The Oak Island Mystery. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep voiced neighbouring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
Longfellow was a genius with a great interest in history and romantic legends. There is a strong suspicion that — like the even more brilliant J.R.R. Tolkien of later days — Longfellow knew rather more about the undiscovered byways of ancient history than he was prepared to say explicitly.
Another fascinating parallel can be found in the works of Victor Hugo, and in particular his “La Legende des Siècles.” In one of these epic poems, which Hugo claims are based on historical fact, he appears to be referring to the mysterious lost treasure of Rennes-le-Château, which is, in turn, connected with Oak Island. Longfellow wrote not only of the Acadians, but of Viking legends. His “Skeleton in Armour” suggests that the ancient remains found in Fall River were those of a Norseman who had built the archaeologically controversial Newport Tower on Rhode Island.
Halfway through the eighteenth century, the indigenous Mi’kmaq population of Nova Scotia was struggling against the new arrivals, and against tuberculosis. The neighbouring Americans were divided between those who wanted nationhood and independence and those who wanted to remain under the protection of the British Crown.
The Atlantic Ocean provided hazards ranging from floods and storms to pirates and privateers. Nova Scotian fishermen and farmers in those days had to be tough and resourceful in order to survive: they were — and they did.
By the second half of the century, about 6,000 of the original French settlers had been deported. They were replaced by settlers from New England, Yorkshire, Scotland, and Ireland. The American element in this migration was the United Empire Loyalists, and among them was Daniel McGinnis’s family. They lived alongside other United Empire Loyalists on the comparatively sheltered shores of Mahone Bay. Although life there was undeniably hard in those days, it was not without its compensations: natural resources and worthwhile opportunities abounded for those who were prepared to work.
Soil, once cleared, became good, fertile farmland. Timber was abundant and could be felled and sold, or used for building houses and ships. The sea was unpolluted and teeming with fish. Despite its hardships and dangers, Mahone Bay was a place where people could live and prosper.
On that fateful summer’s day in 1795, young Daniel McGinnis was taking a few hours off work to explore some of the hundreds of islands scattered across the bay like mushrooms in a meadow. He reached Oak Island, scarcely two hundred metres off shore, and began to wander through the huge old red oaks that gave the island its name. Reaching a clearing close to the eastern end of the island, he was intrigued by a circular depression, approximately thirteen feet across. The earth here had subsided as if a wide shaft had been excavated and refilled long ago, and the soil had subsequently settled.
Above this depression stood a great oak with one large branch lopped off short so that its end was now more or less over the centre of the depression. From that shortened branch hung a very old and fragile ship’s block and tackle.
Knowing the history of the area, and especially the many rumours and legends of buccaneers burying their treasure off the coast of Nova Scotia, Daniel’s first thought was that this must be the top of a pirate’s cache.
He went to fetch two young friends to show them what he had discovered, and it is interesting to note here that the Puritan work ethic prevailing in Nova Scotia at the time was such that Daniel felt it very unlikely that adult members of his family would have offered much encouragement. He probably suspected that he would be reprimanded for “wasting his time on idle fancies” instead of getting on with some “important work” in connection with farming, fishing, or lumbering!
Daniel had judged his two young friends rightly: his contemporaries, John Smith and Anthony Vaughan, were as excited by the discovery as Daniel, and accompanied him eagerly back to Oak Island equipped with mattocks and spades. A few minutes’ work at the site told them that Daniel’s first suspicions about the circular depression had been right.
The loose earth came out with surprising ease. What they were removing now was soil which had clearly been taken out before. Around the edges of the broad shaft they were excavating, the boys saw the pick marks which had been left by whoever had dug there before them.
The lads noticed that the rotting block and tackle were fixed to the “Y” shape formed between the ends of the lopped branch by means of an old wooden peg of the type described by shipbuilders of the time as a “tree” or “tree-nail.” This peg had apparently once formed a secure triangle in conjunction with the ends of the lopped bough.
Dr. Ogilvie’s prodigious eight-volume Imperial Dictionary, which was published early in the nineteenth century, refers to various types of such shipbuilders’ wooden pegs as “chess-trees,” “trestle-trees,” “cross-trees,” and so on.
Had that lifting equipment been left by the original excavators of the Money Pit, or had some subsequent opportunist visitors to Oak Island — prior to Daniel and his friends in 1795 — seen the same circular depression and decided to excavate it with the aid of a block and tackle pegged to a convenient oak?
Two or three feet down the boys discovered a layer of flat stones, obviously placed there quite deliberately by someone who had been digging and refilling the pit before them. Their local knowledge told them that those stones could not have originated on Oak Island. The only similar ones, as far as they knew, were from the vicinity of Gold River, which lay roughly two miles north.
As Michael Bradley has pointed out in his painstakingly researched and superbly written Holy Grail Across the Atlantic (Toronto: Hounslow Press, 1988), there are two Oak Islands, one on each side of the peninsula. There are also two important rivers — each of which is adjacent to one of the Oak Islands. The southern Oak Island which contains the Money Pit is close to Gold River. The northern Oak Island (which ceased to be an island in the 1930s when dykes were built as part of a work program during the Great Depression) is close to the Gaspereau River.
The name Gold River as a possible clue to the Oak Island mystery is self-evident; but what of the name Gaspereau? Over the years a “g” and a “c” easily become interchangeable. Cas can mean a box or case, perhaps a treasure chest, or even a sarcophagus. Cas can mean a hut, a cabin, or even a square on a chessboard — and chessboards figure very prominently in both Templar and Masonic symbolism. Par means with, or by, and eau is water. The cas could equally well have been casse meaning breakage or damage, or even cassette, a casket or money box. Casque, meaning helmet, is another strong possibility. This all reinforces Michael Bradley’s intriguing argument that crossing the Atlantic, locating an island covered with non-indigenous oaks, and sailing up the river beside it would lead to a certain building, to a helmet (or to some honoured military leader who wore a helmet), to the square of destiny on life’s metaphorical chessboard which the travellers were trying to reach, or to a sanctuary where that which was damaged could be restored, i.e., a place where an early sailing ship battered by the ordeal of an Atlantic crossing could be repaired and refitted.
Between the source of the Gaspereau River (“the-treasure-box-reached-by-water”) and Gold River lie the mysterious and controversial ruins the McKays showed to Michael Bradley. Perhaps something like a pentagonal early medieval castle once stood there: there’s enough left on the ground to be very interesting — but there’s not quite enough to be absolutely certain about it.
Bradley’s ingenious theories fit in well with the layer of Gold River stones which the young treasure hunters found near the top of the Money Pit.
There could be no surer indication that a connection had to be made between Gold River and Oak Island than to place a layer of Gold River stones over the highly significant pit. What could those stones have meant? Were they intended as a barrier, a “keep out” sign, to those who were initiated into some ancient mystery? Or were they intended to be something like a name plate on a door saying “Yes, you’re right. This is the place. Dig here!” McGinnis, Vaughan, and Smith interpreted them as a sure