What happened to the Kidd-Palmer treasure maps?
- Thread starter Cryptid1990
- Start date
gjb
Sr. Member
That's disappointing, I really wanted to know who the vendor was of the first two auctions! I actually visited Christie's, the last time in March 2000, to tie up some loose ends before first publishing my book in 2002. I also visited Eastbourne public library to check out who Elliot was and to see if I could find any trace of Pamela Hardy. That's also when I read through the local newspapers to discover what they said about the auction at Palmer's house. No internet, you see!
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- #223
Thread Owner
They are fake in the sense they were drawn in the early 20th century and are not authentic pirate treasure maps. However, this does not exclude the possibility they provide clues to a buried treasure albeit that was buried c. 1920s. There are many things I have stumbled across that suggest this. Note that the so-called Kidd-Palmer treasure maps first appeared in the late 1920s/early 1930s. At this time, pirate-themed treasure maps were created as part of competitions and treasure hunt games. In 1928, the newspaper Spokane Daily Chronicle notably published four fragments of a treasure map to win $5,000 as part of a "Captain Kidd Event" (see below). Around the same time scavenger hunts emerged, and in 1924 there were midnight treasure hunts (newspaper article) in London. Two decades earlier, a treasure hunt craze was started by Tit-Bits (1903) and The Weekly Dispatch (1904) [see "Treasure Hunt Riots" by Paul Slade]. The latter involved metal medallions (photo) worth £50 (at the time) being buried across different cities in England and clues were published to their location (these medallions are worth thousands today). The Kidd-Palmer maps should be considered in this context of a treasure hunt game. Unfortunately, however, aside from myself no one who comments in these threads has discussed this. Rather, there are a bunch of crackpots in these threads who argue the maps point to a buried treasure by Captain Kidd on an exotic island or try to link the maps somehow to Oak Island.
Spokane Daily Chronicle (4 September 1928):
Spokane Daily Chronicle (5 September 1928):
The fourth (final) map piece was published in Spokane Daily Chronicle on 7 September 1928:
The third was published on 6 September 1928 but I cannot find it online [adding pieces 1, 2 and 4 together]:
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gjb
Sr. Member
If you could just for one moment be objective, be open-minded, to supress your deep-seated bias, you might appreciate that there is some reason to suspect that the three sets of Wilkins' instructions and the two Palmer maps may well, in fact, apply to Oak Island. However, you have this unfortunate tendency to declare that anyone who disagrees with you is a crackpot instead of investigating alternative views.
There is reason to believe that all five sets of instructions came from the same source, but you're just not prepared to contemplate this possibility because you're convinced that you have to be right in whatever you choose to think! That's fine, go ahead, but could you just be less free with the insults? I don't call you a crackpot, so, why are you calling me one?
- #225
Thread Owner
They checked the archives for me after I emailed them again and signed a form. I am not affiliated to any university but qualify as an independent researcher since I have published in about a dozen peer-reviewed journals. Presumably based on this they made an exception and accepted me on par as a university-affiliated researcher and approved my request:
I first asked them to provide documentation of the "Lord Nelson relics" provenance. They told me they do not have any information. I then asked for any documentation (paperwork, receipts, letters) for the auctions but they stated the only thing they have are the catalogues for the dates of the auctions (17 June 1930, 21 July 1930, 10 May 1932, 5 December 1932, and 28 February 1933) [I already have scans of these]:
So they are stating they have no information aside from the catalogues. Do you remember who provided the information (you wrote down) about the auctions not in the catalogues? I have finally asked them to check about the information you posted to see if they can find anything on file.
gjb
Sr. Member
Thanks very much for pursuing the matter. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take the name of the person who helped me. From the information I was given, they did then have records of the vendors (and perhaps even the purchasers). They surely wouldn't have got rid of those files. They could even quote their stock numbers. Hopefully, the files might simply be stored separately.
- #227
Thread Owner
Wilkins repeatedly admitted that the instructions on his two maps, he made up and there is no evidence whatsoever for a buried treasure on Oak Island. It is justifiable to be closed-minded or dismissive of claims that are known to be/demonstrable as (a) false, are (b) extremely improbable (c) or lack evidence, especially when absence of evidence infers evidence of absence. As for "crackpot", definitions differ but I meant it in the sense: "a person whose... ideas are considered bizarre" [or replace bizarre with "eccentric, odd, irrational"]. Can this be denied? You have made a lot of far-fetched claims in these threads, so too has CapnGeorge. I mean, have you ever read Anson's Gold?
Why should someone have an 'open-mind' to total nonsense?
gjb
Sr. Member
By all means keep ranting incoherently like this, because you’re just proving my point. You’re not listening and you’re not even prepared to listen. You keep repeating the same thing over and over again instead of stopping to think.
