The history of Oak Island is the longest and most mysterious treasure-hunting epic. Everything was here: precious finds, mysteries and discoveries, finally, human sacrifices. However, nature is in no hurry to part with the treasure hidden in the bowels of the earth.
THE BEGINNING OF TIME
It was a hot summer day in 1795. Sixteen-year-old Daniel McGuinness from the town of Chester, located on the coast of Mahon Bay near the Canadian peninsula of Nova Scotia, went by boat to one of the small islets. The locals call it Oak. Having landed in a quiet cove, Daniel, a few hundred meters from the shore, came across a huge oak tree with an old ship's tackle hanging from its branch. Under it was a lenticular recess of sagging earth with a diameter of 4 meters. The young man's heart was beating with excitement. Treasure Well! He was well aware of the legends in which the Mahon Islands served as a refuge for pirates who for two centuries hunted robbery along the Atlantic coast of North America.
The next day, Daniel returned to Oak, bringing with him shovels and two friends - Tony Vaughan and Jack Smith. They started digging under an old oak tree. At a depth of three meters, the young men stumbled upon a flooring of oak logs, after three meters another one, then another … It became clear that it was impossible to get to the treasures with their own strength. Friends spent several years looking for money. In 1804, a wealthy merchant, Simeon Linds, was interested, and a group of treasure hunters returned to the island. This time they managed to break through to a depth of 27 meters. A flat stone was raised to the surface, on which mysterious signs were carved. Much later, the inscription was allegedly deciphered: "Two million pounds sterling are stored three meters below."
The treasure hunters went further two meters and stumbled upon something solid. There was no limit to exultation. But the next morning a blow awaited them: the mine turned out to be flooded with water up to ten meters above the surface of the earth. For several weeks they tried unsuccessfully to pump out water with hand pumps.
The next year, the financier and leader of the expedition decided to undertake a roundabout maneuver. Near the old mine, he ordered the start of a new vertical shaft. Having safely reached a depth of 33 meters, the workers began to punch a horizontal drift towards the old mine. When the supposed treasury was only half a meter away, water suddenly gushed into the drift. The workers barely had time to flee.
Linde, after two years of failure, gave up further searches. The discoverer of the treasure, Daniel McGuinness, died unexpectedly.
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Vaughan and Smith returned to the island with the most modern horse-drawn drilling rig at the time. Soon after passing in. In the old mine layers of logs, cement, scrap metal and copra, from a depth of 30 meters, a drill extracted three links of a massive gold chain. The mine was named "Money Pit", or "Bonanza". But soon it was filled with water again. And then Vaughan remembered that during the previous flooding everyone was surprised how quickly one of the bays of the island, 200 meters from the mine, had become shallow. Exploration of the foreshore led to an unexpected discovery. There were tons of compressed copra and seaweed under the sand on the stone foundation. This artificial strip, 50 meters wide, extended towards the sea, connecting the highest and lowest tide points. From this sponge-like carpet, underground water supply tunnels were built. Later in the gulf they discovered “the remains of a dam,separating the bay from the sea. Already in the 20th century, researchers stumbled upon the ruins of a large pier that served as a haven for unknown ships.
AWESOME INVENTIONS
In the middle of the 19th century, the Truro syndicate, which was involved in the development of the Golden Bottom, first of all tried to restore the destroyed dam in the bay and dug another shaft with a drift at a depth of 35 meters crossing the Money Pit. It seemed that the treasure was already in his hands. However, the tide destroyed the lintel. A portion of the Money Pit, consisting of logs, cement, metal and treasure, collapsed.
This fiasco did not discourage several subsequent well-equipped expeditions. Dozens of mines have been dug, hundreds of wells drilled. As a result, three more tunnels were discovered. In 1893, Frederick Blair managed to continue drilling in the area of the destroyed and flooded old mine. At a depth of 47 to 52 meters, I found the collapsed part of the "Money Pit" containing the treasury. Moreover, grains of gold and a piece of parchment with the letters “vi” were found in the core. According to experts, the letters were written in Indian ink with a quill pen. But further Works were unsuccessful, and Blair's company, sharing the fate of all its predecessors, went bankrupt.
