Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lammer and I'm Sarah Down and we're going
Speaker 1: to start off this episode with a little personal anecdote.
Speaker 1: When my family was in Hilton Had a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I told my little little brothers that they
Speaker 1: could each pick out a present to commemorate our trip,
Speaker 1: and my brother, who was seven at the time, picked
Speaker 1: out this bottle with a map inside, and then was
Speaker 1: heartbroken to discover that it didn't really lead to a treasure.
Speaker 1: But of course, because he's a kid and not jaded,
Speaker 1: he decided it might be a real map, after all,
Speaker 1: it was just in code. Unfortunately, the treasure hunting does
Speaker 1: not end with children and grown men and women lose
Speaker 1: their heads, sometimes literally, sometimes just go crazy over it.
Speaker 1: And one possible treasure that has enchanted Pete for centuries
Speaker 1: is the Oak Island money Pit, which is our subject
Speaker 1: for today and what's in it, according to some people,
Speaker 1: perhaps the Holy Grail. Others think it's Marie Antoinette's jewels,
Speaker 1: or Sir Francis Drake's lute, perhaps Captain Kid's treasure or
Speaker 1: inca gold, the original Shakespeare manuscripts, even the Secret of Atlantis,
Speaker 1: so naturally it's booby trapped to write or is it
Speaker 1: Sarah or is it So we're going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the discovery of the Oak Island money
Speaker 1: pit that came in when a farm boy named Daniel
Speaker 1: McGinness or McGuinness found something strange on an island in
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia's Mahone Bay. And it was a place in
Speaker 1: the ground that looked sunken, as if something had been
Speaker 1: buried there perhaps, And above it there was a tree
Speaker 1: with a tackle block or maybe a thought off branch,
Speaker 1: depending on whose or you believe. And McGinnis wondered what
Speaker 1: had been hidden away in this spot? Was it treasure?
Speaker 1: And you know, we know people like black Beard dig
Speaker 1: big holes and hide their treasure in it, so it's conceivable.
Speaker 1: So he came back with some friends to try to
Speaker 1: figure out exactly what was there, and armed with shovels,
Speaker 1: they set to digging and digging, and then digging some more,
Speaker 1: but the mystery only deepened. Much like the hole. They
Speaker 1: dug down to a layer of stone, and at ten
Speaker 1: feet they found this other layer of logs at ten
Speaker 1: more feet another layer of logs, so they have no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on, and as one can imagine, they
Speaker 1: got tired when they went back. No one wanted to
Speaker 1: come and help them excavate this pit, so they left
Speaker 1: it alone. But of course the legend had begun to percolate,
Speaker 1: and one of our famous themes, Mysterious Omens, reported sightings
Speaker 1: of a black dog near the site start to pop
Speaker 1: up after this, and um, when we're getting supernatural reports,
Speaker 1: a legend is going to grow from that, right always.
Speaker 1: So a man named Simeon Lynz became interested in this
Speaker 1: spot in the next decade after hearing about it from
Speaker 1: our three farm boy friends, and they formed a group
Speaker 1: called the Onslow Company and started digging again. They made
Speaker 1: it to ninety feet this time, and they found logs
Speaker 1: every ten feet, clay, charcoal, a strange fiber that was
Speaker 1: later discovered to be coconut fiber, which makes you wonder
Speaker 1: where DiDia And they also found a stone tablet covered
Speaker 1: in mysterious letters, which disappeared sometime in nineteen eighteen, nineteen
Speaker 1: nineteen or nineteen twenty eight, depending on which account you follow,
Speaker 1: and some thought it was ancient coptic script, while others
Speaker 1: said it was just an inscription telling or the treasure was.
Speaker 1: But they also strike a chest and they're so happy.
Speaker 1: They figure, you know, we got it. Now this is
Speaker 1: the money pit. That they quit for the day, which
Speaker 1: infuriates me. I think they shod there. Has has to
Speaker 1: me multiple times. Why did they leave? I mean, get
Speaker 1: some lanterns and keep going if you found a chess. Anyways,
Speaker 1: when they come back to the pit the next morning,
Speaker 1: they find it full of sixty feet of water, So
Speaker 1: way to go, guys. It's at sea level, and every
Speaker 1: time they try to drain it, it just fills up again.
Speaker 1: So they gave up, but came back after a time
Speaker 1: with a trickier plan, and they said, Okay, we'll dig
Speaker 1: another shaft that's parallel to the first one we started,
Speaker 1: and then we will dig sideways to get to the treasure.
Speaker 1: But that one filled up with water too, so they're
Speaker 1: kind of out of ideas at this point and they quit.
