by Lee Lamb
They named her Carney, after the canned Carnation milk that she so loved. She was a joyful animal who adored Rick. She was the perfect companion for a young boy, and the two roamed the island together, nothing escaping their scrutiny.
As Mom and Rick happily settled in for an idyllic winter on Oak Island, Dad and Bobby had plenty to worry about. Back in August, Mel Chappell had come to the island for a visit with a National Geographic photographer. It was a pleasant and cheerful day as Dad showed the two men the ongoing work and accomplishments. During that visit, Chappell mentioned that Dad would be given a contract for another year.
But as winter settled in, it seemed that conversation was forgotten, and my dad was told that the current contract would run out at the end of December (1960). Contract or no contract, Dad and Bobby kept working.
According to Bobby’s journal, they continued to dig on the beach every day up until Christmas. There was no work on Christmas Day, but they were back on the beach digging the next day, and they kept at it into the new year.
Fred Sparham’s investment money was running out. Dad considered running the pump and working down the Money Pit until the fuel tanks ran dry, but decided against it. He preferred to trust that Mr. Chappell would come through with an extension. And so ended 1960.
At the start of the new year, winter took over. My mother’s description of that time is worth reading:
Winter really came to stay shortly after the New Year, 1961. The thermometer dropped down to zero at nights, often lower. During the day, it never once climbed over 13 degrees for over six weeks. The bay froze solid. Ice began [to form] along the shore, and daily crept out further and further. Every morning after breakfast I hurried down to the beach to see how close the ice was coming to our end of the island. Overnight it advanced fifty, one hundred feet. Finally we were completely icebound. The calm weather and zero temperatures had brought the severest winter in nearly forty years.
It was bitterly cold. We found birds frozen to death, one a great hawk. You could walk through the woods and hear tree branches snap like a pistol shot.
People on the shore skated over to the island. For the first time in living memory for some of the residents, there was ice-boating. Even cars could be driven over to Oak Island. Some of the younger set took to having car races on the ice. At night it was a sight to see — huge bonfires lit along the shore for skating parties. As far as you could see there were acres and acres of ice.… It was cold, bitterly cold.
The cold penetrated the thin walls of the shack. We had the heater on full blast, but even so I wore my snow boots all day while working around in the cabin. At night we sat on the bed with our feet curled under us; it was too cold near the floor. You froze from the knees down. From the knees up to the shoulders was fine, but the rest of you was too hot for comfort. Now it was too cold to do any laundry outside, so every day I rinsed out a few odds and ends indoors. With daily dishwashing, cooking and laundry, the shack was very humid. This warm, moist air floated up to the ceiling, and as the sun moved off the roof, it froze. Next day, when the sun hit squarely on the shack, this ice would melt. Starting at around 11:00 a.m. it would drip all over the place … on the bed, floor, even on Ricky’s school work. It began to collect around the bottom of the walls and freeze. By the middle of February we had ice an inch or more thick all around the bottom of the walls and up to a height of two feet in some places.
It was so cold that whenever the door was opened, the outside frigid air swept in and collided with the warm, moist air at the open door and there they struggled, a huge cloud of vapour rolling back and forth in the doorway. So cold that when I threw out a pan of dishwater it bounced on the snow.
How we stuck it out, I’ll never know. I worried about Ricky, who was susceptible to ear trouble. But in spite of all the miseries of cold, and lack of conveniences, we were as healthy as horses.Not one of us got even the sniffles.
So there the family was, living in a shack on an island, in the middle of a Canadian winter, with the last of the money slowly leaking away, and with no contract that would allow the Restalls to continue their dig.
Now my father’s letters to Fred Sparham made reference to the need to bring in an additional investor to raise another $5,000, to “wrap this job up.” But if an investor suspected the situation was desperate, he or she might get greedy. Finding an investor who would not demand too big a piece of the pie would not be easy. Finding an investor to come in when there was no contract would be impossible.
A few local people invested $100 or $200, as did one or two of Dad’s family members and a couple of friends from Hamilton, but that just helped with survival. It was not enough to finance real work.
In March, Dad wrote to Sparham telling him that Chappell had given him a guarantee that he could continue until sometime in May. Dad urged Fred to try to find investors.
Fred reached out to his friends, and Dad drove to Hamilton to make a slideshow presentation of his work on the island. This would be the first of many such presentations. But although would-be investors were quite impressed, money was scarce, and they thought long and hard before they coughed up even $100 for the project.
Perhaps this would be a good time to mention two issues that hovered in the background during the time my family was on Oak Island.
It is clear that Mel Chappell really wanted my father to succeed in his quest, yet he did not want to give a long contract to anyone. He was concerned about the risk of having the island tied up with someone who made only a half-hearted effort at the treasure, under the security of a contract. But without a contract, who would invest money in a treasure hunt that could be halted at any moment?
The Restall family were never free of the worry that their contract might end. Each year it seemed that this time they really might not get a renewal. But then they would, and every new year their attempts to raise investment money stalled over this uncertainty.