With the last money, the treasure hunter bought the rights to the island and began to trade in shares of the uncovered treasure. For adventure lovers, the matter was not. By the way, in 1909, having spent five thousand dollars on fruitless searches, the young lawyer Franklin Roosevelt, who later became the President of the United States, left the island.
THE CONCEPT OF A BRILLIANT PROJECT
In the twenties and thirties of the XX century, many American companies, one after another, invested in the search for the treasure on Oak Island. Powerful electric cables were connected here, bulldozers, excavators and drilling units were brought in. But the treasure was never found.
Bäär died a very old man in 1951. His rights to the island were acquired by Mel Chappell, the son of a drilling manager who had retrieved a scrap of parchment from Money Pit. He also had to sell the rights to treasure hunting in parts.
It was believed that someone dug a shaft 53 meters deep and suspended the treasury in it at a depth of 30 meters. Then the builders laid four water-supply tunnels from the mine mark of 27 meters. With the help of an ingenious hydraulic engineering structure in the bay, someone secured his treasure even during the period of maximum low tide. Only the one who came up with this ingenious project knew how to stop the water and get to the hidden values. Otherwise, what happened in the 19th century should happen: an attempt to enter the treasury through a buried mine led to its flooding with water, and the subsequent digging led to the collapse of the treasury to a depth of 50 meters.
TREASURE DEMANDS VICTIMS
In 1959, circus motorcycle racer Robert Restol, who was famous in the United States at that time for his attraction "Ball of Death", acquired part of the rights to search work. Together with his family, he settled in a small house on the shore of the lake, on the site of the former "Money Pit". According to Robert's wife, the sixty-year-old circus performer was more fascinated by the mystery of the island and the search process than the treasure itself. For several years of work, Restol's achievement was the discovery of a stone on which there was an encrypted inscription and the date "1704".
In 1966, tragedy struck. Restol worked in a shallow eight-meter shaft on the coast of the bay. Musty water was constantly at the bottom of the well. Restol's son Bobby, suspecting that something was wrong, began to quickly descend into the mine. All this happened in front of dozens of tourists. Restol's friend Grazer followed Bobby into the mine, followed by Si-Reel Hiltz, a young man from a nearby fishing village. None of them went upstairs. The police pronounced death as a result of poisoning with an unknown gas. What kind of gas it was, how did it get there - these questions remain unanswered to this day. A century-old legend is being told on the island, which says that before the treasure is found, seven people must die. The first one died in the middle of the last century, now there are four more.
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
After Restol's death, the exploration rights were purchased by the Triton Elijens Corporation. One of the directors of the company, Daniel Blankenship, after studying documents and surveying the area with geophysical instruments, laid a new mine, Shpur-10x, 60 meters northeast of Money Pit. As the shaft was being drilled, its walls were reinforced with a metal casing pipe with a diameter of 70 centimeters. At a depth of 54 meters, the face of the mine reached the rocky base. It seemed that such a result was another fiasco of treasure hunters. But the stubborn Blankenship continued to work. Managing with a downright supernatural intuition, he set about drilling the rock. The first meter passed through solid rocks, the second … After 18 meters, a powerful drill went through the rock and appeared in an empty space filled with water. Blankenship lowered a TV camera into the cavity and …what was opened to special television cameras in the early seventies, was broadcast by all television stations in the world. Fragments were shown in the Vremya program: dark, indistinct outlines of a dark object in muddy water and an elongated light spot floating on the TV screen from left to right. Blankenship interpreted these items as a chest with a severed human hand floating beside it.
The next season, the 49-year-old treasure hunter donned a light diving suit and descended to 72 meters depth. According to Daniel, he could not see anything in the muddy water - neither a chest, nor a hand, nor a skull, which allegedly also appeared in the video frames.
As long as the history of Oak Island can be put with ellipsis … People have not been able to conquer nature. Until now, the treasures of Oak Island have not been found. No treasure in the history of mankind has been hidden with such foresight. What is hiding in the Mani Pit mine? Who and when will answer this question, and will he answer?
Vyacheslav Meshcheryakov. "X-Files of the 20th Century"