by Steven Sora
The men dismantled the five drains. Each of these five drains was spaced far apart from the others at their closest point to the ocean, but they converged closer to the shore. Each was constructed of twin rows of rock, eight inches apart, covered with stone slabs. Then more bad luck hit the expedition. An Atlantic storm destroyed the dam that had been built to hold back the waters. Because it was too late in the year to reconstruct it, the men decided to sink still another shaft between the shore and the pit, which would absorb any water from the destroyed drain system. After one shaft missed, a second was dug, which also became flooded. Just south of the original shaft, they dug out what would be the fourth shaft within fifty feet and were faced with another setback. The new shaft collapsed into a cave and then was flooded. Fortunately, it happened during a break in work, and no one was killed. The men refused to enter the shafts, however, and all work was suspended.
By 1859 the syndicate again had raised the funds needed to resume work. Sixty-three men were hired, more shafts were dug, manual pumps were replaced by steam pumps. Still the Money Pit held its own against then-modern technology. A boiler explosion killed one of the men, and the work stopped again. The land surrounding the Money Pit was owned by John Smith and several others, but after the failure of what came to be called the Truro Syndicate, most of Oak Island was sold to Anthony Graves. Graves was a local farmer who never took part in the excavations, although he leased the land to the treasure hunters. A new syndicate was formed to lease the land and try to drill again, but this syndicate failed to raise the necessary money.
In 1866 another company was formed with the goal of building a larger dam. Work started, but the Atlantic Ocean refused to cooperate, and the second dam was flooded. This short-lived company sank a few more shafts, which came to complicate matters for later ventures, but nothing new was found. Meanwhile, the land owned by Anthony Graves reverted to famland. In 1880 the owner was plowing when just eighty feet away from the original pit, the earth gave way. Excavators later guessed that a tunnel lying underneath caused the cave-in, but no one came forward to explore further. It was also said that a coin bearing the unlikely date of A.D. 1317 was discovered, but like the inscribed stone, the coin also disappeared. No modern numismatist was given the chance to study the discovery.
In 1891 twenty-four-year-old Frederick Blair of Amherst, Nova Scotia, was next to take on the Money Pit. His firm, the Oak Island Treasure Company, was founded with sixty thousand dollars’ worth of shareholders’ money, half of which was needed to lease the land. Using modern technology to stop the water trap from flooding the shafts, the men drilled into the tunnel system and exploded 160 pounds of dynamite. The shafts still flooded. Experimenting with red dye, it was discovered that another water tunnel system existed, this time extending from a beach on the other side of the island. A deeper, six-hundred foot tunnel from the south side of the beach was a second trap to protect whatever was concealed in the Money Pit.
Besides disappointment, the 1890s brought new discoveries. A drill had consistently veered off in one spot at a depth of 151 feet. Deciding the obstacle must be a chest, the drillers pierced whatever was deflecting their drill and brought up what appeared to be parchment. The drill had mangled the parchment, and only the letters “V.I.” could be read. Other efforts brought up a pick, a seal-oil lamp, and an axe head, items that Blair decided dated to at least the 1680s. The Blair expedition also suffered the second fatality in the history of the pit—a worker fell to his death from a hoisting platform.
In 1897 more metal and concrete believed to be from a vault were brought up. Analysis in Halifax agreed that the substance was concrete and therefore man-made. Similarly, analysis of the “puddled clay” confirmed that it was not unlike the clay used by miners from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite being more convinced than ever that a great treasure lay just below, personal bankruptcy threatened members of the company, and a new infusion of money proved elusive.
In 1909 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a young lawyer with the establishment firm of Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn, was summering off the coast of New Brunswick. Having heard of the activity in nearby Nova Scotia, he joined the search. He, too, invested in Blair’s syndicate and brought in other well-heeled establishment figures, including Duncan Harris, Albert Gallatin, and John Shields (wealthy family members and friends) to invest alongside him. Roosevelt personally visited the site and even participated in the work. Surprisingly, Roosevelt was no stranger to treasure hunting. In 1896, as a young man, he had spent four days digging on Grand Manan Island for Captain Kidd’s treasure. As president, he once had a navy cruiser land on Cocos Island, 350 miles southwest of Costa Rica, where the privateer Edward Davis reputedly stashed loot from his adventures along the Spanish Pacific coast.6
Franklin Roosevelt was not the last celebrity to become fascinated by Oak Island. Future syndicates organized to search for the treasure claimed investments from John Wayne, Admiral Richard Byrd, Errol Flynn, and Vincent Astor but left these notable investors no richer.7 The efforts of Blair’s group continued. Dynamite was again used, and more cement was discovered; as ever, no money and no treasure were given up by the Money Pit. Blair’s head engineer, Harry Bowdoin, claimed that “any competent engineer could clear up the affair in no time.”8 He was accused of using the expedition as a means of getting publicity for his own salvage company, and after his failure he declared in an article that he believed the Money Pit was nothing but an elaborate hoax.