You’re so prejudiced, so biased and blinkered that you’re not even prepared to address the obvious reductio ad absurdum: should these five sets of instructions actually apply to Oak Island then what would they mean?
You’d then discover that they’re only meaningful in combination. You can’t just use one set, you have to have them all. They work together. That’s why they were all originally in the same place, they all come from the same source. In fact, there are clear indications that two sets of instructions are missing, but these five are just about enough to reveal the intent.
Wilkins created the maps, the island outlines and content, but he didn’t create the instructions. Just for once, start thinking about the implications and consequences of this being correct. Stop deciding the answers without undertaking the investigations.
- #229
Thread Owner
Why should these five sets of instructions apply to Oak Island? You do not present a shred of evidence:
Why should people blindly accept this with no evidence? "All you need to do is to accept"... why? Why should I accept or believe something with not even an iota of evidence? You might as well pointlessly accept the instructions apply to Japan, Iceland or the Falkland Islands.
What you constantly post in these threads is little different to argument by assertion.
"An argument by assertion (also known as the bare assertion or proof by assertion fallacy) is the act of stating a claim and treating it as fact without providing any evidence, reasoning, or logical premises."
- #230
Thread Owner
The burden of proof rests on the person making a claim but in these threads, we repeatedly see evidence-free claims and arguments by assertion, so the burden of proof shifts. In good faith, I have played along. I might as well provide compelling evidence against Gjb's claim that the instructions on Wilkins' Mar Del maps relate to Oak Island since he never provided evidence for his claim.
Harold T. Wilkins [1935] published the following instructions on a variant of his Mar Del map:
This is strong evidence if not proof alone that the instructions do not pertain to Oak Island since it mentions a "Palm" (tree). To point out the obvious there are no palm trees on Oak Island. How does Gjb get around this? Well he ends up changing the instructions (!). He knows full well that Wilkins' instruction says a "Palm" but he instead incorrectly quotes it and changes the word "Palm" to "Tree":
18 NE and by 71 W on Rock
26 ENE 18 SW Tree
7 feet by 7 feet by 8.
He has misleadingly changed the instructions numerous times (another example here) since he knows there are no palm trees on Oak Island. Gjb has the audacity to accuse me of being non-objective and biased when this is what he gets up to...
Talk about confirmation bias. This guy is literally distorting stuff to fit his preconceived ideas and what he posts here should be taken with a massive grain of salt.🧂
Harold T. Wilkins [1935] published the following instructions on a variant of his Mar Del map:
This is strong evidence if not proof alone that the instructions do not pertain to Oak Island since it mentions a "Palm" (tree). To point out the obvious there are no palm trees on Oak Island. How does Gjb get around this? Well he ends up changing the instructions (!). He knows full well that Wilkins' instruction says a "Palm" but he instead incorrectly quotes it and changes the word "Palm" to "Tree":
18 NE and by 71 W on Rock
26 ENE 18 SW Tree
7 feet by 7 feet by 8.
He has misleadingly changed the instructions numerous times (another example here) since he knows there are no palm trees on Oak Island. Gjb has the audacity to accuse me of being non-objective and biased when this is what he gets up to...
Talk about confirmation bias. This guy is literally distorting stuff to fit his preconceived ideas and what he posts here should be taken with a massive grain of salt.🧂
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gjb
Sr. Member
I'm thinking that maybe Schopenhauer was actually right! You’re just not listening. You’ve got it into your head that you’re infallible, that you can’t possibly be wrong about anything. You’re simply not prepared to investigate alternatives. You demand that everyone accepts that what you say has to be totally correct. You abuse and insult people who disagree with you, treating them with contempt. That is so definitely not the definition of open-minded!The burden of proof rests on the person making a claim but in these threads, we repeatedly see evidence-free claims and arguments by assertion, so the burden of proof shifts. In good faith, I have played along. I might as well provide compelling evidence against Gjb's claim that the instructions on Wilkins' Mar Del maps relate to Oak Island since he never provided evidence for his claim.
Harold T. Wilkins [1935] published the following instructions on a variant of his Mar Del map:
View attachment 2253813
This is strong evidence if not proof alone that the instructions do not pertain to Oak Island since it mentions a "Palm" (tree). To point out the obvious there are no palm trees on Oak Island. How does Gjb get around this? Well he ends up changing the instructions (!). He knows full well that Wilkins' instruction says a "Palm" but he instead incorrectly quotes it and changes the word "Palm" to "Tree":
18 NE and by 71 W on Rock
26 ENE 18 SW Tree
7 feet by 7 feet by 8.
He has misleadingly changed the instructions numerous times (another example here) since he knows there are no palm trees on Oak Island. Gjb has the audacity to accuse me of being non-objective and biased when this is what he gets up to...
Just because you desperately don’t want something to be true doesn’t make it false.
