The Buried Treasure of Oak Island
Long before reality TV, the Oak Island treasure hunt captivated collectors—Coins magazine explored the legend in 1965, linking pirates, pitfalls, and a centuries-old mystery.
Many readers are no doubt familiar with the History Channel’s long-running program, “The Curse of Oak Island,” which documents the continued search for the treasure believed to be buried on Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. The series, which has run for 11 seasons, features the Lagina brothers’ (Rick and Marty) continued quest to find the supposed treasure.
Islands located off the coast of Nova Scotia have long been believed to have been a haven for pirates. Some theories about the treasure supposedly secreted in an ingeniously engineered “Money Pit” on one of them, Oak Island, have linked it to everyone from Captain Kidd to the Knights Templar. So far, only some historical artifacts have been found.
In the October 1965 issue of Coins magazine, Carl Allenbaugh detailed the history of the treasure search and one of the theories of how it began in his article, “170 Years of Frustration in Depth: Somewhere some old buccaneer-engineer laughs as treasure seekers pour money into his hole in the ground.” He followed this up in the December 1965 issue with “No Ferry to Dreamsville.”
“Throughout the ages, man has demonstrated a unique capacity for separating Earth from the gold she hoards within her subterranean quietness,” he wrote in the October issue. “Mountains have been moved, or sluiced away, hard-rock tunnels have been blasted, men have walked the ocean floor, seeking the rotted remnants of Spain’s once gloried fleet. Where gold is the goal, its seekers have stood in awe of no obstacle.
“A short distance off the southern tip of Nova Scotia lies a small island which the gods, with an eye to the future mystery which would envelop it, appropriately created in the form of a rough question mark. The natives call it Oak Island, and its outstanding attraction is a hole in the ground.
“This isn’t an ordinary hole in the ground. As holes in the ground go, this one is probably unique. Its appearance is unpretentious. A bit untidy, it is filled to the brim with a glutinous mixture of salt water, sludge, and rotted timbers. But two centuries of men who admire holes in the ground have deemed this one to be the most beautiful sight to ever brighten the eyes of gold-hungry men. Just to stand on its desolate brim is to brighten the leaden sky with the iridescence of many rainbows, each anchored in the sludge pot at your feet, for you stand a mere 170 feet above what could well be the most fabulous accumulation of treasure to be pirated by the devil’s disciples in a decade of scouring the Caribbean seas.
“One thing is certain: the hole grows more valuable with each passing year, for, since 1795, men have dumped one and a half million dollars into the hole in a vain effort to remove 170 feet of pliable muck. Engineering firms have confidently assaulted this hole with the latest in mining and pumping equipment, only in the end to withdraw, defeated by the unknown genius who, two centuries or more ago, dug the hole and contrived the marvel of hydraulic engineering that protects it. Many have been driven to bankruptcy, some to the edge of madness, by this enigmatic hole in the ground.
“It all started in 1795, when a 16-year-old boy, Dan McInnes of Chester, Nova Scotia, grew tired of salt pork. Knowing Oak Island to be uninhabited and thinking it a likely place to find an abundance of game, he rowed over to the island in search of nothing more glamorous than the makings of a squirrel pie. After filling his bag, he decided to explore the island before returning to the mainland. At length, he tired and climbed a small rise at one end of Oak Island, thinking to rest while watching the quiet beauty of the sea.
“Suddenly, every tired muscle sprang taut, for he found himself standing at the edge of a shallow depression about ten feet in diameter and directly beneath a rusted tackle block which was suspended by a bit of frayed and weathered ship’s rope from the limb of a twisted oak. Confronted by such evidence, Dan’s reaction was predictable. Scooping up his squirrels, he raced for his boat and the mainland to secure digging tools and muscles as young and eager as his own to help use them. With Captain Kidd less than a century dead and pirate lore still a lively source of village conversation, Dan had no difficulty enlisting the aid of two young friends, Jack Smith and Tony Vaughan.
“Shortly after dawn, they commenced digging and, at ten feet, uncovered a layer of rotted oak logs. Eager hands tore out the platform, revealing nothing but more dirt. At twenty feet, they encountered another oak barrier, and at thirty feet, still another. By now, all joy had gone out of the work. At such a depth, each shovel of dirt had to be hoisted from the hole by rope and bucket. In their eagerness, they hadn’t perceived the purpose for which the oak floors had originally been installed. It was a simple but practical means by which dirt could be removed from the hole without a time-consuming hoist, simply by shoveling it successively from platform to platform. With a man at each station, the dirt could be removed in a continuous flow.
