Not possible digging that deep.

[Charlie P. (NY)]

Dunfield built the 600 and some foot long causeway in 1965 with much of the excavated soil, and when he was done backfilled the excavations. That's why there is wood all the way down below 150 ft deep where he dug holes. Other hunters constructed damns and cofferdamns in the swamp and at least one of the coves. Somewhere along the line a roadway was built that sealed off the swamp - that's another couple hundred cubic yards of graded fill that may have been from surface heaps.

That poor island has been dug, filled and re dug a dozen times. 1849, 1852, 1856, 1866, 1893, 1909, 1931, 1935, 1959, 1965, 1969, 1971, 1983, and now the Lagina Bros.

 

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[Roadhse2]

Oh I agree there is rock on the island...just not enough to build this 5 foot deep rock bed, not soil/rock mix, without having a quarry some place...unless you spent years hand picking rock out of soil, and even then I am not to sure you would get enough surface or beach rock to do it....and even if you did manage to excavate enough rock for this, what would the island look like? How would you cover it all before you left so that no one knew you had been there? You're burying a treasure you don't want found, so you would have to leave as few clues as possible...just doesn't work for me..

Plus remember all this work was done pre 1795, by someone (supposedly), no matter which theory you like, that was going to bury treasure on their way to somewhere else...If it was pirates or the British or Templars, would any of them have the equipment needed to do the job, efficiently to get in and out before they were discovered? Commercial fisherman had been trawling those waters since about 1580 on a regular basis...this type of construction would have to be done in the open, so getting it done quickly to keep it secret, would be hard to do...

Of course it is all just speculation, but I prefer Occams Razor on nearly everything...the simplest answer is the right answer

And it is shame that it has been so abused through the years...dollars spent, lives lost, island torn up over and over and still nothing to show for it...

 

[petetherocker]

.....And it is shame that it has been so abused through the years...dollars spent, lives lost, island torn up over and over and still nothing to show for it...

yup, a frickin shame.......

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

I placed my marker in Nov 2014 and am sticking to it:

I give it 90% it's a natural glacial sink-hole. 10% something was buried there or mined from there. 0% it has anything to do with Solomon, the Holy Grail, Arc of the Covenant, Elvis' Cadillac or the Templars.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/oak-island/438400-your-thoughts-oak-island-2.html

 

[Roadhse2]

Elvis's Caddy?

That's one I might could go along with...If they come up with some Blue Suede Shoes while drilling a hole, they'll probably just move on to the swamp tho...so we may never know

 

[Roadhse2]

Hey gazzahk...

Wife was just home for lunch, she's a research librarian at the local college, going to see if she can get Steele's book. If they don't have it there she will check the intra library loan system...can get books from all over the USA, even many from the Library of Congress.

All that to say, if your public library doesn't have it in hand, ask them to check the intra library system for it....wasn't sure if you were aware you could that...

I want to read it to be able to compare thoughts with you after you read it....

 

[franklin]

The (Untold) Story of The Oak Island Money Pit

The Oak Island Money Pit was constructed by the “Powers That Be” who were and still to this day, The Secret Force that controls the course of mankind on earth.

This organization is known as - The Freemasons.

The Story of The Oak Island Money Pit begins in the 1760’s

It was conceived by a number of Britain’s’ high ranking Naval Officers, who were Masonic Degree Members of the Freemasons and belonging to the Premier Grand Lodge of England.

These members were:

Washington Shirley, 5[SUP]th[/SUP] Earl Ferrers — Vice Admiral - Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge — Premier Grand Lodge of England

George Anson, Baron Anson — Admiral of the Fleet

George Keppel, 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] Earl of Albemarle - Commander-In-Chief

Augustus Keppel, 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Viscount Keppel — Rear Admiral — Brother to George Keppel

William Keppel — Lieutenant-General — Brother to George Keppel

George Pocock — Admiral — Commander of the Invasion of Havana

and

Benjamin Franklin — First Grand Master of Pennsylvania who met in 1760 with the Grand Master of England to discuss their plan.


These Masons were members of the Whig Party opposed to the next successor to the throne, the unstable King George III.

Their plot originated after King George III’s continued destruction of their Whig’s political power and his redirection of this power to the Tory Party.

These Freemason feared for the continuance of their organization during the Seven Years’ War, with the imminent invasion of England by the joint forces of France and Spain.

Spain outlawed all forms of secret organizations, including the Freemasons.

The Masons planned redirecting all their fortunes to the “New World” (North America), to enable the transfer of the Masonic organization, if and when these fears materialized.

Their military plan entailed the capture of Havana in 1762.

