas brought in and who, using metal detectors, found British coins and other debris that suggested a camp. So, there was a British presence on the island that predates the discovery of the Money Pit. And remember that the residents of Nova Scotia reported seeing lights on the island in the early eighteenth century.

I don’t know all that much about sailing ships of the eighteenth century, but it would seem that docking at an island for repairs might have been simpler than sailing all the way to the mainland (and yes, I know it’s not all that far, but the tides and depth of water might have made it somewhat problematic). That might also explain the artificial nature of that swamp that the Laginas are always attempting to drain, might explain some of the debris found in the swamp, and might explain why some believed that a ship had been scuttled in the area. It would might also explain the artificial beaches, the coconut fiber and the alleged coffer dam.

I also know that some of you might say, “Yes, but what about that stone with the strange carvings found 90 feet down in the Money Pit?”

I would say, “I believe that was created as an inducement for selling stock in another attempt to penetrate the Money Pit. They could say that they had found this plaque proving that there was a huge fortune just a few feet down. Buy stock in my company to recover it.” I would note that no treasure has been found a few feet below where it is the alleged stone was found.

There are those out there who will complain about this debunking of the Money Pit, but I have to say that you need to follow the evidence. The Laginas have provided some of that evidence from their searches. They have found coins on the surface, have pulled iron nails out of the swamp that suggest they had been using on sailing ships, and they have found evidence of lots of tunnels… but they have found absolutely nothing to suggests there is a treasure hidden anywhere on the island.

For those interested in seeing the other side of the coin, might I suggest you take a look at Joy Steele’s book, The Oak Island Mystery Solved, which can be found in many places including Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Oak-Island-Mystery-Solved-ebook/dp/B00Y3BGVDM 

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.