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Surely there can be no more tantalizing a boost to one’s spirit of adventure than the promise of uncovering untold riches. In most tales of buried treasure, real or imagined, our fantasies are limited by what would seem the most difficult task; finding it. In the case of Oak Island, the treasure, or Money Pit, as it is sometimes called, lies almost in plain sight, off the Southern coast of Nova Scotia. Measured and surveyed, it is so accessible and attractive that the spot has been used as a picnic ground for many years.
Here on this mysterious, uninhabited island lies a series of chests that are buried at the bottom of a deep shaft arranged with side tunnels which cause the sea to flood whenever the shaft is dry. Its construction defies even the most brilliant engineering and presents a puzzle that no modern genius or expertise has thus far been able to unravel. Over the years the Oak Island trove has cost at least six lives and over a million dollars.
In October of 1795 a young hunter named Daniel McGinnes paddled from Mahone Bay over to the small island of dense oak trees seeking game. While exploring, he noticed one branch of a huge solitary oak had been sawed off and bore traces of having been used as a pulley. In the ground below the stump was a circular depression, some twelve feet in diameter. McGinnes was hooked. The next day he returned with two friends and some picks and shovels.
The boys dug a shaft whose walls were well-defined with traces of pick-axes. At ten feet they found a platform of solid oak logs. Breaking through the wood, they uncovered an old whistle and a copper coin dated 1713. At both twenty and thirty feet they were confronted with oak platforms, each of an identical six inch thickness and each fitted with precision. They were unable to dig any further and resumed their quest in 1804 when, backed by a wealthy patron, they formed a company which began excavating the hole with every digging apparatus then known to man.
They broke through six more oaken platforms at every ten feet. At ninety-three feet, they were faced with a tier of layers made of charcoal, putty and coconut fiber, the last of which provided a significant clue as the fiber was not indigenous either to Canada or the United States. Buried underneath all these layers was a large, flat stone covered with odd markings that was later mysteriously lost or stolen. The writing was loosely translated to mean that some two million pounds lay buried ten feet below. It is questionable however, and even deepens the mystery of Oak Island as why would anyone go to that much trouble to bury a treasure and then announce its exact location to the world in writing!
The men continued digging, but at ninety-five feet the hole filled with sixty feet of water. Undaunted, they dug another pit beside the original one, hoping to drain out the water. At one hundred feet the old shaft collapsed and the new one began to fill so rapidly that the men ran for their lives and forever abandoned their dreams of discovering buried treasure. The pit lay forsaken until 1849 when another company and new tools presented fresh promise to an old situation.
The Truro Company possessed a tool that none of the other treasure seekers had; a pod-auger (horse-driven drill). At ninety-eight feet it passed through another layer of oak and penetrated what appeared to be metal. The bit was said to contain two tiny links of a solid gold chain. It then pierced into wood, loose metal and then wood again, indicating that there were two chests, one buried on top of the other and each made of 4 inch thick oak.
At one hundred and eighteen feet the shaft flooded, sending the two chests to their resting place at the seemingly endless bottom of the shaft. At this point someone tasted the water, observed that it was salty and noticed that the water level in the shaft rose and fell in the same rhythm as the tide. It was then that the tired crew realized that the treasure pit was protected by The Atlantic Ocean. Still, they couldn’t help but wonder how anyone who hid the treasure there could ever have hoped to recover it. Surely the hole was dry while its contents were placed there and certainly it was expected to be so when they would be extracted from the site. They constructed a dam in a final attempt to stop the sea from filling the inlet at high tide, but it was destroyed in a violent storm.
The pit was left alone until 1893 when a wealthy local resident, Frederick Blair, decided to block the flow of sea water into the shaft by blowing up the channel with dynamite. He went deeper than ever before, reaching a level of one hundred and fifty-one feet. Unfortunately, all he found for his trouble was seven inches of cement, more wood and then thirty-two inches of loose metal. He concluded that the two chests discovered higher up were placed there to fool whoever came upon them into thinking they had found all there was to find. Blair was convinced that the more valuable treasure lay in the cement chamber fifty-three feet farther down. He reached a level of one hundred and seventy feet, struck iron plate and then the shaft flooded again. Only his death in 1951 crushed Blair’s dream of unearthing the treasure on Oak Island.
Others tried laying underwater electric cables, divining rods and even a map supposedly dictated in seance by the ghost of Captain Kidd to unlock the secret of the Oak Island treasure. Nothing ever came of any of these attempts, but the last serious excavation in 1959 met with tragic consequences. Six people died, including two members of the Restall family who had brought their life savings to the forsaken island to pursue their dream of untold riches. Over the years there has been so much digging that the exact location of the pit is not known. Still the question remains for all time: Who built this ingenious underground shaft that defies all modern invention?
There are several theories. One involves the privateer, Captain William Kidd, whose exaggerated swash-buckling adventures left treasure and maps buried everywhere around the globe. Some tenuous fingers point to him, but it is not likely. Although Kidd was an intelligent man, he did not possess the engineering know-how or the man-power that such a project would have demanded. The French, on the other hand, possessed such force and another theory credits them with having hidden the treasure at Oak Island in an attempt to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy British during the American Revolution. Other suggestions include stranded Spanish galleons and whisper of hidden Incan or Mayan wealth, much of which disappeared with their civilizations.
Although no one will ever know for sure, the most logical assumption is that the shaft was constructed by the most brilliant mind of the day, Sir Francis Bacon. As Chancellor of England and chief advisor to King James I, Bacon encouraged the king to explore and colonize the New World. A man of immense vision and talents, it is Bacon who is rumored to be the true author of Shakespeare’s plays. As the purported king of Elizabethan thought and inquiry, he possessed the scientific know-how, the man-power and the time to create an ingenious hiding place for the King’s treasury in the New World that he feared might be usurped by the encroaching power of the French in Nova Scotia.
The secret of the Oak island treasure trove has withstood the test of time. Will it ever be retrieved or is its destiny to remain forever trapped in the delicate balance between the sea and the soil? Whatever its fate, whosoever shall claim it will never quell the thirst for untold wealth and the spirit of adventure that lives deep within us all.
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