The following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. (Image credit: NormanEinstein) The romance of searching for pirate treasure has been celebrated in dozens of stories since Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. But is there really any buried treasure to be found? Maybe so … on Oak Island. TREASURE ISLAND In 1795, a teenager named Daniel McGinnis discovered an unusual, saucer-shaped depression on Oak Island, a tiny island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Next to the hole was an ancient oak tree with sawed off limbs. And, according to legend, a ship's tackle hung from the tree directly over the depression - as if it had been used to lower something very heavy into the hole. McGinnis was certain he had found buried pirate treasure, and with the help of two friends he began digging for it. Within minutes they hit rock - which turned out to be a flagstone buried two feet below surface. They hit another barrier made of oak logs at 10 feet deep; another at 20 feet, and a third at 30 feet. McGinnis and his friends kept digging - but they never found any treasure and eventually gave up. Still, word of their discovery spread. SECOND TRY In 1803, a wealthy man named Simeon Lynds took up the search. The diggers he hired found another platform at 40 feet, and found several more deeper down. Finally, at 90 feet, the workers found a large stone with strange symbols carved into it. No one could decipher what the stone said, but the workers were convinced they were close to treasure and kept digging. (The stone was later stolen.) At 98 feet deep, their shovels struck what felt like a wooden chest. But the sun was going down, so they stopped for the night. By the time the workers got back the next morning, the hole had flooded to the top with seawater. And it somehow kept refilling, even as the workers tried to bail it out. They never were able to drain the pit enough to finish digging. Like McGinnis, Lynds had hit a dead end. AMAZING DISCOVERIES Franklin Roosevelt and others at the Money Pit. Lynds wasn't the last person to dig for treasure on Oak Island. In fact, so many excavations have been attempted that the precise location of the original hole - known as the "Money Pit" because so much money has been spent trying to solve its mysteries - has been forgotten because so many other holes have been dug nearby. Even young Franklin D. Roosevelt supervised a dig in 1909 (he followed Oak Island's progress even as president). And the search continues today. Some findings: There's at least some gold down there. In 1849, treasure hunters sank a drill to the 98 foot level. Like Lynds, they hit what felt like a wooden chest. They dug through the top into what felt like "22 inches of metal in pieces (possibly gold coins)," through more wood, and into another 22 inches of metal. When they pulled the drill back to the surface, three links of gold chain were stuck to it. In nearly 200 years of digging, that's all the treasure that's been found. In 1897, another group of drillers dug down to 155 feet. They pulled up a half-inch-square piece of parchment - but that's not all. They also hit what they thought was a heavy iron plate at 126 feet, but couldn't pull it up. Money Pit inscription and cipher at The Active Mind In 1987, an IBM cryptologist finally deciphered an engraving of Lynds' lost stone. The message read: "Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried."
Image: George Bates Maritime map set (The Oak Island Mystery) HIGH SECURITY Whoever dug the original pit went through a great deal of trouble to do it. In 1850, explorers resting on a nearby beach noticed that the beach "gulched forth water like a sponge being squeezed." So they dug it up - and discovered it was a fake. The beach was actually a manmade network of stone drains that filtered seawater and fed it into the Money Pit. The drains - designed to flood the pit whenever treasure hunters got close to the treasure - had been buried in sand to avoid detection. The Money Pit may even be protected by poison gas. On August 17, 1965, treasure hunter Bob Restall blacked out and fell into the pit he had dug. His son and four others tried to rescue him, but they also blacked out and fell in. Restall, his son, and two of the workers were killed. The autopsy finding: death by "marsh-gas poisoning and/or drowning." TODAY In 1977, the Montreal-based Triton Alliance, Ltd., a consortium of 49 investors headed by David Tobias, bought the 128-acre Oak Island for $125,000. They have spent more than $3 million digging for treasure. During one drill, Triton's workers found bits of china, glass, wood, charcoal - even cement. But no treasure. Perhaps the strangest incident associated with Oak Island occurred in 1971 when Tobias' partner Dan Blankenship lowered an underwater video camera into a water-filled cavity at the bottom of a shaft. On the monitor, Blankenship suddenly saw what looked like a human hand. Horrified, he called over three crew members, who later verified his story. Asked by Smithsonian magazine about the legitimacy of his hand-sighting, he answered, "There's no question about it." WHAT'S DOWN THERE? Oak Island's "treasure," if there is one, could be worth over $100 million. Among the many theories of what the Money Pit could be hiding: 1. The missing crown jewels of France. The Nova Scotia area was frequented by pirates in the 16th and 17th centuries - when the jewels were stolen. The local Mahone Bay takes its name from the French word mahonne, a craft used by Mediterranean pirates. 2. Inca gold plundered by Spanish galleons and later pirated by Sir Francis Drake. A carbon analysis of wood samples recovered from the area dated them back to 1575, around the time of Drake's explorations. However, there is no record of Drake ever having been to Nova Scotia. 3. Captain Kidd's buried treasure. Some believe Kidd buried his treasure there before being extradited and later hanged by the British. Before Kidd was executed in1701, he offered a deal: "He would lead a fleet to the spot where he had hidden his East Indian treasure, if the authorities would put off his execution. The deal was refused - and Kidd's treasure has never been found." There is, however, no evidence that Kidd was ever near Oak Island. Others have their doubts. Some feel that the Money Pit is merely an elaborate decoy and that the treasure is actually buried in a nearby swamp. Others think it's just a sinkhole. Many doubt whether pirates had the resources and engineering know-how to construct such an elaborate trap. POSTSCRIPT Similar Money Pits are rumored to have been found in Haiti and Madagascar, although these discoveries have not been confirmed by archaeologists. |
