Oak Island
Oak Island is one of 300 islands located in Mahone Bay, which is on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, Canada. The 140 acre tree-covered island rises to a maximum of 35 feet above sea level and is known around the world as the location of the famous Money Pit. The Money Pit is the site of numerous excavations in the 19th and 20th Century to recover treasure believed by many to be buried there.
In 1795 a teenager, Daniel McGinnis, apparently discovered a circular depression in the south eastern end of the island with a tree nearby which had apparently had its branches chopped to support a pulley. With some other friends he excavated the depression and discovered a layer of flagstones a few feet below. As they dug down they discovered layers of logs at every ten feet or so. They abandoned the excavation at 30 feet, only to resume eight years later having set up a company, The Onslow Company, for the purpose of funding the recovery what they believed to be treasure buried by pirates. They continued excavating down to 90 feet, finding layers of logs every ten feet, and apparently layers of charcoal, putty and coconut fibre at 40, 50 and 60 feet respectively.
At 90 feet they apparently recovered a stone bearing an inscription of indecipherable symbols. The pit subsequently flooded up to the 33 foot level pumping did not reduce the level, and the excavation was abandoned. The flooding was caused by the existence of a 500 foot tunnel from the pit leading to Smith's Cove nearby and so linking it to the sea.
A new company, the Truro Company, was formed in 1849 and re-excavated the shaft back down to 86 feet at which point it flooded again. They then drilled down into the ground below the bottom of the shaft. The drill allegedly passed through a spruce platform at 98 feet and then through 22 inches of what was described as "metal in pieces", 8 inches of oak, and then another 22 inches of metal followed by 4 inches of oak and another spruce layer. One account states that they recovered three small gold links of a chain from mud stuck to the drill. They attempted to prevent the pit from flooding by damming Smith's Cove and subsequently by excavating a shaft into the tunnel to block it and prevent the pit from flooding.
The next attempt was made in 1861 by a new company, the Oak Island Association, which apparently led to the collapse of the bottom of the shaft into a natural cave underneath it. The first fatality during the excavations occurred when the boiler of a pumping engine burst — in total about six people have been killed in accidents during the various excavations. The company gave up when they exhausted their funds in 1864.
Numerous further excavations were made by different people in 1866, 1893, 1909, 1931, 1936 and 1959, none of which were successful. In 1965 the area of the pit was dug out using a 70-ton digging crane with a clam bucket to a depth of 140 feet and width of 100 feet; the soil removed being carefully examined for artifacts. Consequently the location of the original shaft is no longer precisely known. Assembling the crane required the construction of a causeway (which still exists) from the western end of the island to Crandall's Point on the mainland two hundred metres away.
Another attempt was made by a company, the Triton Alliance, in 1976 with the excavation of 237 foot shaft supported by a steel caisson. Cameras lowered down it into a cave underneath allegedly recorded some chests, a "human hand" and some tools. The shaft subsequently collapsed and the excavation was again abandoned. They apparently paid for a survey by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1995 but the results were not published.
Various opinions have been put forward as to what the pit might contain. Most of these suggest treasure which has been buried by any of a wide variety of people — the pirate Captain Kidd, British troops during the American revolution, Spanish sailors from a wrecked galleon, the Incas or even the exiled French Knights Templar.
Since the 1970s, few people have believed in any possible connection to pirates, due primarily to the massive scale of the subterranean construction.
According to the legend, the inability of excavators to gain access to the contents of the Pit is due to the presence of a complex flooding system which has foiled repeated excavation attempts over the last two centuries. Proponents claim that at least one of the beaches on the island is entirely artificial, acting as a giant sponge due to thick layers of coconut fibres beneath the surface (coconuts are not indigenous to Nova Scotia). Water enters the Money Pit through an ingenious system of tunnels that delivers it from the "sponge" to drains in the side of the pit.
A dissenting view is that the account of the discovery at the end of the 18th Century through to the mid-19th century is based on unverified folklore and entirely false. This view is supported by the fact that the earliest known written description of the Money Pit is a news article published in the Liverpool Transcript newspaper in October 1862, which included an oral account of the early years of the excavation attempts as told by several diggers. No corroborating material exists, making the story told by these men impossible to verify. It is not certain that any elements of the original tale (e.g. "oak platforms", an "inscribed stone", or even the tree) actually existed, and many details have changed repeatedly since this version was published. Many elements found in the Oak Island story — such as the discovery of tantalising but inconclusive objects, and a message in indecipherable code — are commonly found in other tales of treasure and piracy (see the Edgar Allan Poe story The Gold Bug for example), so it is not known whether the early account of the Money Pit is due to several stories which have been merged together.
It is also noteworthy that the island lies on a glacial tumulus system and is underlain by a series of water-filled limestone caves; which offers an alternate explanation for the repeated flooding of the pit and the shafts dug around it.
Oak Island is also well-known because Franklin Roosevelt, former President of the United States of America, was once a treasure hunter there, part of the Old Gold Salvage group of 1909 and kept up with news and developments for most of his life.