Off the coast of Nova Scotia lies tiny, irregular-shaped Oak Island.
Far out of
proportion to its size, however, is the awesome enigma of what lies hidden beneath the
deceptively innocent surface. Rumors hint of a fabulous pirate treasure of almost
unimaginable wealth. Exploratory findings speak of a potential for tragedy and an
engineering feat by whoever hid the treasure unrivaled in its almost supernatural ingenuity.
Whatever the eventual outcome, for almost two hundred years Oak Island has frustrated every single attempt to pry loose its secret. The first to try was sixteen-year-old Daniel McGinnis and two companions who rowed across Mahone Bay from the Canadian mainland in 1795. In a clearing on the wooded eastern end of the island they discovered an old ship's tackle block hanging from a single tree above a filled-in depression. Intrigued, they dug down, uncovering the opening of a thirteen-foot-wide circular shaft. At a depth of ten feet, the boys encountered the first of the thick oak platforms. Twenty feet down, they found a second platform, and at thirty, a third.
Digging through the flinty clay exhausted the young treasure hunters, both physically and spiritually. But there would be others to take their place. Work next resumed in 1804, financed by Simeon Lynds, a well-to-do Nova Scotian. Lynds' diggers found five more oak platforms, each at depths of ten-foot increments, three of which had been sealed over with ship's putty and a layer of coconut fibers. At ninety feet, they found what became known as the "cipher stone," inscribed with obscure symbols that one source interpreted to mean "ten feet below, $10 million are buried." The amount would be exponentially greater in today's dollars.
Eight feet under the cipher stone a miner's crowbar struck something solid, thought to be a treasure chest. Lynds' men broke off for the day. The following morning the pit had filled with water to a depth of sixty feet.
The Money Pit broke Lynds, as it broke the back of any number of similar expeditions since. Over the years just enough tantalizing evidence has been pulled out of the pit to keep treasure hunters coming back, including bits of gold chain and indications of chambers containing wooden chests.
The mystery of what the Money Pit holds deepened when two channels connected to the pit were discovered at the 111- and 150-foot levels. Filled with coconut fibers, both led to the island's beaches, where they seem to serve as sponges, soaking up the sea, and forever flooding the shaft with water. The coconut fibers hint of a South Pacific origin for the treasure.
Treasure hunters continue to sink money into the frustrating hole, risking their lives in the process. Daniel Blankenship, a former Miami contractor, is director of Oak Island excavations from Triton Alliance Ltd., a forty-eight member consortium of wealthy Canadian and U.S. backers. Blankenship was once deep in the pit when steel casings holding back the sides fifty feet above his head began collapsing. Workers winched him out of the hole seconds before the shaft gave way.
Having already sunk $3 million in the site, Blankenship and Triton vow to fight on. Now in the works is what Triton president David Tobias calls "in all probability the deepest and most expensive archeological dig ever made in North America." The new plan calls for sinking an immense steel and concrete shaft, sixty to seventy feet wide and two hundred feet deep, that will reveal, once and for all, what lies at the bottom of the Money Pit. Estimated cost? Ten million dollars.
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