Preface

Before 1958, Oak Island was a well-kept secret. Its legacy was confined to miscellaneous newspaper and magazine articles, the prospectuses of treasure search companies, and isolated chapters of a few books on buried treasure—all scattered over a period of about a hundred years. Then, in 1958, The Oak Island Mystery was published. In it, Reginald V. Harris related the history of island activity since 1795, when the first search began. An attorney, Harris had represented two Oak Island treasure hunters. The book is definitive historically, but has its limitations. It leaves many questions unanswered, such as: Who constructed the labyrinth of shafts and tunnels? When was it done? Why was it done? How was it done? These questions have captured my imagination for many years.

A year prior to the release of Harris’s book, I had been an engineering student and survey party chief on a highway construction project several miles north of Oak Island. During a mid-morning coffee break, I overheard the men in my crew talking about a nearby island where people were digging for an enormous treasure. It was another Fort Knox and it was there for the taking, if anyone could get to it. The men talked excitedly about an unimaginable quantity of gold buried deep beneath the island, protected by a labyrinth of shafts and tunnels connected to the ocean. Every time treasure hunters
had dug within reach of the cache, they had been driven out by a flood of water from the sea. After first hearing the story and later reading Harris’s book, I began to follow newspaper accounts of the ongoing treasure searches. This is how I became involved.

In 1972, I took my boat The Scotia Lass on my first ocean cruise to Mahone Bay, where Oak Island is situated. Subsequently, I made annual excursions to cruise the waters of the bay in search of clues. I reported my findings in The Oak Island Quest, which was published in 1978.

The Oak Island Quest outlines the history of the hunt up to 1978 and it covers most of the theories and speculations of investigators and writers of the day. Some of the speculations I offered were tongue-in-cheek—advanced in the interests of not limiting the possibilities, as opposed to representing any firm convictions on my part. The reader is left to reject what he or she feels is too “far out” to consider.

After writing The Oak Island Quest, I have continued to follow the island’s saga as it has unfolded, and in 1991 I began to write Oak Island Gold.

While I was still outlining Oak Island Gold, one of the island’s current treasure hunters emerged out of the blue to disclose a startling discovery. He then engaged me to conduct an engineering survey. My work on the island in connection with this find led me to an entirely new path of inquiry. This, in turn, led to the formulation of a novel theory, different from any that had come before. Although I began the relatively straightforward task of chronicling an update of the treasure hunt, I ended up with far more than I had bargained for.

Since a treasure has yet to be recovered, I cannot profess to have solved the mystery once and for all. Although circumstantial evidence abounds, the irrefutable proof is still in the proverbial pudding.

Perhaps the details of this unexpected survey will spark you to become engaged in the quest—either as an armchair philosopher or as a digger. Perhaps these findings will bring us all one step closer to discovering the irrefutable proof that still eludes our grasp.

W. S. C.

One

The Mystery Begins

June 17, 1992. Frederick G. Nolan, Nova Scotia land surveyor, slowly unzipped a black briefcase and gave me a cryptic smile. We were seated at a corner table in a popular coffee shop overlooking Halifax Harbour. The last rays of a scarlet sunset reflected off the glossy surface of a colour photograph being pushed in my direction. “Take a look at this,” Nolan said, “and tell me what you see.”

A practicing professional surveyor of Bedford, Nova Scotia, Nolan owns a portion of Oak Island, site of the two-century-old treasure hunt that has baffled scores of treasure seekers. Nolan has been involved in the search for over thirty years. Like a man manacled to an obsession, he has surveyed, drilled, and dug. I had an intuitive feeling that the photo was going to lead me to a place where only he had ventured. My intuition was correct.

The photo was of a large sandstone boulder about four feet in diameter, displaying a gruesome appearance.

“What do you make of it?” Nolan asked. “Do you notice anything peculiar?”

I was reluctant to say. Feeling certain that what the photograph suggested was simply a coincidence, I disregarded my first thought and searched for something else. Finally, after examining the photograph for a couple of minutes, I gave in to an impulse to shun my dignity and blurted, “It looks like a human skull!”

Nolan quickly glanced around the room as if checking to see if I had caught anyone’s attention and replied almost in a whisper, “You’ve got it. That’s what it is!”