The second issue was less serious, but still an irritation. A steady stream of people with ideas of how to get the treasure contacted Mr. Chappell. Whenever he visited the island, Mr. Chappell would tell my father about this person or that group who wanted to take over the search. Sometimes he brought them over to the island so they could tell Dad their theories and to let them see Dad’s work. But really, their aim was to replace the Restalls. My father tried to be courteous for the sake of good relations with Mr. Chappell, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.
Contract or not, the Restalls kept plugging along, living a spartan existence and working every day … even through the winter.
The long nights were spent poring over information about Oak Island from the Halifax library and the records of previous searchers, or discussing what they found in their own work as compared to those records. And countless hours were spent writing letters to people who might possibly make a little investment in the work, or to those who had already invested, to keep them up-to-date.
On March 6, Dad wrote a long letter to Fred Sparham. In it he mentioned that he and Bobby had dug some 65 holes on the beach. He went on to describe new discoveries they had made, and ways in which previous knowledge about Oak Island’s beach work was inaccurate. With this letter, Dad included a sketch of the reservoir. It was on the right side, in the ring of stones that acted as a seal, that the 1704 stone had been found (see Appendix 2).
Dad also described the winter conditions and how the huge ice floes were smashing the wharf:
The winter here has been terrible, the Ice is breaking up, the pieces floating by are 18” to 20” thick with some over two feet thick. This on salt water yet…. There is a storm on now. Waves are only three to three-and-a-half feet but not close together. This gets the chunks of ice (tons) enough momentum to give things an awful beating.
I am going ashore on foot this afternoon. The other half of the island is in solid ice yet. So, will mail this then. We have to wind this job up fast (its here, we can get it, and we are going to get it) but we can’t stand much mo
re of the way we have been living. It’s enough to drive anyone out of their mind. Do the best you can and we have got to get enough for eating and stove oil, etc. Best regards to all from all of us.
Yours very truly, Bob
Here is what my mother wrote about that time:
It was well into March before the breakup came. I think everybody we knew was glad to see the end of winter. “Worst winter we have had in years,” the natives said. It was certainly the worst for me.
As the ice began to break away from the mainland, it floated past our island. Great slabs, some big enough to put a fair-sized house on, went floating by, and many swirled around the end of our wharf to lodge in the cove. They piled up on the beach where the receding tide left them, making miniature cliffs from four to ten feet high….
Before the men could put the boat into the water, it was necessary to clear away some of the ice that was floating in the cove. To the boys, this was great sport. Taking long poles, they jumped from one ice mass to the next until they were nearly at the outer edge. Then pushing with all their might, they forced the ice out to where the current would take it past the island. Often when they got back, they would find ice right back in the path they had cleared, and would have to go through the whole business again. Some of the slabs were nearly three feet thick. Hard work.
Bobby moving ice away from the wharf.
Chapter Twelve
The Best Summer Ever
It had been a rough winter and spring, both weather-wise and money-wise. It was clear that the job would go on longer and be more costly than they had first expected. Investors must be found.
Fred Sparham had provided the money to start the project, and many times when Dad needed parts, supplies, or equipment, Fred was the one who would get the money together and send the goods. Sometimes he sent cash from his own pocket to tide the family over with food and fuel expenses. He told his son Eddie, “We can’t have Bob and his family going hungry out there. It’s twenty bucks for us, and twenty bucks for Bob.”
Fred did his best to interest others in Oak Island, but even with Dad’s trip to Hamilton to present the slideshow, little money was raised.
The story of Oak Island and its treasure hunters was reported time and again, all over the world, as a “stranger-than-fiction” story. Yet most Canadians had never heard of it. All that was about to change.
In 1961, television crews and newspaper and magazine reporters descended
Lloyd MacInnis (right), television journalist, with Mom, Carney, and CBC’s The Gazette crewmember, preparing for interview, April 9, 1961.
on Oak Island to tell the story of the Restall family — “modern-day treasure hunters” who traded the comforts and certainties of civilized life for a primitive, harsh, isolated existence, because they were determined to follow their dream.
The first to come that year was Lloyd MacInnis and his crew from the CBC. They were preparing a one-hour television documentary for The Gazette. Dad said they brought enough equipment for a Hollywood movie. It was a long day, but a happy one.
Before my mom had met my dad and become a motorcycle rider, she was a dancer in one of the countless variety shows that criss-crossed England. From the age of 12, she had supported herself in show business. Mom was totally at ease in front of the camera and had a talent for storytelling. Audiences small and large found her stories fascinating, and that summer she had many chances to showcase her skills.
Shortly after the CBC visit, a photographer and reporter came to the island from the Hamilton Spectator newspaper. They put together quite a big spread, which appeared in the paper that June.
On July 18, Louis Jaques and Cyril Robinson came to the island to do a piece for the Weekend Magazine. Jaques had previously done an article on Mom and Dad and the Globe of Death, so it was like a visit from old friends, and there was lots of laughter.
Discovery of the Vertical Shaft. Mildred and Ricky are wearing bug gear. Ricky has his hand on the stone dome. Beneath it you can see the hole that they named “the Vertical Shaft.” In the foreground is the white, hand-drilled granite stone, a marker stone from the time of the pirates.