Havana’s Morro Castle and the Jesuit's Cathedral were the Fort Knox of Spain, holding the plunder of South and Central America’s treasure prior to its shipping to Spain.

The invasion of Havana was under the command of George Keppel, with Admiral George Pocock and Keppel’s two brothers Augustus and William Keppel, commanding the actual attack.

They were successful with the capture of Havana and Fort Morro and its unprecedented amount of treasure.

They also captured a number of the Spanish Fleet, which were needed to accomplish their plan.

Accordingly, Admiral Pocock returned to England with the main English fleet carrying a portion of the treasure, while Augustus and William Keppel along with their crew and Masonic engineers all sworn to secrecy, manned the Spanish Galleons and the British Man of War Vessels.

This treasure was diverted to a small island off the coast of New England and Nova Scotia, now called Oak Island.

At Oak Island, the treasure was buried based on the Masonic “Royal Arch” (Enoch’s Temple) doctrine, consisting of nine arches going down nine levels by way of the main shaft (The Money Pit) which was then dug further down to the bedrock.

From the ninth level another circular tunnel was constructed which ran back up to a point above the known water level, roughly 20 feet underground and then towards the North/West end of the island.

This tunnel stopped roughly 50 feet out under the ocean where an enormous cavern was built to hold the treasure.

The treasure was carted down the main shaft and placed up into this cavern.

To conceal their plot they had the Spanish ships and some of the British ships dismantled with all the wooden parts not used in the construction of the shaft, tunnels, and cavern, burnt and all the metal parts, canons, anchors, and bolts placed at the bottom of the main shaft.

A Flood Tunnel was built out to the ocean to booby trap any treasure seekers attempts to follow down the main shaft.

A large stone was placed above the air lock (8[SUP]th[/SUP] level) as bait to activate the flooding.
This stone had strange engravings on it to entice any unworthy treasure seekers to pause and take the bait (stone) away for deciphering, thus allowing time for the tunnels and main shaft to fill with water and be destroyed forever.

The Masons could access the Treasure Cavern under the ocean by digging down to its entrance from where they triangulated a set Marker on the shore to be.

Once the treasure was secured in the cavern and all the evidence was hidden from the island, it was documented that the Keppels sailed back to England with a few ships and a small portion of the treasure.
They claimed that the remainder of the fleet had sunk in a hurricane on route.

The Masons left several Marker Stones on the island to relocate the treasure.
1 large triangle or more precisely a crude Sextant
Many drilled holed Marker Stones
1 large Marker Stone Cross
These combined Marker Stones from the Freemason’s Star Map are used to cross triangulate to locate the entrances to where the Treasure Cavern and Sir Francis Bacon’s Tomb are located.

Is the treasure still in this cavern?

I believe it was removed shortly after the American Revolution.

One of the three original discoverers of the Money Pit was Daniel McGinnis, who stated he was drawn to the island when he noticed strange lights appearing on the island just prior to his discovery.

These lights were made by the Freemasons when they returned for their treasure.

This Masonic party was headed up by George Washington, President of the United States — acting Grand Master of the Washington DC Masons.

The Treasure’s vast fortune was used to further the power of the Freemasons in their New World and accomplishing Bacon’s dream of a New Acadia.

Sir Francis Bacon, along with his original and unpublished Manuscripts, are resting in his Tomb, located between Nolan’s Cross and the Money Pit, watched over by a statue of the Knights Templar.

Either you have a great imagination or do you have documents to verify all of that you just posted?

 

[petetherocker]

Occam's razor. from wiki...

....The principle can be interpreted as stating Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. For each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there may be an extremely large, perhaps even incomprehensible, number of possible and more complex alternatives, because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified; therefore, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more testable.

 

[Robot]

How Much Proof...Would You Need...To Believe?

Either you have a great imagination or do you have documents to verify all of that you just posted?

 

[Raparee]

View attachment 1400205

Everybody is entitled to believe what they want ... so long as they don't try to pass their beliefs off as fact.

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

A big pile of "treasure" would go a long way towards swaying me to belief.

As would providence of documentation found with the "treasure". "I, Wilfred of Brimley, do lay these items from the Los Vegas Masonic Temple in situ until such time as . . . "

Rotten lumber . . . not so much.

 

[gazzahk]

Hey gazzahk...

Wife was just home for lunch, she's a research librarian at the local college, going to see if she can get Steele's book. If they don't have it there she will check the intra library loan system...can get books from all over the USA, even many from the Library of Congress.

All that to say, if your public library doesn't have it in hand, ask them to check the intra library system for it....wasn't sure if you were aware you could that...

