The discoveries made by each group of searchers act as a lure to the next. And that next group, armed now with even more tantalizing information, sets out confident that they will be the ones to at last unlock the treasure of Oak Island. And so it has gone for more than two centuries. During that time, much knowledge has been gained, but all at tremendous cost.
What kind of discoveries are so compelling that they act as the motivation for search after search when there is no material reward, not even any substantial proof of treasure? That is easier to understand if I take you on an imaginary walking tour of Oak Island. Throughout more than two hundred years of searching, each team of treasure hunters has made well-documented discoveries; as a result, we now have the benefit of considerable hindsight. Using information gained by those searchers, let’s try to imagine Oak Island as it must have been in 1750, after the treasure was in the ground but before any treasure hunters disturbed it.
Oak Island is less than one mile long by half a mile wide and lies only three hundred feet from the small town of Western Shore on the east coast of Nova Scotia. Almost all of the work in searching for treasure has occurred at the south end of the island, furthest away from the mainland.
Imagine that we sail in from the Atlantic Ocean through Mahone Bay and land on the beautiful beach of Smith’s Cove on the eastern coastline of Oak Island, almost at its southern tip. Walking inland on the sandy beach of Smith’s Cove, we find that beyond the beach the land rises fairly steeply ahead of us from sea level up to a height of thirty-two feet. At that height there is a plateau about three hundred feet across. When we walk to the other side of the plateau, we see that the land drops sharply down to sea level in a cove on the western coastline of the island. This is South Shore Cove. By traversing the south end of the island from Smith’s Cove up, across the plateau, and down to South Shore Cove, we have covered all the parts of Oak Island that have fascinated treasure hunters since 1795.
If we stand in the centre of the plateau we see a tree with a block and tackle hanging from a lower limb, and under that a depression in the earth. Digging down, we uncover previously dug earth to a depth of ten feet. Under that we find planking made of tightly fitted logs. Surely treasure chests lie below. But no, under the logs we dig through ten more feet of earth, only to find beneath it another layer of logs. Again and again we uncover ten feet of previously dug earth, then a layer of logs. At ninety feet down we find a large inscribed stone that tells of a fortune buried below.
We realize that we have been digging in a man-made hole or shaft (the Money Pit) and that the layers of logs and earth must have been placed there to prevent settling of the earth so that no signs of excavation would be evident on the surface.
If we were able to remove the inscribed stone and to set a drilling rig on the earth beneath it, our drill might pass through oak chests filled with gold at a depth of 104 feet, we might feel the drill pass through a cavity in the earth that must surely be the entrance to a tunnel at 154 feet, and at a depth of 170 feet we might come to an iron plate that stops us from going further. Measuring from the surface of the plateau, we realize that our Money Pit is at least 170 feet deep, and all but the top 32 feet of it is below sea level.
But we will not be able to remove the inscribed stone and make those discoveries beneath it, for the Money Pit contains an ingenious booby trap. Once we have cleared the pit of earth and logs down to a depth of ninety feet, sea water floods in with a mighty force and fills the pit where we were digging up to sea level. This is because those who were responsible for burying the treasure protected it by constructing a tunnel system that causes water from Smith’s Cove with many pounds of pressure behind it to burst in and obliterate any interference with the Money Pit. If we were to pump out the Money Pit, we would find that sea water continues to rush in at 450 gallons per minute.
To fully understand the magnitude of the sea water inlet tunnel, we need to go back to Smith’s Cove, where we landed. Hidden under the water in the sandy bottom of the cove are five box-style drains. Those five drains are protected by layers of first tightly packed stones, then eel grass, then coconut fibre, then two feet, six inches of beach sand. The drains make their way inland under the beach and eventually converge into a single drain constructed in keystone formation. This travels 525 feet inland from Smith’s Cove through the hard clay of the island, sloping downwards until it connects with the Money Pit at a depth of roughly 110 feet. Along its way, it changes from a single keystone drain to a tunnel four feet in diameter that is kept from collapsing by boulders placed within it. The drains and tunnel ensure that every time anyone digs down the Money Pit or digs a new hole near it, sea water breaks through and sweeps away their work. There is a sketch of a cross-section of the Money Pit and inlet tunnel (see Figure 1). Be aware that anything beneath 110 feet in the Money Pit is assumption. The layers of previously dug earth and log planking in the Money Pit, the stone with markings that purportedly tell of a treasure buried below, the connecting sea water inlet tunnel, the keystone drain, and the five box-style drains have all been seen by various treasure hunters since 1795 as they attempted to retrieve Oak Island’s treasure. However, the chests of gold, walk-in tunnel, and iron plate may not exist; they have been deduced from drill core samples or from traces of wood, metal, or clay left on a drill bit.
The original work on Oak Island is ingenious. All that we know of it we learned through the efforts of a series of treasure hunters who, in their attempts to reach the treasure, laid bare parts of the original beach work in Smith’s Cove as well as shafts and tunnels in the island. But these searches by party after party have left the island honeycombed with shafts and tunnels. My brother Bobby wrote a summary of discoveries made by the various treasure hunting parties that came before the Restalls. His account appears in Chapter 13. Some readers may prefer to read that section now.
Figure 1: Cross-section of Money Pit and Smith’s Cove.
OAK ISLAND
Aerial photograph courtesy Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations NS Geomatics Centre 160 Willow St. Amherst, NS B4H 3W5
People often comment that surely with modern machinery and technological know-how, if there were a treasure it would have been raised by now. Perhaps when you read this you will appreciate the way that the brilliantly designed sea water inlet system, treasure hunters, and Mother Nature herself have inadvertently conspired to keep the treasure safe.
Anyone can dig for treasure. But to keep anything you find, you’ll need a Treasure Trove Licence issued by the government. In Oak Island’s case, that is the government of Nova Scotia. This licence gives you permission to keep 95 percent of what you find. The other 5 percent goes to the government. Of course, you will also need the permission of the person who owns the land you want to dig on. When my family got involved with Oak Island, the land was owned by Mel R. Chappell of Sydney, Nova Scotia, and he held the Treasure Trove Licence for Oak Island.
Dad had read about Oak Island in a Popular Science magazine back in 1939. It was a dazzling tale. Throughout the years, numerous magazine and newspaper articles appeared, serving to keep