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It was obviously someone with a really odd sense of humour, but as Harry Hill wasn't alive back then, I'll go for the Pirates me 'arties. EE-Arr etc etc (adlib to fade).
Charles Dawson?Mr. R.I.N.G. said:...but who would risk life and limb on a hoax, as the orginal finders did?
from: AN INTERPRETATION OF MULTIBEAM BATHYMETRY OFF EASTERN OAK ISLAND, MAHONE BAY, NOVA SCOTIA (by Gordon B. J. Fader and Robert C. Courtney. Of the Geological Survey of Canada (Atlantic), Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada)
(from the second and third paragraphs of the sub section Anthropogenic Features of the section MULTIBEAM BATHYMETRIC IMAGE AND INTERPRETATION)
An unusual large depression with a linear positive feature in the centre, occurs in the southwest area of the image. The depression is similar to features observed in other areas where seabed sediment scour, or a lack of deposition, occurs around large obstacles such as shipwrecks and bedrock ridges. Two parallel, linear, slight depressions are found on the mud bottom at the southeast area of the image. They may represent artifacts from data levelling problems or large linear scours in the mud attributed to unknown anthropogenic processes.
A rectangular depression occurs on the seabed near the northeast shore. It is directly across from another large depression formed in hard materials on the opposite side of the linear channel. The origin of both features is unknown, however, the nearshore Oak Island feature likely represents a data processing artifact.
Three words come to mind, Flash, which I shall not utter here. Having examined the earlier thread I can find no difference in topic between the two. Thus I will not prevent the merging of this thread with the earlier one. That said I shall discuss this with my collegues and await a concensus before taking further action.Lord_Flashheart said:note to mods: the money pit thread in the notes and queareys section is clearly about current or recent developments and excavations this thread is for dicussion of the history of the pit before all the excavations began and the structure, man made or natural etc so should not be merged as althogh both threads concern the pit they deal with 2 very different facets of the subject.
Niles Calder said:Three words come to mind, Flash, which I shall not utter here. Having examined the earlier thread I can find no difference in topic between the two. Thus I will not prevent the merging of this thread with the earlier one. That said I shall discuss this with my collegues and await a concensus before taking further action.
Chant said:I've just stumbled across this story in a book I found in a junk shop.
Surely this has got to be one of the most brilliant pieces of engineering around? Like the Pyramids, or Leonardo's submarine/ornithopter etc. Why isn't every penny going being chucked at it?
It's not only fantastic engineering but a genuine mystery and so few people seem to know about it! Surely some archeological investigation could drag their students and some engineering students along for field work?
Does anybody know why, considering reclaimed land is hardly unknown around the world, they can't drain the entire area? The amount that has been spent on the project since its discovery would pay for sea defences and drainage fifty times over and it could all be put back again after the work had been completed.
And yes, I AM naieve. But, why not? anyway.
Treasure hunter says he's pieced together Oak Island puzzle
By Steve Proctor / Staff Reporter
After 38 years of searching, Oak Island's most famous treasure hunter believes he's solved the mystery of the famous Mahone Bay island.
In an exclusive interview with this newspaper, Dan Blankenship said he has uncovered evidence that proves the 32-hectare island is the repository for millions in silver and gold left behind by marauding Spaniards in the mid-16th century.
"I've never spoken publicly before because I didn't want to have put in this much work and end up being wrong," he said.
"But in the last six weeks, I've been able to confirm all my suspicions and I can say definitively who did it, how they did it and where they did it. But until I get down there, I can't say exactly what is there."
Mr. Blankenship was 42 when he gave up a Miami-based contracting business and brought his family to the province's South Shore, confident he could solve the mystery that had eluded searchers for more than 165 years.
For three decades, he's toiled in the mud, the snow and the heat of summer, drilling tunnels and trying to make connections between a series of unusually shaped rocks scattered about the rocky island.
In 1971 he was almost killed when a steel-reinforced shaft in which he was working buckled, nearly trapping him more than 45 metres below the surface.
He's never recovered a dime's worth of treasure, but the robust 80-year-old said that with the new information he's gathered, the riches could be brought to the surface within seven months.
The early story of Oak Island is well-known around the world. Three boys from the area were exploring the island in 1795 when they came across a depression in the ground near an oak tree.