I want to read it to be able to compare thoughts with you after you read it....

Cool... I will order the book.

 

[Dave Rishar]

Exactly the point...on documented evidence and contributing factors inherent to the need alone...there was 'something there'

No, I get your theory. On the surface, it makes sense logically. They're processing fish and they need salt. Importing salt is expensive. There's salt in the ocean. The ocean is right there. I understand that entirely.

What I'm having a problem with is the idea that they'd dig all of these trenches to direct seawater to a central location. I had some vague memories of how sea salt was recovered before modern times and I spent a bit looking into it today. My memories seem to have been correct for once. When you're using evaporation to concentrate your brine, you ideally want a warm climate, lots of sun, and large, shallow pools for the brine to sit in. The latter is particularly important. A well would not do the job. The rate of evaporation simply wouldn't be sufficient. Blocking off a very shallow lagoon might work, but then we no longer need any finger drains. Hauling buckets of seawater onto the beach to boil in a big kettle would work, but again, you don't need finger drains for that. This is the part that I'm having a problem with.

Touche to the salt mining. I haven't been able to find dates of the earliest eastern Canadian/US salt mines, and the more I look into the evolution of the process, it does appear costly pre-1850.

It was. You had to have an urgent need and the right location, with the right climate also being a plus. Even today, evaporating seawater for salt is not economically viable in most locations, and some of those locations only work because other minerals besides salt can be recovered. (Terrestrial saltwater from springs being evaporated to acquire lithium? I didn't know that! But I do now.)

The most economical method for getting salt is to mine it from the ground. It was true then and it's true today, interestingly enough. That's where the vast majority of it comes from. However, if you don't have salt deposits handy and your source of salt is expensive enough, it would certainly make sense to get it from the ocean if that were less expensive. What I find particularly interesting was that even in antiquity, when salt was far more expensive than it is today and people knew that you could get it from seawater, they still often bought it instead, even when it was right there and essentially free for the taking. It must have been a monumental pain in the ass to evaporate seawater if the conditions weren't just right.

One more quick thing about the non-presence of marine life in the caves. Marine life needs sunlight to survive.

No disrespect intended, but you don't work on ships, do you? Break open a seawater line and be amazed at all the little critters that have left their concretions all over the interior. Even in the sensitive stuff upstream of the filters, you'll find the little *******s everywhere. It probably won't be mussels and such (although it certainly can be!) but you'll definitely see those little calcium carbonate "tunnels" that some critter or another makes. No sunlight required, no sunlight desired.

I can tell you stories of the stuff that grows in potable water tanks, which is remarkable by itself. Imagine this: we take seawater, boil it down, condense the vapors into what's essentially freshwater (with a bit of carryover, but that's been boiled as well0, funnel it into an enclosed holding tank, and there's algea and crap growing in there after all of that. I can only imagine that it somehow came in through the vent or something, but how does algea even grow in water that's been distilled and is purer than what your public utility pipes to you? What's more interesting is that if you go through the trouble of scraping all of that crap out of the tank, the water will taste like an ass sandwich for a few months until the algea grows back. It's somewhat esoteric knowledge, but if you know someone that's in the trade, ask them. As Jeff Goldblum famously said in Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way."

That's why I made my somewhat final statement earlier: if there isn't evidence of critters there, there's not seawater there - not in significant amounts, anyway.

View attachment 1400205

Growing up when I did, I was taught that Columbus was the first westerner to the New World, even though by that time it had already been established that he was not. I blame this on the dated books and the more dated curriculum at the school that I attended. Later on in life, I read that this was not the case. I looked further into it and realized that this lesson had been incorrect, and that Columbus had not been the first, or the second, or even the third. He had actually been pretty far down the list. The "first westerner in the New World" ship had sailed centuries before he'd been born, if not earlier.

I'm a pretty reasonable man. When confronted with proof that contradicts my beliefs, I change my beliefs to accomodate the proof - not vice versa. But those beliefs are based in proof, and proof is not catchy quotes that essentially sum up blind faith. That's an interesting quote though, in that it encouraged me to look up who Stuart Chase was and how he lived his life. I now understand why he would have written such a thing. The guy was not writing about treasure legends when he came up with that, but he was wrong nonetheless.

If that's your argument here, have at it. If that's not your argument here, you may wish to consider a more appropriate quote.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

View attachment 1400205

How about: ".... For those who don't believe, No proof was evident " ?

 

[Dave Rishar]

How about: ".... For those who don't believe, No proof was evident " ?

Way to sum up in a sentence what it took me three paragraphs to say.

 

[Roadhse2]

Dave...

