The Oak Island Mystery. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe

first two sets of samples produced only mud, clay, soil, gravel, and a few insignificant stones which were small enough to negotiate the retaining pin below the ball. The next three holes provided important evidence.

      At the ninety-eight-foot level — precisely the depth where the Onslow men had hit with their iron probing rods forty years earlier — the pod auger went through a spruce platform nearly six inches thick. There was then a space of a foot or so through which the bit dropped effortlessly. Below this small, empty zone, the auger bit through four inches of oak and then encountered nearly two feet of tantalizing loose metal which it could not retrieve. Next came a further four inches of oak, which was immediately repeated. The auger then threaded its way awkwardly and reluctantly through another two feet or so of the irretrievable loose metal. After that it chopped through another four inches of oak with six inches of spruce below that. Under this spruce layer the auger detected seven or eight feet of backfilled clay, which had evidently been disturbed at some time in the past. Below this previously-worked material the drill encountered only natural virgin clay as far as McCully and his men could ascertain.

      Subsequent drillings again hit the ninety-eight-foot platform and the side of a chest, cask, or sarcophagus. Small splinters of wood came up from it, and McCully noted with commendable precision and attention to detail that the drill behaved oddly and erratically as though the revolving chisel tip was struck repeatedly against a wooden obstruction parallel to one side of the descending drill. Coconut fibre also came up, and, very significantly, three or four links of gold chain, perhaps from a necklace or bracelet; perhaps from the epaulette of an officer’s uniform, or from the ornately decorated robes of a long dead religious leader. McCully himself wondered if it was part of an old-fashioned watch chain.

      The continuity and interconnection of the various teams who worked on the Money Pit are significant. Two of the original Onslow men in 1803 had been Colonel Robert Archibald and Captain David Archibald. In 1849, Pitblado certainly knew Charles Dickson Archibald of the Acadian Iron Works. This was located in Londonderry, Nova Scotia. James (or John?) Pitblado may have been a somewhat dubious character, or, at the most charitable interpretation, an unscrupulous opportunist. He had been instructed by the Truro team to bring every fragment raised by the drill for microscopic examination. John Gammell, a major shareholder, claimed that he had seen Pitblado take something from the drill, examine it very closely, and slip it into this pocket surreptitiously when he thought he was unobserved. Gammell challenged Pitblado and asked to see what had been retrieved. Pitblado refused, saying he would show it to all the shareholders together at their next meeting. He never did.

      Leaving the island that day with the mystery object, Pitblado contacted Charles Archibald, who applied for a government licence to search for treasure on Oak Island. All he got were the rights to hunt on empty land, or land which had not been granted to anyone. Not satisfied with that — it excluded him and Pitblado from the vital Money Pit area — he attempted to buy the east end of Oak Island. He failed. Not long afterwards he left Nova Scotia and settled in England. Pitblado vanished into obscurity amid contradictory hearsay. Some reports made him the first victim of the legendary Oak Island nemesis. One account says he was killed in a mining accident; another relates that it happened during railroad construction. Whatever the precise circumstances of his death, word went round that Pitblado had died shortly after pocketing that unknown fragment of treasure which he had found in the pod auger. What might that mysterious object have been? The first suggestion is that it was a small piece of gold, or a jewel. It might also have been a scrap of parchment, a precursor of the tiny piece which was retrieved by T.P. Putnam and examined by Dr. Andrew Porter on September 6, 1897. Another intriguing possibility is that Pitblado found not merely a precious jewel or gemstone, but one which bore a carefully inscribed mason’s mark. Suppose that the inscription on the strange stone unearthed by the Onslow men had contained masons’ marks and that these had been regarded as an unknown alphabet by the men who had puzzled over them in 1803.

      Pitblado’s action has yet another parallel with the curious story of Rennes-le-Château: according to one account, during the restoration work on the church, in the course of which the “Knight’s Tombstone” was discovered, one of the builders thought he saw something glinting underneath. Saunière abruptly brought the day’s work to a halt on the grounds that they could not leave a hole in the floor on the Sunday following. By the time work resumed on Monday, somebody had disturbed the stone which had been left covering the hole, and the “glinting object” had disappeared.

      Back to the Truro team on Oak Island! The explorers next made a discovery that diverted their attention from Pitblado’s disloyalty. They noticed that the water in the flooded shafts rose and fell a foot or two as the tides came and went around the island. The question that McCully and his team asked themselves repeatedly was: “Why was there no water in any of the additional shafts until those shafts were connected to the Money Pit?” The clay was very hard, practically impermeable. Few men knew better than those rugged old Truro diggers just how hard the going really was. They argued that if a natural waterway or underground stream ran from deep in the Money Pit to the Atlantic Ocean, it would have prevented the original workers from completing their design. In addition, the impermeable clay through which the shaft had been sunk made such a natural watercourse very improbable.

      Observations at Smith’s Cove at low tide had revealed water trickling down the beach towards the sea. Putting their observations and deductions together, the Truro men began to wonder whether the unknown miners who had sunk the Money Pit with its many elaborate layers of oak, putty, fibre, and charcoal, had somehow connected it to the ocean.

      The Truro team began to dig up the beach at Smith’s Cove. The first thing they found was a massive sheet of coconut fibre which covered the shoreline for about 150 feet. The fibre layer was between two and three inches deep and below it lay several more inches of tough, old, salt-resistant eel grass, which was, however, now showing signs of decay. It had evidently been there a long time. This double blanket of eel grass and coconut fibre covered the shore between high and low tide levels. It would seem to have served two purposes: to retain and transmit water like an enormous sponge; and to prevent sand and clay from passing through to clog whatever lay beneath.

      Simplicity is the hallmark of genius. Standing on the shoulders of the intellectual giants who pioneered the path, the average man and woman can see their way forward to new discoveries. Armed with high-powered computers linked to I.T. databases, third year high school students can solve in minutes problems that would have delayed Archimedes, Newton, or Einstein for several weeks. To construct an underground defence system using twentieth century technology, high-powered excavators, and bulldozers is no more than an average task: to construct it with very simple and limited resources is an outstanding achievement.

      Under the eel grass and coconut fibre filter-blanket, the unknown engineer laid a mass of stones and boulders completely free from sand and clay. It seemed to bear a remarkable similarity to a Roman road, as if its builder had been familiar with their road-building technique.

      Jotham McCully’s keen eyes noted the remains of an old coffer dam surrounding these amazing beach workings. If that was how the original builders had done it, his men could do it too. Accordingly, the Truro team built their own coffer dam around the zone they were investigating.

      With the seawater out of the way, they dug down below the stones and discovered a set of five fan-shaped box drains relentlessly conducting the Atlantic into the lower levels of the Money Pit.

      With their quickly erected and non-too-sturdy coffer dam in place, the Truro men began to trace the drainage system back up the beach as it converged on the main flood tunnel leading to the Money Pit. About fifteen or twenty yards along, they were having to dig down four or five feet to locate the drains.

      Disaster struck in the form of an abnormally high tide which overflowed their temporary coffer dam. It was constructed to take pressure from the Atlantic side, but not from a weight of inshore water trying to flow back down the beach: it broke and was washed away. The Truro team was beginning to suffer from two of the major frustrations