Speaker 1: But it's discovered that this water was a problem because
Speaker 1: there were tunnels going from somewhere in the bay to
Speaker 1: the pit, and it was theorized that when that cipher
Speaker 1: stone was removed, some sort of airlock was broken and
Speaker 1: the water rushed in. Perhaps it was a booby trap.
Speaker 1: So forty years later, another group comes along determine this
Speaker 1: time we're going to find the treasure. This is the
Speaker 1: Truro Company, and they use that first shaft, which is
Speaker 1: still full of water, and use an augur which is
Speaker 1: kind of like a twisty screw to see what they
Speaker 1: can pull out of the pit. They get clay wood
Speaker 1: links of gold chain, which also disappeared later. Um, but
Speaker 1: the water is still a problem. So these excavations go
Speaker 1: on for years, and we also have our first casualty
Speaker 1: death by ruptured boiler, which does not sound like a
Speaker 1: good way to go. But okay, we've got shafts full
Speaker 1: of water, all sorts of material in the ground, including gold,
Speaker 1: and a death on our hands. So people figure out
Speaker 1: this must add up to something, and it must be
Speaker 1: something big. So enter another party, the Oak Island Association.
Speaker 1: They too are trying to figure out how to get
Speaker 1: around this water problem. Every time they dig it fills
Speaker 1: up with water. But they do manage to tunnel to
Speaker 1: what's now known as the money pit, the actual pit
Speaker 1: where everything's supposed to be, and it collapsed, so again,
Speaker 1: what kind of booby trap is this? Eventually we get
Speaker 1: yet another company, the Oak Island Treasure Company. I think
Speaker 1: this very direct name before it's like association and such
Speaker 1: and such, a company digging for treasure on Oak Island.
Speaker 1: And they find a tunnel five feet from Smith's cove
Speaker 1: to the pit, and it has a drain made of
Speaker 1: coconut fiber, which again, how did that get there? And
Speaker 1: they also find some parchment and some kind of cement.
Speaker 1: So these seems like clues. So they seem like possible clues.
Speaker 1: What would Nancy Drew do? We also have our second death,
Speaker 1: a worker who fell down a shaft. But the company
Speaker 1: runs out of money and so their investigations end. But
Speaker 1: don't think people stopped looking, because you know, when there's
Speaker 1: golden question, they're not going to stabee Shakespeare's original manuscript
Speaker 1: were Marie Antoinette's Jewels? A young Franklin Delano Roosevelt even
Speaker 1: gets into the whole thing. And all of these people
Speaker 1: dig and dig and dig until the island is basically
Speaker 1: Swiss cheese. And in the meantime for more people die
Speaker 1: who drowned, but they were poisoned first perhaps by swamp
Speaker 1: gas and Then in the nineteen thirties, a man named
Speaker 1: Gilbert Hedden thought that he'd found proof that this was
Speaker 1: Captain Kidd's treasure buried in the island. And he thought
Speaker 1: this because he had found a book with a map
Speaker 1: in it, and the Kid's Treasure Island looked a lot
Speaker 1: like Oak Island. Wow, how about that? That's what he thinks.
Speaker 1: A lot of it matches up. But it turns out
Speaker 1: that the guy who wrote the book had drawn the
Speaker 1: map from memory. It wasn't the original map, and the
Speaker 1: original map proved that there was no way that Captain
Speaker 1: Kidd's Island was Oak Island. Filed again, foiled again. And
Speaker 1: George the sixth had become interested in this the same time.
Speaker 1: So we've got some famous names going on here. And
Speaker 1: around the same time, there's also this story on the
Speaker 1: island of a wealthy foreigner who explored the bay with
Speaker 1: an ancient nap. He was very secretive, and one day
Speaker 1: he disappeared. I like to think he might be a
Speaker 1: ghostly ghostly specter. We like those. And this brings us
Speaker 1: around to the nineteen sixties and a man named Dan
Speaker 1: Blankenship who between nineteen sixty five and nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: spent an estimated nineties seven thousand dollars trying to excavate
Speaker 1: this island. I think he's found a real money pick
Speaker 1: of the law. Good ones, sir. He teamed up with
Speaker 1: a guy named David Tobias and a bunch of investors
Speaker 1: to form the Triton Alliance in nineteen sixty nine to
Speaker 1: begin a ten million dollar dig. They figured it was
Speaker 1: time to get the professionals involved with professional equipment, and
Speaker 1: they're convinced that there could be billions of dollars worth
Speaker 1: of treasure and you know, maybe some cool archaeological stuff too.