In the hope that somebody here other than Andrew might actually be open-minded, I offer the following possibility. The five sets of instructions work in exactly the same way, they follow the same rules. You just have to figure out what those rules are - which can be achieved for the following reason.
We know practically nothing about any of the islands being put forward here and elsewhere as ‘the one’, except for Oak Island which after 230 years of exploration is effectively an open book. If the instructions apply to Oak Island then we might have a reasonable chance of figuring out what they mean. This ends up potentially being the case. In fact, Oak Island would be the only hope we’d likely ever have of solving the instructions. Fortunately, it looks like it could possibly be the right island!
The map instructions actually target five out of seven points on a geometrical pattern, that is, points A to G in the figure below. You just have to apply the stated offsets from the Rocks and Tree (the Triangles in two cases) giving three points. Then find the centre of the triangle thus formed. Thereafter, take the final offset (the last line) which in each case brings you to within inches of the target point. The Skeleton Map actually provides the key, that is: "from centre of triangle betwixt? rocks 20 feet E." This opens up all the other instruction sets.
The instructions are clearly cryptic. You just have to figure out how to unravel them. As a hint, just try reversing the first two lines of each of Wilkins’ instruction sets: sensibly, you'd start at the Rocks and the Tree, you don’t end there!
Wilkins’ instructions target Map Points A, C and E (this point using the so-called ‘Mar Del’ map that Gilbert Hedden made a complete mess of in 1937). The instructions that Cryptid quotes above targets Map Point A.
The Palmer maps target points D (the Coral Island Map) and F (the Skeleton Island Map, the Key Chart). The figure below provides the final variances from target which are between five inches (13cm) and ten inches (26cm). The centre of the figure (X) is considered the likely focus of the entire operation.
Map Point G (for which there is no map) seems very likely to be the Cave-In Pit where somebody dug a hole eight feet in diameter and eighteen feet deep and then filled it back in. I have to wonder why somebody might do that at what turns out to be one of these map target locations.
The point is that all this could be checked out and tested on Oak Island. This is a truly rare thing on this forum: a hypothesis that can actually be tested. So, it's a strange thing that people here are dead-set against seeing it tested, apparently due to an unseemly personal animosity.
I've explained everything fully in my book The Oak Island Concealment: Seeing Beyond the Money Pit. The fact is that nobody here wants to consult the book, because they've made up their minds that it has to be wrong without bothering to see what it says. Now, that really is prejudice!
- #232
Thread Owner
There is a much easier way to disprove what you are saying than digging holes on Oak Island. Wilkins admitted that he made up (in his own words, "out of my imagination") the instructions on the two Del Mar maps (for example, see Wilkins 1940 [quoted by me here] and Wilkins 1950 [quoted by me here]). However, you claim that post-1950 Wilkins stated that he did not make up these instructions but copied them from somewhere else and he changed his mind significantly about the maps. A simple way to disprove this is to find a post-1950 article Wilkins wrote on the maps in the last decade of his life. I think it is highly probable that he wrote another article on the maps, we have not yet found. I recently stumbled across his 1942 article in The Trident: A Magazine of the Sea but I do not yet have access to it.
gjb
Sr. Member
There you go again! Everything that's written has to be true, except when you decide it doesn't fit your narrative. People only ever write what they really think, believe or have done, never trying to disguise the true state of affairs. Where are you getting all this from?
gjb
Sr. Member
I didn't actually mention or reference the trilogy, which is out of print anyway, and you failed to report that the latest book is available cheaper than £11.99 as an ebook and can even be downloaded for free in certain circumstances. You're certainly highly selective when it suits you!
- #236
Thread Owner
I just bought the book after realising it contains a scan of both sides of a postcard by Wilkins. Curiously, CapnGeorge claims he was given the same postcard ("This was sent to me by a colleague in Australia many years before my book was published") but his book only contains an image of one side. Did you buy the postcard from him? However, why did CapnGeorge not mention anything about the other side of the postcard? Can you provide a translation since it is difficult to read. What I can understand so far:
*Reginald Hall served as Director of Naval Intelligence for the British Royal Navy (1914-1919).