In the months to follow, the skull-shaped rock, which Nolan has dubbed “the Head Stone,” would add a bizarre twist to Oak Island’s baffling mystery. A mystery that began a very long time ago with the confession of a dying sailor, and a lost treasure.

According to legend, in the 1600s an old man on his deathbed, in what was then known as the New England Colonies, said he had been a crew member of the notorious Captain William Kidd. He swore that many years earlier he had assisted Kidd and his crew in burying an enormous treasure on a secluded island east of Boston. The legend was widely spread and early settlers brought the broadly publicized tale to Nova Scotia. For a century following the alleged confession numerous searches were made, but the treasure was never found.

Then, one day in the late spring or early summer of 1795, a young man, Daniel McGinnis, stumbled upon what he and others became certain was the hiding place of the lost treasure of Captain Kidd.

McGinnis was exploring the eastern end of Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, when he discovered a spot that appeared to have been worked many years earlier. Someone had cut away a portion of the forest, forming a small clearing in which oak stumps were visible among a new growth of trees. A large forked limb extended over the clearing from one of the original oaks. An old tackle block was attached to the forked part of the limb by means of a wooden peg that connected the fork into a small triangle. The peg, or “treenail” was of a type used in the construction of wooden ships. The ground below the tackle block had settled into a saucer-shaped depression about thirteen feet in diameter.

The waters off the northeastern coast of North America from Brazil to Newfoundland had once been infested with pirates. LaHave, fifteen miles south of Oak Island at the entrance to Mahone Bay, was a depot for pirates in the early 1700s—a depot to which they resorted in great numbers. As one might well imagine, Mahone Bay—in which Oak Island is situated—was a pirate haven.

Having undoubtedly heard the stories of pirate activity in Mahone Bay and the legend of the treasure of Captain Kidd, McGinnis immediately suspected a buried treasure. Enthusiastically, he confided in a couple of close friends: John Smith, age nineteen, and Anthony Vaughan, age sixteen. The next day the three of them rushed off to the old clearing.

The tackle block was the foremost point of interest. They immediately climbed up on the limb, but as they tried to remove it, it fell to the ground and broke to smithereens. So they began to investigate the old clearing. Searching about the area, they discovered the remains of a road running from the tree to the western end of the island, which gave them hope that the lost treasure of Captain Kidd might be here.

Abandoning further investigation, they hurried back to their homes and returned armed with axes, picks, and shovels to begin work with a fervour. They cut away the young trees and began excavating the surface soil. Two feet down they uncovered a layer of carefully laid flagstones. The stones were of a type not found on the island and they figured that they had been transported from Gold River, about two miles north of the island on the mainland.

Once they had removed the flagstones, they found that they were entering the mouth of an old pit or shaft that had been refilled. Although the sides of the shaft were of tough, hard clay, the material being removed was loose and easily shoveled without the use of picks, but they noticed pick marks on the sides of the shaft as they shoveled downward.

Pirates had a reputation for being lazy, and it was common knowledge that they buried their treasures only a few feet underground for easy retrieval. Therefore, McGinnis, Smith, and Vaughan expected to hit the top of a wooden chest each time their shovels bit into the soil. By the time they had reached a depth of six or seven feet, they became apprehensive. But treasure fever had set in, and the dig continued downward.

At a depth of ten feet, one of the shovels hit wood. First they were elated, figuring they had hit the cask. But disappointment immediately followed. What they had struck was a platform of oak logs and not the top of a treasure chest.

The ends of the logs that made up the platform were securely embedded into the sides of the shaft. The outsides of the logs were rotten, indicating that they had been there for a long time.

The trio probably expected to find a treasure chest directly below the platform, but when they removed the logs they found nothing—only a two-foot depression caused by soil settlement. But again treasure fever got the best of them and they continued to dig downward, day after day. Finally, at a depth of twenty-five feet, the work became too heavy and they were forced to abandon the dig.

At this point, McGinnis, Smith, and Vaughan realized that someone must have concealed something of extreme value to have gone to the trouble of digging deeper than twenty-five feet. Disappointed but undaunted, they began to prepare for future work, when help might be available. Before leaving on the final day, they drove wooden sticks into the sides of the pit at the bottom and they covered the place over with trees and brush.

On June 26, 1795, John Smith purchased Lot No. 18, which contained the Money Pit. Eventually, he built a house near the pit and purchased Lots 15, 16, 17, 19, and 20, making him sole owner of the easternmost, twenty-four-acre portion of the island.