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| The article above, titled "The Mystery of Oak Island," is reprinted with permission from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out! | |
Interesting stuff though
From http://www.criticalenquiry.org/oakisland/whoi.shtml
The Woods Hole scientists introduced an extremely sensitive dye into Borehole 10-X and then monitored the coastline around the island to check for outflow. Absolutely no dye was detected emerging anywhere around the island despite the fact that the water level in the 'borehole' varies with the tide in the same manner as is claimed of the Money Pit. Also, the water in the hole is not actually seawater. Instead it is brackish, indicating that a freshwater 'lens' exists on the island, riding atop the surrounding seawater due to the density difference between the two. This is apparently quite common where island geologies are concerned (Aubrey, 2002). If the so-called 'box drains' actually existed we would expect to find only seawater in the Pit. Instead, the findings indicate that a subterranean stream, normal water infiltration through the deeper 'sand and boulder' soils, and/or other natural mechanisms have caused the flooding of the Pit and other shafts.
This finding is reinforced by the results of side-scan sonar studies that were conducted at the same time. No indications of any sort of channel or 'drain' between the Pit area and the shoreline were found. The scientists summarized this finding during the interview by stating that 'no direct connection to the surrounding ocean was found during the study (Gallo, 2002).'
A new group from Michigan, along with Dan Blankenship (long time Oak Island treasure hunter) have established Oak Island Tours Inc.
They have recently received their Treasure Trove Licence (necessary to conduct digs) and plan to begin their search very soon. For more information vistit: http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/content/view/36/49/
Jo Atherton
Oak Island Treasure
Since these two beach areas are similar, then flood tunnels run the same depth to the 100-feet level under the Islands, we know this because by the excavations of the Money pit. So what’s ever is in the Birch Island triangle probably goes to the100 ft depth and it has surface shafts inland that more than likely surfaces out of the triangle..... http://www.canadaka.net/blog/oakster
i can be your friend madeleine
http://oakislandtreasurenewsarchives.blogspot.com/
http://www.veling.nl/anne/templars/knight.htm
...In the fourteenth century, some of the Knights Templar, escaping persecution in Europe, may have come to Nova Scotia with a certain...ah..."Treasure". Several people have questioned why somebody would create such an elaborate hiding place for, apparently, not very much treasure. Wellll, if what they were trying to hide was *the Holy Grail*...then definately what they created was worth it! - Pudnik....
then perhaps it is simply forty feet below the surface?
Perhaps, the layers are code for the searching...... clay and youre there, coconut and youre too far....
Perhaps the treasure is ...7degrees out form the orignal tunnel?
Perhaps if the treaure is in someway related to the freemasons it will be spoken of within there writtings?
Perhaps the treasure can only be reached at set tied in some relation to the water tunnels?
.........
Sometimes when the puzzle is difficult and clouded, the answer is simple and clear.....just the mind confuses it up...
but, in saying all that.... there are alot of "perhaps"....... arrr mi hearties......where's the rum....
The people of the earlier times utilized their brains to the full and we, having internet at home are quite lazy to move our ass from the chair and start real research.
So, the point here is that we will have to think the way they thought. Now we are quite advanced in terms of technology and science so it is natural to have no knowledge of how we could have thought without these advancements.
Like Sir Albert Einstein was not able to define the atom after he had invented the atom bomb. The reason being that his level of thought had gone beyond the normal way of thinking of normal human beings.
So we have to think what they would have thought like to encode it with hardwares without having any automatic machines.
THINK guys! Its time to move back and do research and come back to present again.
I would summer there and was a lifeguard on a local beach. The area where our house was built was sparsely developed and my brother and I would explre the forests around our house. there was a high hill that was about 1/4 mile from an inlet and we found a tree at the top of the hill with a chain hanging ftom a limb and a depression below the chain. Locals told me that the chain was used when deer had been caught and hung to dry and then cut into pieces. I thought that this was strange since the chain was couvered by the bark on the limb and I stuck a kife into the crevass and the barch overlay was over 2 inches thick.
I had read about Oak Island but no one believed my story. Today that hill has many summer homes, roads and a park. No one dug for the treasure but I believe that it's there.
a block n tackle. maybe that was
to REMOVE a treasure' ???? just a thought