Smaller operations continued over the years until, in 1922, a major investor-participant was found. William Chappell of Sydney, Nova Scotia, and his son, Mel, joined Fred Blair. Mel was an engineer, and he decided that an open pit and a centrifugal pump would be used. Again the latest equipment that modern technology could muster failed to open the secret of the pit. Still, the open pit gave up an ancient anchor fluke and more concrete. Away from the pit another tantalizing clue was found by Chappell as he walked around the island. A stone triangle had been set up as a marker, which came to be regarded twenty years later as very significant. In 1937 Charles Roper, a Halifax-based land surveyor hired by Hedden, checked the measurements between certain drilled rocks and the triangle, but his survey offered no explanation for the marker. In the 1950s Fred Nolan, a surveyor from Bedford, Nova Scotia, agreed that numerous stones had been set in place as measurement markers. Nolan, who now owns part of the island, believes this triangle is a key to determining where the treasure actually lies.
To date, the marker has been just a clue; however, it has not helped Nolan, or anyone else, find answers. The Chappell expedition, too, ran out of money, as all the preceding ventures had. The Depression of the 1930s did not stop two more minor attempts, but the Money Pit yielded no new secrets to the treasure seekers. In 1934 Gilbert Hedden, who had been the manager of a family-owned steel business in New Jersey, an auto dealer, and the mayor of Chatham in his home state, was just the wealthy investor Blair and Chappell were seeking. Chappell, who died in 1946, was sixty-seven, and his time was running out. Partnership with Hedden brought electricity to the island and a contract drilling team from the coal mining districts of Pennsylvania, but no results. After three years the expedition’s failure as well as business needs back home sent Hedden packing.
Chappell and Hedden had not found any treasure, but they did add to the body of research on mysterious Oak Island. In addition to redis-covering the stone triangle, Heddon found other monuments. These included two distant boulders with mooring holes similar to those the Norse sailors left behind in Norway—and even Maine, according to some historians. Hedden brought in a surveyor who found large stones that had been placed there to form of an arrowhead. Working from the highest point of the island, the survey indicated another spot to dig near the original shaft, but nothing came from the new location. After the death of Chappell, his son Mel, who was ten years old when he first came to Oak Island in 1895, continued as owner and treasure hunter until 1975. After Hedden, another enginee
r, Edwin Hamilton, took over but failed to uncover anything new. By then so many shafts had been dug that the location of the original pit was uncertain. Hamilton’s efforts may have been successful in only one respect—he believed he had located one of the two water tunnels and the original shaft.
In the 1950s George Green, a petroleum engineer from Texas, and John Lewis, a gold miner with a ten-thousand-dollar new drill, tried and failed to make new discoveries. In 1960 a stunt motorcycle rider, Robert Restall, his son, and two workers were added to the list of fatalities claimed by the unyielding Money Pit. Restall had devoted five years to trying to cope with the water problem and to compiling measurements of the island. One August day he was overcome by carbon monoxide in the shaft. His son went down to help him but also collapsed. Two others made heroic efforts to save the father and son but were also lost, and the worked again was halted. As always, others came forward to take their places. In 1965 a California geologist, Bob Dunfield, and a Miami contractor, Dan Blankenship, were next. Dunfield brought in heavy equipment, including two bulldozers, to clear the original pit area and a seventy-ton crane to deepen the hole and dig trenches to stop the water flow. He even built a causeway that now leads from the island to the shore of Nova Scotia. His critics were not few in number, and complaining townspeople and unexplained equipment problems plagued his operation. His work covered up the stone triangle, which has since been re-formed.
Chronology
1795
Discovery of Money Pit
1802
Onslow Syndicate
1849
Truro Syndicate
1861
Various Groups (Graves no longer involved)
1893
Blair (in 1897 the Chappells join him)
1909
Henry Bowdoin (Blair still involved)
1931
Chappell/Blair
1934
Hedden first becomes involved
1955
Greene (Chappell still involved)
1959
Restall does extensive work on drainage system
1965
Dunfield constructs causeway to the island and Blankenship takes over excavation
1970
Tobias forms Triton Alliance and starts the current excavation
In 1966 Dunfield’s time ran out as his deal with Mel Chappell was not renewed. He tried to buy the island from Chappell but was turned down. Dunfield left but Blankenship was hooked. From the day a Readers’ Digest article about the treasure captured his attention, he had become obsessed with Oak Island. He sold his successful contracting business in Miami and moved to Nova Scotia permanently. Four years later, in 1970, David C. Tobias of Montreal incorporated the latest syndicate under the name Triton Alliance. Named for a Greek demigod who was the son of the sea god Poseidon, Triton still runs the excavation of Oak Island today. Blankenship was one of the first investors, starting as a minority partner with Dunfield in 1965. With a farmer from New York, Dan Hanskee, the two have been working the pit ever since. In 1990 on my first visit to Oak Island, Dan Hanskee gave me a guided tour of the island while the work continued. Borehole 10X is the name given to the current shaft, which the drillers believe is closest to the original efforts. Borehole 10X was in operation then and until recently was still in operation. Mel Chappell has since died. Tobias, Blankenship, and Nolan all still own lots.