They dug in the dirt in hopes of finding treasure but hit a wooden platform. They lifted it and continued to dig, only to find another platform a few metres deeper.
Subsequent efforts by everyone from locals to John Wayne and Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned up tantalizing items like bits of chain, parchment and coconut husks, but all were defeated by what seemed to be an intricate series of flood tunnels designed to protect whatever was at the bottom of the pit.
When Mr. Blankenship began as director of field work for the treasure-hunting syndicate headed by Montreal businessman David Tobias, he started his search at the famed money pit site, but his interest in other parts of the island grew as the years passed.
In the interview he dismissed the money pit on the eastern end of the island as "an elaborate decoy" and suggested the bulk of the treasure was located in a series of tunnels running deep beneath the western end of the island.
Mr. Blankenship has long suspected there were tunnels deep beneath the island, but he didn't have the proof until he came across evidence of three metre-wide holes that he says once served as air shafts for the tunnels.
He located the shaft based on measurements taken from the position of a series of oddly shaped multi-tonne stones. First discovered by rival treasure hunter Fred Nolan of Bedford, the rocks form the shape of a giant cross and Mr. Blankenship now believes they serve as a key to the mystery.
He was prompted to look for the shafts after the previously unreported discovery of stone icons by a small Norwegian exploration team that worked on the island in June. He believes the European team was hoping to confirm that the island was the repository for the Shakespearean works of Francis Bacon, but he believes his subsequent find points to the Spanish treasure.
Quoting from a book that details 1,500 years of mining experience in Spain, Mr. Blankenship hinted that many of the surface icons are markers that mirror something happening deep below the surface.
The veteran treasure hunter's problem is that he doesn't have a treasure trove licence giving him permission to pursue his effort.
All exploration requires a licence from the the province, and all licences for searches in the area expired in July, said Rick Ratcliffe, the province's registrar of mineral and petroleum titles. New requests have not been approved.
Under the Treasure Trove Act, the province is entitled to one-tenth of the find or the equivalent monetary value.
Four people have applications before government for the five-year permits.
They include Oak Island Exploration, the company headed by Mr. Tobias and of which Mr. Blankenship is a dissident member; Mr. Nolan, owner of five lots of the island; art gallery operator and Upper Kennetcook resident Robert Young, owner of a single lot; and Mahone Bay Exploration Inc., owned by Mr. Blankenship.
Mr. Blankenship's application is the only one that covers property he doesn't own.
In an effort to bolster his case for a new licence, Mr. Blankenship met with Natural Resources Minister Richard Hurlburt recently and laid out his findings.
"I turned 80 in May and won't get another chance," he said. "If they give Tobias a licence for property he's never been interested in, it will be a very sad day."
Mr. Ratcliffe said the department is still reviewing documentation accompanying the applications. When the review is complete it will be turned over to the minister who will then take the issue to cabinet.
If Mr. Blankenship is granted a licence, he said that he could use a rotary drill to confirm the presence of the tunnels and within seven months could recover the treasure.
If he is proven correct, he said Oak Island could become a tourism draw attracting 100,000 people or more a year.
Mr. Ratcliffe would not comment on decisions about the permits but said he expected it would be spring before the next exploration season would begin.
McAvennie said:I am guessing what is down there is just your bog standard pirate treasure. Mighta been worth a load in the 1700's or earlier but now would just be seen as old coins. Can't see that anything amazing is down there, tho you do have to wonder why so much effort was made to hide whatever is in there.
For Sale: Island with Mysterious Money Pit
Heather Whipps
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
Tue Nov 8, 1:00 PM ET
It may look like a fixer-upper at first glance, but what is buried beneath scrubby little Oak Island might just make its estimated $7 million price tag worth the investment.
Oak Island, in Nova Scotia, is famous for its Money Pit, a mystery that has endured two centuries, claimed six lives and swallowed up millions in life savings.
The Pit was discovered in 1795 by a local boy named Daniel McGinnis who, spotting an unusual clearing in the earth under one of the island's oak trees, was prompted to start digging. The discovery of layered planks, mysterious stone slabs, and mats made of coconut fibers descending deep into the ground turned his casual afternoon dig into an all-out excavation.
Investors and thrill-seekers would eventually jump in and continue the work, kicking off one of the world's longest running treasure hunts.