“Although they were encouraged by the successive oak platforms, which certainly had been put there by man, and by the pick marks of the original diggers, which were sharply impressed on the clay walls of the pit, they decided to enlist additional help, although it meant sharing their secret and their hoped-for wealth. But no one could be induced to help them. All knew that Oak Island was haunted by the ghosts of two fishermen, and none but ‘young fools and the demented would tarry there.’ After encountering still another oak barrier, the boys decided to abandon the project. Who needs money when barter buys the beer?
He is third from right (smoking a pipe) in this 1909 image. Image courtesy: WikiCommons.
“One doesn’t abandon a dream; he but puts it aside for a time. Nine years later, in 1804, McInnes and Smith moved to Oak Island and persuaded the wealthy Simeon Lynds to participate in the venture. They formed a legal partnership and recommenced their digging more efficiently than they had employed as boys. They sunk the hole to 90 feet, encountering the inevitable oak barrier at ten-foot intervals. Also encountered were layers of ship’s putty and (strangely) of shredded coconut hulls.
“Excitement soared near the 90-foot level with the discovery of a stone slab inscribed with a strange cryptogram which one knowledgeable source translated to read: ‘Two million pounds lie buried ten feet below.’ A long iron rod hammered into the yielding soil struck a solid obstruction at 98 feet. They retired for the night, confident that but a few feet of clay now lay between them and a treasure of uncertain variety but positive grandeur.
“Morning brought not treasure but 60 feet of water in their laboriously dug hole. Thinking they had inadvertently tapped into an underground reservoir or spring, they commenced bailing. Weeks of around-the-clock bailing left the water at exactly the same level it had been at the beginning: 60 feet. The following year, Simeon Lynds hired a crew of miners and sunk a side shaft 110 feet deep. A horizontal shaft was then dug toward the original pit with near-tragic results.
“As they neared the original hole, the wall between them suddenly collapsed, and a wall of water rushed in, quickly filling the new pit to the same depth as the original. The pit workers escaped drowning only by a happy combination of good luck and frantic scrambling. Lynds, now bankrupt and bitter with disappointment, was forced to retire from the project. Dan McInnes, whose appetite for squirrels had first led him to this fount of frustration, died, and the diggings were again abandoned.
“During the next 44 years, Oak Island knew no activity but the scurrying of squirrels and the erosion of tides. Then Vaughn and Smith interested a group of well-to-do in Truro, Nova Scotia, to join them in another try for instant wealth. They decided that they would first apply the technique of core drilling. With a horse-powered bit, they quickly penetrated to 98 feet, the point where the first promising obstruction had been encountered in 1804.
“What followed put Oak Island on the map. The original obstruction proved to be a 6-inch-thick spruce and was quickly penetrated. The bit then fell through an empty space and shortly thereafter chewed, in rapid succession, through four inches of oak (chest lid?), 22 inches of loose, hard metallic pieces (coins?), four inches of oak (chest bottom?), four more inches of oak (chest lid?), 22 inches of metallic pieces (coins?), four inches of oak (chest bottom?), six inches of spruce, and then sank again into clay. The evidence indicated that the drill had passed through two oaken chests, one atop the other, and both filled with coins or jewelry. The latter possibility must be considered since the extracted drill had a few links of a gold chain adhering to it.
“Excitement ran high on Oak Island. A new parallel shaft was quickly sunk and just as quickly filled with water. But this time, a workman, who had been caught in the rush of water, surfaced sputtering incredulously, ‘By the Saints that be, she tastes of salt!’ As well it should have been, he was swimming in the ocean.
“Now that the ‘Why?’ of the water was indicated, it remained to determine the ‘How?’ They found it, and the ingenious Jolly Rogerite who engineered the project wasted his talents as a pirate — if he was a pirate. The beach at a point known as Smith’s Cove, almost 600 feet from the astounding hole in the ground, had been turned into a gigantic, man-made sponge. Five stone drains led into a layer of stone covered with a blanket of South Seagrass and pulverized coconut, all deep under the green-tufted beach.
“The ‘sponge’ is 150 feet wide and, lengthwise, spans the rise between low and high tides. A stone-walled conduit drains water from the ‘sponge’ down into the treasure pit. When the diggers probed to 98 feet, water pressure in the conduit, triggered by the lessening of soil weight on the inner conduit orifice, was sufficient to blow through the remaining soil plug and let the ocean into the pit — as it was designed to do—a watchdog as sleepless and eternal as the sea.