Maritimers frequently comment after travelling abroad that Nova Scotia is Canada’s best-kept secret. The highlands of Cape Breton and the waters of Bras d’Or Lake are unparalleled in their magnificence, but they in no way exceed the beauty of the sparkling waters of Mahone Bay, speckled with its numerous sand beach islands.

Oak Island is a small, peanut-shaped island hidden from the open sea by many of these spectacular islands. On a gorgeous summer day, one doesn’t get the feeling that this island is veiled in the mist of an ancient secret. But Oak Island can take on a sinister appearance when fog rolls in from the Atlantic Ocean and rain and hail pummel her shores. The elegant setting can rapidly become morose and on these occasions one can picture scenes of bloodshed, torture, and torment.

The Money Pit, 1795.

Oak Island is situated about forty miles south of Halifax and is one of more than three hundred islands scattered about Mahone Bay on Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coast. It is about three-quarters of a mile in length by one thousand feet wide at the narrowest section near the centre. The long portion of the island runs in an east to west direction with a small crescent-shaped bay called Smith’s Cove or Smuggler’s Cove situated on the north side at the extreme eastern end. The west end of the island is linked to Crandall’s Point on the mainland by a narrow causeway constructed in 1965 to transport heavy treasure digging equipment. Two roads lead to the Money Pit from the western end of the island—an old road on the north side and a recently constructed one on the south. For almost two centuries, thousands of people have walked the old road to witness the strange works, hear stories of the digs, and ponder the mystery. The island, named for the beautiful groves of oaks that once shrouded the hills, is now mostly covered with scrub and spruce trees. The east end is sparsely vegetated and severely pocked and scarred from decades of digging for the elusive treasure.

Topographically, the island consists of two oval-shaped hills about thirty feet high, separated by a swamp and marshy area over the narrow section. Many investigators of the Oak Island mystery, including Fred Nolan who owns land on that portion of the island, believe that the swamp is associated somehow with the legendary treasure.

The soil of the island is a hard, stiff clay more than one hundred feet deep, overlying a bedrock of limestone. Deep within the limestone formation, present searchers have found what they believe is evidence of man-made workings.

Smith’s Cove has a very unusual feature: Its beach is artificial. Sometime long ago, before the discovery of the Money Pit, it was made by man.

The mysterious Money Pit lies near the top of the high, oval-shaped hill on the east end of the island, five hundred feet from the shore of Smith’s Cove. And here, for the past two hundred years, men have wasted fortunes and lost their lives in search of buried booty.

Daniel McGinnis, the discoverer of the Money Pit, is himself an enigma. No one knows where he came from or where he lived. His age in 1795 is unknown. His origin and parentage is unknown. However, we do know a bit about Anthony Vaughan and John Smith. Perhaps from their origins and lineages we can read between the lines and make a good guess about the man named Daniel McGinnis.

On October 18, 1759, Nova Scotia’s British Governor-in-Chief, Charles Lawrence, granted one hundred thousand acres of Crown land known as the “Shoreham Grant” to about seventy-six immigrants from the British colony of New England. This grant included the township of Shoreham, which is now Chester; the area which is now a community known as the Western Shore; and several Mahone Bay islands, including Oak Island. An additional grant of 29,750 acres was made in 1760 and another of 12,400 acres in 1785.

Most of Oak Island was granted to New England families but none are known to have had the names of McGinnis, Smith, or Vaughan.

But on March 8, 1768, an Edward Smith acquired title to Lot 19, adjacent to Lot 18, which contains the Money Pit, and John Smith’s father, who may have been a relative of Edward’s, probably settled on the island. According to M. B. DesBrisay in his History of the County of Lunenburg (Nova Scotia) [1895 edition], John Smith was born on August 20, 1775, and died on Oak Island on September 29, 1857, after living there seventy-one years. In view of these dates and his term of residency on the island, it appears that he moved there in 1786 at the age of eleven.

Oak Island from one mile above; 1992 aerial mapping.

Causeway constructed in 1965 to admit a huge excavating machine, used to dig for treasure.

Anthony Vaughan’s father immigrated from Massachusetts in 1772 and acquired two hundred acres of land on the mainland near Oak Island which is now the community known as the “Western Shore.” He was one of three brothers who settled in the Chester area. One of his brothers, Daniel, acquired title to Lots 13 and 14, three lots removed from the Money Pit Lot No. 18.