Complex trap
What appears to be a complex flooding trap has thwarted efforts to reach the bottom of the Money Pit ever since. Some think the pit was purposely flooded with seawater, via a series of artificial swamps and tunnels, to hide its contents.
Through the murk, drill borings and shafts dug by the island's series of owners have detected what seem to be cement vaulting, wooden chests, and scraps of parchment paper. Radiocarbon dating of these artifacts is consistent: whoever constructed the shaft likely did so sometime in the 16th Century.
Speculation about the contents of Oak Island's Money Pit range from the treasure of the Knight's Templar to Shakespeare's original manuscripts.
Oak Island's current owners, Dan Blankenship and David Tobias, have worked on the island since the 1960s, sinking millions of dollars into the project and revealing some intriguing clues of their own. For many who follow Oak Island developments, their abandonment of the treasure comes as a surprise. As recently as December of 2003, Blankenship told the Halifax Herald that he would announce some new, exciting findings in the following months. The revelation never came.
What's it worth?
The treasure's fate -- assuming there is treasure -- now rests on the outcome of the sale. Court-appointed liquidators in Nova Scotia are currently wrapping up the evaluation of Oak Island's market worth, with an announcement expected before the end of the year.
A growing movement led by the Oak Island Tourism Society calls for the governments of Canada or Nova Scotia to purchase Oak Island and exploit its potential as a major attraction. It seems for now the governments have little interest in throwing their hats into the ring of potential bidders, and that has many who've follow the island's saga breathing sighs of relief.
"The ideal candidate would be an individual or group with a genuine interest in and means to carry out professional archaeological work", Mark Finnan, author of "Oak Island Secrets" (Formac, 1997) told LiveScience in an e-mail interview.
Finnan believes Oak Island has not seen the last of the aging treasure-seeker Dan Blankenship, either.
"He has a strong hunch about the nature of the treasure and may yet pass on his findings to the new owners of the land or even participate in a new exploration effort," Finnan said.
Oak Island
linesmachine said:I also recently heard that people are still throwing money at this. My bro now lives in Canada and I'm going to use this excuse to go visit Oak Island, will post if/when I make it.
In the early days of the internet I found a discussion forum on Oak Island. It's what led me to having an interest in all things Fortean. I love the story coz it's got all the halllmarks of a classic mystery (plus pirates for good measure!).
Feature: Dan Blankenship’s 40-year search for the secret treasure of the Money Pit
Treasure hunter, Dan Blankenship displays metal chain links, wire and forged metal castings which are just a few of the many relics dating prior to 1750 he's found underground on Oak Island in Nova Scotia
Joe O'Connor October 9, 2010 – 8:00 am
Golf? It is a waste of time. And vacations, well, there is no time for those either, no reason to be lying about in the Florida sun sipping umbrella drinks when there is work to be done.
And there is always more work, and never enough time, not for Dan Blankenship. Not for the past 40 odd years. Not for a hopelessly driven dreamer with gold in his eyes.
He is 87. Don’t ask about retirement. There is no quitting, no turning back, especially with the clock winding forward, ticking down to a Dec. 31 deadline that changes everything.
“It is way too late [to turn back],” says Mr. Blankenship. “It’s been too late for a good many years. I had a good contracting business in Florida. I had friends, a good reputation, and I shucked it all to come up here and make a gamble.”
Here, is Oak Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, near the well-heeled town of Chester. It is a 56-hectare postage stamp shrouded by trees and central to a mystery that has been tormenting treasure hunters, like Dan Blankenship, for more than 200 years.
Nova Scotia farmers, Texas oilmen, Boston financiers, New York dandies, celebrity daredevils, Hollywood legends (John Wayne), even an American President (Franklin D. Roosevelt), have been bewitched by tales of the Money Pit.
Blankenship has searched for the fabled treasure hidden on Oak Island since he read about it in the January 1965 edition of Reader’s Digest.
It is a Canadian cliffhanger dating back to 1795. A teenager happened upon a clearing, saw an oak tree with a missing branch and beneath it, an unusual depression in the earth. So he began to dig, an excavation that revealed an underground shaft — a Money Pit.
In the years since, fortunes have been swallowed, hopes dashed, partnerships fractured, friendships ended and six lives lost in a hunt for what, nobody knows.