With the excavation of Oak Island four years past its bicentennial, the investment of its most important current backer is keeping the project going. Tobias, a Montreal millionaire who runs more than one business, has the money to invest but not the time. For this reason, Blankenship and Tobias have been in equal partnership over the past several years. Other investors have been invited in through a stock offering, but even after the success of the famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher’s limited partnership, which paid off very handsomely, new investors have not always been easy to find. Tobias continues to sink his own funds into the operation, and between the costs of legal wrangling and digging, his personal contribution has passed the million-dollar mark. The Triton Alliance is now a consortium of fifty-two American and Canadian investors, including George Jennison, a past president of the Toronto Stock Exchange; Charles Brown, a Boston developer; Donald Webster, a Toronto-based financier; Bill Sobey, of Canada’s largest supermarket chain; Bill Parkin, a weapon systems designer for the Pentagon; and Gordon Coles, Nova Scotia’s deputy attorney general.
The Triton group has allied itself with another syndicate to fund the exploration. The newest group is called Oak Island Discoveries, a partnership between a Boston millionaire, David Mugar, and film director William Cosel. Triton and Oak Island Discoveries together are funding a series of tests that will determine their next step. The prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is conducting the testing on the shafts with equipment that is similar to that used in exploring the Titanic in 1991. If the testing is successful, Tobias and Mugar will go on to raise another ten million dollars. The contribution of Tobias goes well beyond the job of fund-raising. Under his leadership the excavation has seen the most scientific approach to date as well as the most extensive historic research into just who is responsible for the elaborate pit and what might be found someday. Tobias used the resources of the National Museum of Natural Science in Ottawa, which confirmed that the fibrous material was coconut fiber. He turned to the Steel Company of Canada to analyze the iron spikes found in the coffer dam and found that the spikes had been forged prior to 1790.9
In 1990 Tobias said he was convinced that the English navigator and privateer Sir Francis Drake was the primary candidate for the person responsible for the Money Pit; Drake had raided the Spanish Main for Queen Elizabeth I, sharing in the spoils, and Tobias contended that Drake needed to preserve a portion of his gains outside of England. He believes that the pit was Drake’s stash of part of the loot he had taken for Queen Elizabeth I. His well-researched theory, however, is not the only one with merit. After two hundred years of work there are certain facts that have been established without doubt. First, the underground workings exist and are man-made. Second, whoever constructed the Money Pit was knowledgeable about advanced hydraulics. Third, the work, which must have taken a year or longer, was completed before 1750, when settlement would have made such construction impossible to keep secret. Apart from what we know is true, it is possible to make assumptions as well. What was buried had to be of considerable value for someone to go to such lengths to conceal it. The Money Pit has so far defeated any attempts to claim its secret, and there is a very good chance that a treasure of incredible value is still there, awaiting discovery.
Chapter 2
THEORIES AND SUSPECTS: WHO DUG THE MONEY PIT AND WHAT LIES BELOW
The Money Pit has defied engineers and excavators for more than two hundred years, and so has the mystery of just who is responsible for its existence. A complete list of suspects might include any individual or group of people that are known to have inhabited the area. A people referred to by anthropologists as Paleo-Indians, or the Red-paint people, were in the Canadian Maritime Provinces from as early as 8500 B.C. While little is known about them, it is safe to say that they were not aware of advanced hydraulics.
As early as A.D. 700 and as late as A.D. 1100, a more advanced culture inhabited the Atlantic coasts. They are generally referred to as the Micmac peoples, a name derived from their term nikmaq, meaning “my kin friends.”1 The Micmac were nomadic, dividing their year between wintering inland and summering along the Atlantic coast. They became skilled at fishing the coastal Atlantic and by the eighteenth century had developed a writing system.2 Again, we can eliminate this group from the suspect list because they lacked both the motive and the means to construct an underground vault as complex as the Money Pit.
Conventional histories of North America often start with the state-sponsored explorations of the New World. This would leave us with a narrow time frame that would begin in 1497, when the first European explo
rer reached Canada, and end sometime before 1795, when the area became populated and the pit was discovered. This first explorer was John Cabot, an Italian sailing under the English flag five years after Columbus reached the Caribbean. Cabot is given credit as the first European to have reached the Atlantic coast of Canada. He made landfall on June 24, 1497, which was Saint John the Baptist’s feast day. He established no colonies but may have opened up the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador for European fishermen. In all likelihood, they had been fishing the rich banks well before Columbus, although they knew the area as a fishing ground and not as a “New World” or the sought-after passage to Cathay for which Columbus had been searching.3
Five years after Cabot’s venture, a Portuguese expedition to America took place. Pedro de Barcelos, a landowner from the Azores, led the expedition. On board was a friend and fellow Azorean, João Fernandes.4 Because Fernandes’s time away from the sea was spent farming, his nickname was lavrador, meaning “farmer” in Portuguese. Although the exact landfall of this expedition is debated, the Canadian province of Labrador received its name from the nickname of João Fernandes, a farmer on expedition.