As for Oak Island, can you explain how you determined the spot you begin with the instructions? This is one of the main reasons it appears to be a complete waste of time since it is so arbitrary. Based on the instructions you listed elsewhere:
How are you determining where to start from? Secondly, why are these instructions listed in this sequence? Again, looks arbitrary. The order of these instructions are certainly not chronological in terms of when they were found by Palmer or published by Wilkins. The second instructions I cannot even find anywhere. What is the source for 50 feet N and by 8 feet W on Rock; 20 feet NE Tree; 5 feet by 4 feet by 5 (?). If it is the so-called Flood Map, you have heavily altered the text. Why are the instructions from the Plum Island Map excluded? As I said, since you are arbitrarily selecting a spot to begin the instructions, arbitrarily selecting a sequence, modifying some instructions and appear to have excluded instructions from the Plum Island Map - is is hard to take any of this serious.1. 18 NE and by 71 W on Rock; 26 ENE 18 SW Tree [Palm]; 7 feet by 7 feet by 8. [Mar Del Map frontispiece]
2. 50 feet N and by 8 feet W on Rock; 20 feet NE Tree; 5 feet by 4 feet by 5. []
3. 18 W and by 7 E on Rock; 30 SW, 14 N Tree; 7 By 8 By 4. [Mar Del Map]
4. 515 SE and by 50 N; 36 NE, 36 NE Rocks; 3 feet by 3 feet by Four. [Coral Island Map]
5. 360 yards V.R. North 3 stumps: 55 feet from centre of triangle betwixt [illegible] Rocks; 20 feet E. [Skeleton Island Map]
gjb
Sr. Member
I assume that you know who George’s colleague in Australia is? I sent the colleague a copy of the postcard map and I assume that he copied it to George. The card is still in my possession. The text reads:
“Admiral Sir Reginald Hall. R.N. (former Chief of Naval Intelligence) wanted to take this chart, overleaf, to the Admiralty when he saw it. (Palmer refused)”
As to the order of the five sets of instructions, the first three are Wilkins-Kidd and the last two are Palmer-Kidd. Surely, it hardly matters what they say since you're declaring that they're fake, that Wilkins made them up. On top of that, you're also saying that you can't take any of this seriously. I'm sure that's not surprising anybody. It certainly doesn't surprise me.
“Admiral Sir Reginald Hall. R.N. (former Chief of Naval Intelligence) wanted to take this chart, overleaf, to the Admiralty when he saw it. (Palmer refused)”
As to the order of the five sets of instructions, the first three are Wilkins-Kidd and the last two are Palmer-Kidd. Surely, it hardly matters what they say since you're declaring that they're fake, that Wilkins made them up. On top of that, you're also saying that you can't take any of this seriously. I'm sure that's not surprising anybody. It certainly doesn't surprise me.
- #238
Thread Owner
Some of the instructions you posted are not from Wilkins though - you changed what he wrote. So yes, it is hard to take this serious. The reason you have changed certain details is they contradict and do not match an Oak Island setting meaning you are not looking at the instructions objectively but distorting them to fit a preconceived location.
"50 feet N and by 8 feet W on Rock; 20 feet NE Tree; 5 feet by 4 feet by 5."
Here is the original:
"50 feet N by 8 feet W on the second marked bolder 20 [or 26] feet NE on coco palm five feet by four feet by five."
You've changed the text, for example "Coco Palm" has been changed to tree (like you changed "Palm" to tree for the other instruction); "second marked bolder", to "rock". It is also not clear if 20 feet should be 20 feet or 26 feet; the 0/6 is ambiguous.
There are no palm trees or coconut palm trees on Oak Island so the instructions/markers cannot have anything to do with Oak Island.
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gjb
Sr. Member
Oh my God, you're doing it yet again! I'm well and truly creased up here laughing! Wilkins couldn't possibly have modified the instructions to fit his ridiculous Olde Worlde Mappe of the Caribbeen! He changed 'Tree' to read 'Palm', and as there are no Palm trees on Oak Island the instructions can't possibly pertain to it. Seriously? You're really cracking me up!
- #240
Thread Owner
Major fail at deflection. You are not only changing Wilkins' instructions to fit your preconceived ideas but omitting large parts of his instructions that do match Oak Island (like coral reefs and coral of sand). From the same map that you have completely omitted:
You omitted further instructions including yards, for example:
"Go a score of four yards..."
Even worse, you do not point out in your comments you are changing words in Wilkins instructions (as he wrote them) and omitting large parts of text (like above) from the instructions:
I don't think you realise how bad this makes you look. Why not quote the instructions as they were actually written? Instead you are modifying text and cherry-picking (omitting text that does not fit your preconceived ideas) which highlights the extent of your confirmation bias but sneakily did not tell people you were doing this and trying to pass-off your changes and omissions as the published originals by Wilkins (but I caught you out). Furthermore, the problem you now face is explaining why certain text should be changed or omitted but not other text. You have omitted a large amount of the instructions on the Flood Map including "go a score of four yards" but why omit that text and not say "5 feet by 4 feet by 5"? This goes back to what I was saying about arbitrariness or these text alterations/omissions being highly subjective, and why as I said, it is hard to take any of this serious. If you do not understand the point I am making then let me put it another way: what is to stop me changing/omitting text on the Flood Map to say the instruction should read:
"Go a score four yards on the second marked bolder 20 [or 26] feet NE on coco palm five feet by four feet"
[text "50 feet N by 8 feet W replaced with "Go a score four yards and "by five" omitted].
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