I wasn't going to revisit this as i am sure everyone is bored to death with it...so just a couple of points to clarify

The "well" is NOT used to concentrate the solution, it is merely a holding facility to work out of while new water is added to the pond to begin evaporating and concentrate the water left in the pond even more, the climate being a large factor in this, short summers you want to get as much as you can, letting water into the well, let's you do this. While it may not double your yield in the same time period, it does increase it. Anywhere from 8.9 oz per gallon with straight sea water to maximum density of 2 pounds per gallon concentrated before it falls out of solution...

There is/was a large basin to concentrate the water in, the area separating the sea from the shore created by the cofferdam, maybe not by today's standards of acres of ponds, but enough to satisfy the need of the fishing company.

Salt was a regionally made and sold product as transport costs were high, it remains so today, Morton Salt company has 6 facilities around the US to retrieve salt both through mining, brine pits, and sea water evaporation...to be sold in those regions mainly, with Sea Salt being higher in cost when it is transported across country to sell. We ourselves use sea salt, it is higher priced than normal table salt, but not significantly so. Transport costs to Missouri make that difference, not cost of processing.

You also have to look at the cost and reliability of shipping a product that can make or break your company, with a lost shipment, from Europe...if the ship doesn't make it, how long of time will you be unable to produce product, fish, till the next one shows up? Months? So it only makes sense to make it yourself if you can, even if you only make enough to run the business in a diminished capacity, it still keeps the company viable.

Did you read the report on salt mining being the most dangerous mining pre the industrial revolution, often done by prisoner forced labor or slaves as it kills workers off quickly from salt dehydrating their bodies in the mines, respiratory deaths from breathing in the fine mist of salt as they worked? Essentially mummifying them as they worked?

Did you read in this same report that Europe had many small scale sea salt works, for the local coastal community because of the high costs and the ease with which they could retrieve the salt from the sea? That almost every coastal town had a small scale salt works? Producing enough for their population? Same thing here...

Morton uses a system much the same as I have described, though they use more ponds to continue to concentrate the salinity of the water to get maximum yield. It is a cove like structure also...with water let in as needed through a dam, wraps around the edge of the cove to different ponds, each pond gaining in saline content as it is gated into each one and added to the one following it, and finally into finishing pools where the last of the water is evaporated out. Saving costs by not force drying it with fuel fired dryers.

Check Morton's website for a diagram..

Not an engineering marvel, easy to do with a small crew, the building and the operating, nearly free materials, reliability of having the product when you need it....Plus the evidence of the fishing company, that would have the need, owning the fishing rights AND the whole of Oak Island in 1753, plus proposed evidence of them having a fish camp/station there while they owned the island.

I'm going to have to stick with this one until someone shows me more compelling/verifiable data...if they do, I will be happy to say "Hey, you got it!" Think about it, NO other theory has as much documented plus circumstantial evidence as this one....or the proven need, pertaining to Smith's Cove

Thanks..

 

[Robot]

For Oak Island Skeptics...It is more like..."Show Me The Money"!

How about: ".... For those who don't believe, No proof was evident " ?

I believe "Nothing Short" of Showing the Oak Island Treasure...Would Satisfy Our Critics!

And then:

I am sure they would want to bite each coin...To Prove that it is Gold!

 

[Roadhse2]

Found this out in the shed....in my scrap lumber pile....proof the treasure was moved to Missouri by Jesse James...

 

[Roadhse2]

"It must have been a monumental pain in the ass to evaporate seawater if the conditions weren't just right."

Portable salt reclamation unit I built....just add match, wood, pot, and sea water...

 

[ILikeTreasureStories]

"it is essentially the same as assuming I should have found aquatic life in my well. "

Let's look at this first...

Your underground lake did not have access to a clear path to open water, which is what the flood tunnels theory says...so in that marine life would be free to enter or leave at will...and even if now collapsed due to blasting, evidence would still be present from past intrusion by marine life, shells, crab bodies, urchins etc....at least since the trap was sprung to the shaft, and before that to the tunnel itself. Drilling a bore hole that encountered this flood tunnel should also bring up signs of this. There are many species that live with no light, but we won't consider that as being the case here.


Roadhse 2, where is the clear path to open water? I was under the impression that the sand, eel grass, and coconut hair was covering/filtering the entrance. If there is another entrance to the tunnel system, it is unknown. I fish lobsters and crabs for a living, so you would have a hard time convincing me that crabs would be in those caves. First of all, they are carnivorous, and the entire food chain must exist around them. I guess I should have said, "A complete underwater ecosystem depends on sunlight." Worms, micro-organisms , 0.00001% chance of an eel, sure. Crabs, not in a million years.