There is no record of Daniel McGinnis’s family having owned land on Oak Island or on the mainland prior to 1795. DesBrisay writes, “The first settlers were John McMullen and Daniel McInnis [McGinnis]” and states that three men, Smith, McGinnis, and Vaughan, emigrated from New England to Chester and that Smith and McGinnis settled on Oak Island and Vaughan on the mainland. DesBrisay was probably referring to the fathers of the discoverers, because as noted above, Anthony Vaughan’s father had acquired two hundred acres on the mainland near Oak Island in 1772. Also, John Smith was too young to have “settled” at the age of eleven.

We may glean from DesBrisay’s accounts, therefore, that in 1795 when the Money Pit was discovered, Anthony Vaughan was living on the mainland, and John Smith—and quite possibly Daniel McGinnis—on the island.

So, in the year 1795, three young men who in all probability were neighbours as well as close friends became involved in an enigma that would consume their lives and ensnare the lives of their children and their children’s children. They had launched a saga that would claim lives and squander fortunes.

Survey plan of Oak Island.

Two

Thwarted

After the discovery and excavation of the Money Pit down to a depth of twenty-five feet, almost a decade elapsed before the dig was resumed.

It is assumed that Daniel McGinnis and his companions John Smith and Anthony Vaughan initially failed to acquire help to continue the dig due to local superstition about Oak Island, and the lack of free time available to the hard-working men of the area.

Many years before the discovery of the Money Pit, the people of Chester, three miles across the Bay, noticed strange lights glowing on Oak Island at night. Fishermen ventured as close as they dared and observed what appeared to be pirates silhouetted against huge bonfires. Curiosity grew, and two men went out to the island to investigate. They never returned and were not heard from or seen again. That is the story as it was handed down. The tale is said to have been revealed by an old woman in Chester when the Money Pit was discovered. The story had been related to her many years before by her grandmother. Added to this tale were the superstitious beliefs that witches frequented the island and that ghosts of victims buried with booty guard a pirate treasure.

Most of the inhabitants of the Chester area were poor, hard-working farmers and fishermen with little leisure time. Their only salvation from day to day drudgery was their adhesion to religious traditions that included the observation of Sunday as a day of rest. It was a day on which any kind of work for financial gain or subsistence was forbidden—including digging for pirate treasure.

But was it really superstition and lack of available manpower that stopped the discoverers from continuing the dig? It doesn’t seem credible that the hardy settlers wouldn’t have braved the ghosts and gambled a few days or weeks of fishing or farming for a fortune in gold. It seems more probable that McGinnis, Smith, and Vaughan made a pact to keep the Money Pit a secret until they could find financial assistance to continue the search.

The discoverers probably felt a strong need to protect their find. They may have asked themselves, “What will happen if we go through the community talking about everything we’ve found and asking for help? Is it possible that a group of men from Chester might invade the island?” I certainly would have held such a concern. The discoverers were probably not unlike the present searchers with regard to the matter of secrecy. Fred Nolan, one of the searchers previously mentioned, once told me that secrecy is of the utmost importance to him and his neighbour treasure searchers and expressed his annoyance about someone who had recently trespassed on his Oak Island property.

The discoverers needed a financial backer. Like their Chester neighbours, they were poor, hard-working fishermen and farmers. Without financial help, how could they raise the money to pay the wages of labourers? They were sure of uncovering an enormous treasure and undoubtedly didn’t want to have to split it among a group of hired men, in lieu of a few days or weeks of manual labour.

In the years following the discovery, Daniel McGinnis married and began farming the southwestern end of the island. Anthony Vaughan married and settled on the mainland near the island in the neighbourhood now known as the Western Shore. John Smith, who was married in 1790, five years before the discovery, built a house near the Money Pit and began farming the eastern end of the island.

So, it was easy for Daniel McGinnis and his partners to watch over the Money Pit while they searched for a backer.

Early accounts differ as to when that backer was eventually found. DesBrisay’s account gives fifteen years after the discovery and other accounts say it was seven years. Fifteen years seems like a rather long time, considering the riches they expected. The evidence indicates that seven years, or 1802, is probably correct.

The backer was a gentleman of financial status from Onslow, near Truro, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, by the name of Simeon Lynds. He was related to Anthony Vaughan’s father.

