discovery story: the De Mille version

[GravelTeeth]

James De Mille [ wiki ] was a Nova Scotian author who published in the mid 1800s. Among his many works were a series of adventure novels meant for a young audience (what we would call YA or J Fic in today's parlance) called the BOWC series. The tales involve a group of teen boys who head out to sea on a schooner piloted by an old salt who leads them on all sorts of crazy adventures. They read on about the same level as the original Hardy Boys series.

One of the books in the series, The Treasure of the Seas, contains a version of the Oak Island discovery legend in chapter 7. It was published in 1872 or 1873, making it one of the earlier retellings to see print. De Mille's version has some marked differences from the ones we are more familiar with:

• the discovery is made by an older man, who then enlists his son, a young man capable of helping with the arduous dig
• the tree with the pulley is a pine instead of an oak, and the pulley is attached with a chain
• the inscribed stone is the very first thing found after they start to dig, rather than a later development, and only "a little distance" from surface
• the spacing between the log platforms could be as little as five feet
• they got down to near 100 feet on their own over the course of three months, cribbing or "staying" the shaft walls as they went
• it was these two individuals, father and son (rather than Onslow Company), who triggered the initial flooding to tide level, which also caused a collapse of the cribbing and walls of the shaft, and they then had to abandon the work
• the Money Pit stayed in its flooded state for as much as 40 years before the next attempt, by the grandson of the first discoverer and "a few friends" who employed a pump but to no avail
• the first company is then formed, with the grandson among the other investors who "bought the island" and began to work the Money Pit with heavy equipment

Doug Crowell had this to say about De Mille on his erstwhile "Blockhouse Blog" in 2016:

"De Mille summered in Chester, so was well positioned to learn of all the developments in the treasure hunt as they happened. De Mille is noted for including real history, places, and events in his books. As the book is a work of fiction, we can not place too much weight on the facts presented in it about Oak Island, but we can assume that De Mille related them as they actually were."

[ blockhouse archive - way down in the article "Missing! An investigative report into Oak Island's long lost 90 Foot Stone (Part 2 in a special series)" ]

I'm attaching the Gutenberg transcription of the novel (copyright protection has long since expired).

--GT

 

[SSR]

James De Mille [ wiki ] was a Nova Scotian author who published in the mid 1800s. Among his many works were a series of adventure novels meant for a young audience (what we would call YA or J Fic in today's parlance) called the BOWC series. The tales involve a group of teen boys who head out to sea on a schooner piloted by an old salt who leads them on all sorts of crazy adventures. They read on about the same level as the original Hardy Boys series.

One of the books in the series, The Treasure of the Seas, contains a version of the Oak Island discovery legend in chapter 7. It was published in 1872 or 1873, making it one of the earlier retellings to see print. De Mille's version has some marked differences from the ones we are more familiar with:

• the discovery is made by an older man, who then enlists his son, a young man capable of helping with the arduous dig
• the tree with the pulley is a pine instead of an oak, and the pulley is attached with a chain
• the inscribed stone is the very first thing found after they start to dig, rather than a later development, and only "a little distance" from surface
• the spacing between the log platforms could be as little as five feet
• they got down to near 100 feet on their own over the course of three months, cribbing or "staying" the shaft walls as they went
• it was these two individuals, father and son (rather than Onslow Company), who triggered the initial flooding to tide level, which also caused a collapse of the cribbing and walls of the shaft, and they then had to abandon the work
• the Money Pit stayed in its flooded state for as much as 40 years before the next attempt, by the grandson of the first discoverer and "a few friends" who employed a pump but to no avail
• the first company is then formed, with the grandson among the other investors who "bought the island" and began to work the Money Pit with heavy equipment

Doug Crowell had this to say about De Mille on his erstwhile "Blockhouse Blog" in 2016:

[ blockhouse archive - way down in the article "Missing! An investigative report into Oak Island's long lost 90 Foot Stone (Part 2 in a special series)" ]

I'm attaching the Gutenberg transcription of the novel (copyright protection has long since expired).

--GT

We cannot assume anything. The work is an adaptation of circulating stories that are allegedly 75+ years old by then. They have already evolved in newspapers. Smith had already been dead for years and Vaughn had been spreading stories which no one could corroborate since the late 1850s.

Thomas Halliburton's novel "The Old Judge" has much more prescient take on this "mystery". His story was published in 1847, before the Onslow Group's excavations, making it a possible local influence for searchers as opposed to an attempt at a faithful retelling.

Lewis Carroll's 1865 poem "All in the Golden Afternoon" touches on a boating adventure taken by three youths who make up a tale they conclude everyone will believe if one states it, the other testifies to it and a third confirms the other two. And they think it's so clever they might even half believe it themselves. Carroll was a fan of Halliburton's works as a young man.

The OI story is under literary influence from the very beginning. As for the TT mystery involved, it is also from religious literature that found its way into Freemasonry. Reginald Harris (custodian of the OI histories) made sure that what was conserved as numerical detail say true to the TT symbolism.