“The Truro Company attempted to wall Smith’s Cove off from the sea. The sea, one angry night, marshaled its waves and smashed the wall. They then sunk a shaft about 120 feet to a point under the two suspected chests, tunneled over to the treasure pit … and the ‘bottom’ of the pit promptly collapsed into their tunnel, which in turn collapsed into an unsuspected vacant space still deeper in the money hole. After spending $50,000 to no avail, the Truro Combine quit.
“The next to pick up the pirate’s gauntlet was Frederick Blair, who spent 60 years and $100,000 learning many interesting things about the riddle — but not its solution. He located the conduit linking the pit with the Smith’s Cove ‘sponge’ and blocked it with a dynamite explosion. The pit remained full of water, proof that there are at least one, and possibly more, systems of hidden ‘beach sponges’ and conduits feeding into the pit. Their location is yet unknown.
“Blair core-drilled deeper than in any previous attempts and at 153 feet found evidence of still another chest containing 32 inches of loose metal pieces. He also brought up flakes of gold on his bit and a small sliver of parchment bearing the letters ‘vi’, written in India ink and quill pen. At 170 feet, the deepest yet penetrated, his bit chattered helplessly against an iron barrier. Whether this iron sheet is the bottom of the pit or merely the top covering over a still more expansive chest remains speculation.
“Since Blair, the hole has been assaulted by an unending stream of engineers, mining and drilling companies, imaginative adventure[r]s, and businessmen with a little money to chance in a highly speculative, but potentially rewarding, venture. You may be familiar with one member of a syndicate that tried — and failed — in 1909: a young New York lawyer by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
“This hole in the ground has baffled combines from Nova Scotia, Ontario, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and, as late as 1955, a syndicate of Texas oilmen. The hope is there, and men converge on hope like moths to a deadly flame. The lure is great. Speculation as to what is hidden in the hole has been as wide as the hole is deep: the unpublished works of William Shakespeare; the jewels of Marie Antoinette; the treasure trove of a pirate, or a combine of pirates; a stone slab inscribed, ‘April Fool!’ or ‘Kilroy Was Here’ or ‘Yankee, Go Home!’
“Logic indicates that whoever solves the riddle of Oak Island will be well rewarded. This was no spur-of-the-moment burial of pirate loot. No average or unlearned mind designed and built the superbly engineered protective system. The installation of it and the sinking of the 170-foot pit called for the efforts of a great number of men over an extended period of time. Boatloads of grass and coconut hulls were transported from the southern seas to a tiny island on the fringe of eternal ice. Someone labored mightily to hide something on Oak Island; he must have thought it worth the effort. Men seldom take pains for no purpose.
“A treasure is buried not to the end of eternal concealment but for eventual reclamation. There is a key to the hole in the ground, a way, so to speak, of parting the waters. Someone will divine it or stumble upon it — and gasp at its simplicity.
“At the present time, a 65-year-old former steelworker lives in a small cabin near the hole. He digs and hopes and sleeps and hopes and digs. Not entirely without success, for he will show you a stone he found in one of the holes he has dug; it’s a sick-looking green with the date 1704 chiseled upon it. Others have found less.
“Doubloons, anyone?”
Tragic Footnote: Death on Oak Island
The November 1965 issue of Coins would report tragedy in the search for the Oak Island treasure:
“Last month, a Coins feature by Carl Allenbaugh told the colorful story of Nova Scotia’s treasure island, tiny Oak Island, which for nearly two centuries has frustrated a parade of fortune hunters. Individuals, syndicates, and mining and drilling companies have spent fortunes of their own trying to probe the secrets of the island’s water-filled pits.
“As that issue of Coins was going into circulation in mid-August, a tragic footnote to the Oak Island story was being written. On August 17, four men gave up their lives in a shaft they were sinking in the treasure search.
“Robert Restall of Hamilton, Ont, leader of the operation, collapsed and died when the pit filled with gas. His son Bob died in an attempt to rescue him. Karl Graeser, a mineralogist of Long Island, N.Y., and Cyril Hiltz of Marin’s Point, N.S., died when they tried to save the father and son.
“A fifth explorer was pulled from the hole unconscious, and two others escaped through their own efforts.
“Speculation as to the source of the gas pointed to a gasoline engine used in the pit pumping operation. On the other hand, some of the rescuers thought the fumes were swamp gas.
“So, a new and tragic chapter was added to the legend of Oak Island and its pirate treasure. But the legend’s irresistible attraction was unimpaired.
“‘I don’t see,’ said one of Restall’s backers, ‘why this tragic accident should stop us.’”
Two others had given their lives in the 1800s in pursuit of the treasure. An unsourced legend states that seven would need to perish before it could be found. To date, six have.
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