Vicki mentioned watching a series on the History Channel called “The Curse of Oak Island” about the recent effort of the Lagina brothers. I said. “I’ve been fascinated by the Oak Island Money Pit ever since I was a teenager!” The show has rekindled my interest.
Ten years after I read about the Money Pit in one of my father’s magazines, the young brothers from Michigan became obsessed after reading a 1965 article in Reader’s Digest. One of them became a wealthy engineer, bought part of the island and is financing their hunt. I hope I live until they solve its mystery.
In 1795 young men started to excavate a hole on the island just off the coast of Nova Scotia. Every ten feet they encountered a log platform sealed with a mixture of clay, ash and coconut fiber which is impervious to salt water. Therein lies the first mystery. How did coconut fiber end up in Canada?
Speculation about the treasure runs the gamut:
Could it be the treasury of the Masonic Knights Templar, perhaps the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant? Supposedly, after the disbandment of the Templars, a precious treasure was taken from France to Scotland from whence Sir Henry Sinclair, owner of the Rosslyn Chapel, sent it to Oak Island with 300 men.
Could it be Pirate Captain Kidd’s booty? Marie Antoinette’s fabulous jewels that were a cause of the French Revolution? Unpublished Shakespearean manuscripts? A Rosicrucian vault? Spanish royal treasure? Inca treasure?
Who dug the pit? Why did they hide the treasure so well that no one could get it? What’s the meaning of stones with untranslatable carved symbols found on Oak Island? Oh, oh, oh! What delicious mysteries!
This is more than just the obsession of a few nuts. Six men died from accidents, hence the curse. Just enough rather flimsy evidence has been found so that various individuals, alliances, associations and consortiums have spent many millions of dollars on laborers, equipment, specialists, consultants and lawsuits.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandfather Delano invested. FDR visited the site as a young man, invested and remained interested until his death. John Wayne, Alan Ladd and Admiral Byrd, the great explorer of Antarctica, businessmen and engineers invested.
In 1803, the original discoverers joined the Onslow Company that dug down to ninety feet where they found a large stone with symbols. To their surprise, the next day they found that the pit was flooded with water.
Water has bedeviled the treasure hunters. Supposedly, those who dug the pit booby-trapped it with two channels from the ocean so that water rushes in. All efforts to bail it out have failed. One group built a coffer dam. The Lagina brothers’ group tried to pump the water out of a nearby swamp. All to no avail.
Holes were drilled near the original pit in an effort to connect tunnels to it. One group built a causeway to the island so that they could haul across big machinery rather than using horses. Another bunch electrified the island. Various excavations collapsed or were abandoned when people ran out of money. The area became littered with debris from various excavation attempts.
Sparing no expense, the Laginas hired sonar and metal detector experts. They brought in huge drills to take core samples, investigated various improbable theories, studied maps, and even visited the Rosslyn Chapel. Their operative words are, “Could it be?” and “What if?” Repeatedly, their hopes have come to naught.
An island resident who owns 10 X, a 1970 shaft drilled to 230 feet with a 27-inch-wide liner part of the way down, joined the Laginas. In this season’s finale, they hired a renowned deep-sea diver to go down over 200 feet through the murky water. He wriggled through the 27-inch-wide pipe to a cavity at the bottom that they hoped would hold the treasure. Nada!
Oh dear. I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer! wclarke@comcast.net