There are two versions of the first Oak Island financier. One account refers to Simeon Lynds as Dr. Lynds from Truro and says that his involvement came about because John Smith’s wife, Sarah, refused to have her first child on Oak Island because of the superstition connected with the Money Pit. She travelled to Truro, a distance of more than one hundred miles overland, and had her baby delivered by Dr. Lynds. Smith accompanied her and took the doctor into his confidence, intending to win him as a financial backer. Lynds was intrigued with Smith’s story and returned with the Smiths to Oak Island. After seeing the Money Pit, Dr. Lynds returned to Truro and formed a company to go after the treasure.

It seems unlikely that Smith’s wife would journey all the way to Truro to have a baby, considering the extreme hardship posed by the difficulty of travel in those days. If there wasn’t a physician in Chester, there were most certainly experienced midwives. This version of the story is further weakened by the fact that John, the Smiths’ first child, was christened at Chester on April 15, 1798, four years before Lynds visited Oak Island.

According to a more plausible version, Simeon Lynds was on business in Chester and spent an evening with Anthony Vaughan’s father. During the course of the evening’s conversation, Lynds heard about the discovery. The next day, Lynds went over to the island with Vaughan to see the Money Pit.

Lynds was apparently carried away by what he saw and heard, for he returned home and formed the Onslow Company in order to attract investors to provide the necessary funds to hire men and equipment to continue the excavation of the Money Pit. He appointed Colonel Robert Archibald director of operations and the company was successful in attracting over two dozen substantial investors from the Onslow and Truro regions. They were friends of Lynds, and in addition to Colonel Archibald included such prominent men as Sheriff Thomas Harris of Pictou and Captain David Archibald, who were men of substantial standing in their communities.

Colonel Archibald was a surveyor who laid out the Township of Onslow in 1780. He was also Justice of the Peace and town clerk for the area that is now Pictou and Colchester Counties. It is noteworthy that men of Archibald’s calibre were among the first to become involved in the Oak Island treasure hunt.

The winter and spring of 1803 must have passed very slowly for McGinnis, Smith, Vaughan, and their wives. The Lynds party had made plans to start work that summer. One can imagine the long, restless nights filled with dreams about bushels of gold and silver coins and the excitement that must have flared up when the families would meet on occasion to discuss the upcoming search.

For the men, a share of the expected treasure may have meant freedom from a lifetime of toil, a couple of fine horses, a luxurious carriage, or a new sloop. For the ladies, the treasure may have offered freedom from household drudgery, salvation from tending the livestock and working in the vegetable garden, the promise of fine china dishes, silver culinary, silk dresses, an education for their children in Europe, and a luxurious home in the town of Chester.

So, the early discoverers and their wives anxiously waited while the Onslow company completed their arrangements and put their plans into motion.

In the summer of 1803, the newly found syndicate loaded up a boat at Onslow with supplies and equipment and set sail for Oak Island. Their course took them southwesterly to the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, counterclockwise around the southwestern end of the province, and northeasterly to Mahone Bay, a distance of about 350 miles.

McGinnis, Smith, and Vaughan joined the Lynds party on arrival and introduced them to the old pit.

Work in the outset was not as easy as Colonel Archibald and Lynds had expected. Since the work halted in 1795, the pit had caved in, and the first task was to clean out the mud and debris. The crew completed this chore with some difficulty, but they were delighted to find the sticks that the three discoverers had driven into the mud to mark their final digging spot. The presence of the sticks confirmed that no one had tampered with the site during the eight-year lapse.

Driving downward beyond where McGinnis and his companions had quit, a shovel eventually struck wood. Expectations undoubtedly soared, but when the crew removed more soil all they found was another tier of logs comprising an oak platform similar to the one encountered in 1795.

Ten feet further down they came upon a layer of charcoal, ten feet lower a layer of putty, and much further down a most enigmatic object. It was a flagstone that bore mysterious letters and figures. The stone was about twenty-four inches long by sixteen inches wide and it was found with the figures facing downward. No one in the search party could decipher the stone etchings, so it was temporarily cast aside. That strange piece of rock later became one of the most talked-about artifacts of all—the centre of enormous controversy and speculation.

Sample of coconut fibre taken from the Money Pit.