Somewhere near the end of August, a photographer from the International Harvester magazine came to the island and took some excellent photographs. Robert Norwood, a photographer from the Halifax Chronicle, came in October, and shortly after that a well-crafted article and some superb photographs appeared in the Halifax newspaper.
My mother loved these celebrity moments, and Dad was hopeful that all this publicity would generate some interest from investors.
In the midst of all this, still working on the beach, Dad and Bobby discovered what they believed was some original work done by the pirates. They called their new find “The Vertical Shaft.”
As mentioned earlier, a white granite stone with a hand-drilled hole lay on the beach, and if you drew a line from it to its twin stone at the Money Pit, your line touched the Cave-In Pit. Along that line, but not far from the beach granite stone, Dad and Bobby had begun a meticulous examination of the beach.
Right beside the beach shack that Bobby and Ricky slept in they found, to their great surprise, a small dome of stones. When they removed the dome, they found a narrow shaft that was lined with more stones. It went down 43 feet (13.1 metres) and was about 13 inches (0.33 metres) wide.
Dad and Bobby were elated. Surely this was the spot where the pirates intended to come back and plug the sea water inlet tunnel. Now Dad could pour concrete down the hole and stop the inflow of sea water.
Quickly they arranged for a cement mixer, operator, and materials to be brought to the island. Heavy rains held them up a full day and Dad could barely wait. This was it! This was the moment they had worked so hard for.
But it was not meant to be. The cement did not mix smoothly. After they mixed the cement, sand, and water together to make concrete, they pumped it down into the shaft. But it did not make a seal. They tried for hours to correct the problem, but when air pressure was applied, the seal broke and the concrete blew out and travelled underground and out to sea.
Dad blamed himself for not researching Nova Scotia cement better. He expected it to be the same consistency as in Ontario, but it wasn’t. He should have put the dry cement through a sieve before adding the sand and water. He didn’t, so their concrete was lumpy and incapable of forming a solid seal. Dad was deeply disappointed.
Shortly after that, in the first week of August, Fred Sparham arrived on the island for a brief visit. A day or two later, I arrived for a nine-week stay along with my husband Doug and our three young children. Doug was there to help with the work and I was there to have a vacation in paradise with my young family. The kids and I spent many days swimming in the water inside the cofferdam, lolling on the beach, and exploring the quiet, tree-lined pathways of the island. One day when my mother and Ricky were with us, we came upon a farmer’s garden, now abandoned, that was enclosed by a tall, thick wall of blackberries — millions of them — that fell into our hands at a touch. The five of us picked and feasted for hours.
Meanwhile, Dad brought a drill over to the island and the men tried to intercept the sea water inlet tunnel close to the Vertical Shaft, but this time a little closer to shore. When that failed, they moved the drill inland a short distance and tried again. But they still couldn’t locate the inlet tunnel (or drain).
During the first week of October, Doug and I packed up the kids and returned to Hamilton. With so much happening on the island, it was difficult for us to leave.
Bobby’s journal indicates that he and Dad then went back to one of their beach shafts, dug a tunnel out from its floor, and set up the drill across the bottom of the tunnel in another attempt to locate the inlet tunnel. But again they were unsuccessful.
Fred Sparham (left), Bobby and Bob Restall, drilling near the Vertical Shaft.
At the beginning of December, my husband returned to the island to deliver a diamond drill bit and to help with the work. He stayed unt
il December 20. During his stay he wrote to tell me that the earth around the vertical shaft was “like porridge” — an oozy, formless mess. It was impossible to dig. Much later, it would be learned that this was an extremely important site.
During Doug’s stay, Davis Tobias, a potential investor, paid a visit to the island. Mr. Tobias had the kind of money that could see the project to its completion, and he seemed very interested. Hopes were high that an investment deal could be struck.
There was no contract for the next year and Chappell was pressuring Dad to work down the Money Pit. But Dad knew that once the pump was started, there had to be an ample supply of gasoline to keep it running. If David Tobias came on board, all that could happen.
Chapter Thirteen
More of the Same
The Restalls had learned a lot about surviving on the island, so the winter of 1962 was much easier than the previous one. They placed spruce boughs around the shacks for insulation and as a windbreak, and the buildings remained toasty warm.
They continued to drill beside the Vertical Shaft all through January, but the drill bits had a tough time getting through the stone.
Winter roared in as February arrived and the island was once again ice-bound. That meant that whenever they needed food, mail, equipment, or supplies, they had to walk the length of the island, pulling a toboggan, then trudge across the expanse of ice to the mainland, where their car would need to be dug out.
At first, negotiations between Dad and Chappell and between Dad and David Tobias did not go smoothly, but in February a contract was signed by Mel Chappell and Bob Restall that allowed my dad to continue to search for treasure on Oak Island until the end of 1962. At the same time, Mr. Tobias and my father signed a contract that formalized David Tobias’s investment in the Restall dig. David Tobias brought much-needed cash and business savvy to the project.