Speaker 1: So they find cavities which are kind of like small
Speaker 1: underground caves, and inside of them they find little shards
Speaker 1: and bits of things would charcoal, cement, iron, brass, china, clay,
Speaker 1: and interestingly, they do carbon dating on on these artifacts eventually,
Speaker 1: and they're from different time periods. The wood is from
Speaker 1: the fifteen hundreds, as is the cement, the metal is
Speaker 1: from pre eighteen hundreds, Spanish scissors from the sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: So something something strange exture of items. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one they took a camera down to one of
Speaker 1: these cavities underwater and they saw wood, a pick axe,
Speaker 1: and what was possibly a human head or a human hand,
Speaker 1: Although people who have seen the video some say, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty blurry, but yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: can see where there might be a hand, while others
Speaker 1: say there's nothing to see at all, So we'll leave
Speaker 1: that up to you. But nothing is easy with Oak
Speaker 1: Island and the money pit, and so their problems, including
Speaker 1: some very nasty and expensive land disputes because who wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to own Oak Island? And then Blankenship and tobiases partnership,
Speaker 1: they had a bit of a falling out, so that
Speaker 1: fell apart. Blankenship offered tours for a while on the island,
Speaker 1: and then they offered it up for sale, and it
Speaker 1: looks like for a while Blankenship's new group was pursuing
Speaker 1: a new treasure trove license, but I couldn't find updated information.
Speaker 1: Oak Island has a site oak Island Treasure dot c
Speaker 1: O dot UK, but I couldn't find anything that was
Speaker 1: quite up to the present. So we're left with the
Speaker 1: questions about what is the truth, what kind of treasure
Speaker 1: might be there? Is there a treasure at all? Are
Speaker 1: these you know booby traps or is it something else?
Speaker 1: And Joe Nicol, writing for The Skeptical Inquirer, thinks that
Speaker 1: the money pit is actually just a sinkle. Trees could
Speaker 1: have fallen in and ships. Artifacts could have been sucked
Speaker 1: into caverns under the island and the caves. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're a natural event to due to the interaction
Speaker 1: between limestone and water. And the flood tunnels could also
Speaker 1: be a natural occurrence due to tidal pressure and other
Speaker 1: physical aspects on the island. So maybe it's not you know, pirates,
Speaker 1: booty or this great mystery. Maybe it's just science. Science
Speaker 1: trumps again. Um, and what about that mysterious cipher. There's
Speaker 1: also a cross found in the eighties, this heart shaped stone,
Speaker 1: all sorts of weird little things, and Nicol says that
Speaker 1: these and some other artifacts have something to do with
Speaker 1: the Freemasons, that these things were either added sometime during
Speaker 1: all this treasure hunting, or that the whole thing started
Speaker 1: off with a Masonic chowl having to do with something
Speaker 1: called the Secret Vault allegory that we won't get too
Speaker 1: deep into. For what is perhaps a good final word,
Speaker 1: a woman who was married to one of the four
Speaker 1: drowned men. Another was her son told a reporter from
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal Darcy O'Connor in n I knew
Speaker 1: from the first day I stepped on that miserable island
Speaker 1: that there was no treasure there. So Katie and I
Speaker 1: are actually a little worried that we're going to become
Speaker 1: obsessed with the money pit. Because that reporter we mentioned,
Speaker 1: Darcy O'Connor, he goes on to write an entire book
Speaker 1: about the island that's considered basically the definitive book on
Speaker 1: the history of the island. And apparently there was a
Speaker 1: recent CBC documentary about Oak Island and the money Pit,
Speaker 1: which we haven't seen, but if you have, please email
Speaker 1: us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: because there are plenty of unanswered questions, as you've heard
Speaker 1: in this podcast. We'd like to Harry think plenty of
Speaker 1: Canadians senners he can maybe answer that me. Listen goes
Speaker 1: and that brings us to our listener mail today, which
Speaker 1: is real mail, our favorite kind. We got a postcard
Speaker 1: from James and Qatar that's really lovely, all sorts of
Speaker 1: boats and boat building on the front and a wonderful
Speaker 1: stamp of a sure ear wig, and he said, I
Speaker 1: heard you wanted postcards from around the world and thought,
Speaker 1: I live in a strange place. Maybe you want to
Speaker 1: postcard from the state of Qatar. I definitely do, He said,
Speaker 1: I do a ton of traveling, and I've listened to
Speaker 1: all of your podcasts, and he requested some history on
Speaker 1: the Middle East. So we'll see what we can do, James.
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Speaker 1: where it missed in history. And if you want to
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about pirates and maybe start
Speaker 1: your own treasure hunt, you can search for how Pirates
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