Some of the old accounts say that platforms of oak were struck at the ten, twenty, and thirty-foot levels and if so, the charcoal and putty would have then been situated at the forty-foot and fifty-foot levels respectively. However, there are minor variations in the early accounts. According to Reginald V. Harris, author of The Oak Island Mystery, one account says that the putty was found at the forty-foot level, spread over a log platform, and that there was so much of it that it provided glazing for the windows of more than twenty houses in Mahone Bay. Further, it said that the charcoal was found at the fifty-foot level along with more oak planks. After the planks were removed, ten feet further down, coconut fibre was discovered and again another platform of oak.

James McNutt, who worked on the island in 1863, states, “At 40 feet a tier of charcoal; at 50 feet a tier of smooth stones from the beach, with figures and letters cut on them; at 60 feet a tier of manilla grass and the rind of the coconut; at 70 feet a tier of putty; at 80 feet a stone three feet long and one foot square, with figures and letters cut on it, and being freestone, being different from any on that coast.” Adams A. Tupper, who worked on the dig in the summers of 1850, 1851, and 1863, gives an account that places the inscribed stone at ninety feet but makes no mention of the putty, charcoal, or coconut fibre. Reginald V. Harris says that quantities of coconut fibre were removed from the pit from time to time, and Hiram Walker, a ship carpenter who had worked with the early searchers, told his granddaughter, Mrs. Cottnam Smith, that he had seen bushels of coconut fibre brought up from the Money Pit.

No water had been encountered until the ninety-foot level was reached. At this depth the bottom of the pit became soggy and water began to ooze from the clay. At ninety-three feet, water intrusion became a nuisance. The crew found themselves removing one bucket of water for every two of soil. With the dusk of night approaching, the men probed the mushy bottom of the pit with a crowbar to see if they could strike anything below. This was their standard practice every evening before dark, and on this evening, five feet below the bottom of the pit, at a depth of ninety-eight feet, the bar struck a hard, impenetrable material bounded by the sides of the pit.

The searchers suspected that they had finally encountered Captain Kidd’s treasure and the men returned home in high spirits. The fact that a considerable amount of water was seeping in at the bottom of the pit may have weighted their expectations in favour of a treasure cask rather than another platform of logs. How could the treasure have been placed much deeper, considering the amount of water flowing into the pit?

The Money Pit, 1804.

If Daniel McGinnis and his companions had spent a winter and spring of restless nights, the night following the probe of what seemed most likely to be the treasure chest must have been one of no sleep at all. This had to be the end of the search. Could Kidd have possibly gone any deeper? The treasure seemed just within their grasp.

But when the searchers returned to the pit the next morning, they were shocked by what lay below. The shaft, which had remained dry throughout all the previous weeks, was now filled with about sixty feet of water.

Discouraged but undaunted, the crew dug in their heels and began bailing out the pit with buckets. They bailed day and night before conceding that their work was useless. Despite their considerable efforts, the water in the shaft remained at the same level.

As it was approaching haying season and some of the men had to return home to cut, dry, and store their grass, Colonel Archibald temporarily halted the work. That fall, a committee was sent to see a Mr. Mosher of Newport, Hants County, Nova Scotia, who was considered to be the best person in the province to consult regarding how to remove the water. The company paid Mr. Mosher eighty pounds to rig up a pump, which he lowered to the ninety-foot depth in the pit. He started it up, but the pump burst before the water reached the surface. With winter approaching, Colonel Archibald called off the project until the following year when an alternative plan could be put in place.

The following spring, the Onslow Company returned to Oak Island with redoubled vigour and a new approach to bailing out the pit.

They sank a shaft 110 feet deep at a point 14 feet southeast of the Money Pit. They planned to tunnel in under the bottom of the Money Pit and remove the treasure from below. They didn’t encounter any water when they excavated the new shaft, and they started to dig a tunnel from the 110-foot level towards the bottom of the Money Pit. But when the diggers got to within two feet of the old pit, water began to ooze in small streams from the end of the tunnel. The bank between the end of the tunnel and the Money Pit suddenly collapsed, water burst into the tunnel, and the workmen barely escaped with their lives. Within two hours, the new shaft was filled to the sixty-five-foot level, equal to the depth of water in the Money Pit.

Further attempts at bailing proved futile. The Onslow Company’s funds were now exhausted, and the project was abandoned.

Almost a half century would pass before the next attempt to reach the elusive treasure.

Preface

Acknowledgements

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