Some say it is pirate booty, perhaps even the riches of Captain Kidd himself. Others imagine Aztec gold, the lost treasures of the Templar Knights, a tomb for Norse kings or even Shakespeare’s original manuscripts.
It could be anything, or nothing at all. All that is required are the dreamers to keep on dreaming about what it might be.
“I read about Oak Island in the January, 1965, issue of Reader’s Digest,” Mr. Blankenship says. “I handed the article to my wife and said, read this. She read it and shrugged, said, “So what?”
“I said, ‘Well, No. 1 there is treasure on Oak Island, and No.2, I am going to find it.’ ”
He has not yet. Not after 45 years, not after “shucking it all” and moving to Oak Island in the 1970s. Dan Blankenship’s search could be nearing its end. Once the current treasure trove licence he holds, along with his four partners from Michigan, expires on Dec. 31 that is it. No more licences. At least not ones where the treasure hunter gets to keep 90% of whatever booty he finds.
If the legislative process stays on track a new permitting process, under the auspices of the Special Places Protection Act, will be struck in the New Year and any search for treasure would essentially be an archeological dig. Any riches unearthed on Oak Island would be the sole property of Nova Scotia.
Even if the deadline passes without striking it rich, Mr. Blankenship — the island’s owner — is not prepared to give up on his quest.
Once infected by the mystery few men can.
His approach is different than most. Mr. Blankenship conceives of the Money Pit as a ruse, a clever decoy. It is his contention, and has been ever since 1967, that the bounty is elsewhere on the island.
That bounty, he believes, are riches conquistadors looted from Mexico, Central and South America.
“It has been my hope, over the years, that some of the Spanish captains took a detour on their way back to Spain,” he says. “I am hoping that they wanted to start their own country and they built up a big treasury, because there are certain years when the [treasure] fleets sailed [back to Spain] and had very little goodies on them.”
Mr. Blankenship and his crews have drilled countless holes over the decades and made some tiny, teasing finds along the way — rusted bits of metal here, a piece of chain there, a mysterious cavity at 235 feet beneath the earth’s crust — enough to sustain a seeker’s faith.
There has been more drilling in recent days, some sonar work offshore and some visual mapping.
“I still get out in the woods with my chainsaw,” Mr. Blankenship says.
“He is a brilliant man,” says Rick Lagina, one of the American partners who, as a young boy, read the same Reader’s Digest article Mr. Blankenship did. “I can’t say what inflamed him about Oak Island, or what has driven him to these lengths in this pursuit. Anybody from the outside looking in would have to respect his tenacity.”
Or else: they would have to see him as a damn fool, an old man who has tossed away half his life chasing who knows what. And Mr. Blankenship, he understands those people. Sometimes, he thinks they are probably right. That what he has done is “just plain foolishness.”
Still, Oak Island burns in his soul. He can’t shake it. In many ways, he is symbolic of the place he has lived for all these years: a complex, complicated riddle of a man who simply endures, decade after decade.
Dig after dig.
And he is not alone.
Mr. Blankenship and his wife, Jane, have been married for 63 years. He says it is “true love,” says she is “one in a million.”
“Other women would have walked away,” he says. “And I would not have blamed them.”
But Jane Blankenship has stayed. She has stood by her man, and now, each afternoon, after searching for the clues that could ultimately reveal Oak Island’s untold riches, Mr. Blankenship sits by his wife.
Jane is in the hospital. She might never get out.
“It’s not good,” her husband says.
It is difficult to ask a man about his regrets. But in asking Mr. Blankenship, you are asking a different kind of man. His one regret seems to be there isn’t more time.
“I’ve wasted a lot of my life,” the treasure hunter says, and though the words may appear bitter, his voice, his tone, his way, do not betray a sense of loss.
Catch him on the phone around suppertime and he is positively bubbling, merrily fixing a pot of spaghetti for a friend — fresh inside from shingling his roof.
He is a man who is not ready to lie down, an 87-year-old who is brimming with life, no matter how much disappointment he has encountered along the way.
Time, though, is running out. Like it or not, the Oak Island treasure hunt is nearing its end. There has been no magic X on any of the maps Dan Blankenship has drawn over the years, and no glittering conclusion to his life’s quest.
But he hasn’t lost hope.
He never will.
“If I didn’t think there was something on this island I wouldn’t be here,” he says. “And I sure as hell didn’t stay here for 40 years thinking there was nothing.”