and heroic Sinclair branch of the Knights Templar after their betrayal and downfall in 1307, Drake’s Devon lads, Kidd’s bloodthirsty pirates, or a detachment of meticulously disciplined British army engineers … who constructed the Money Pit and why?
The historical and geological background of Oak Island and its immediate surroundings abound with exciting and intriguing possibilities.
- 2 -
Smith, Vaughan, and McGinnis
in 1795
To understand Daniel McGinnis and his pioneering companions, it is first necessary to know something of the political and social background of Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century. The Chinese have a proverbial “curse” which runs: “May you live in interesting times.” The eighteenth century was — in that subtle Chinese sense — an interesting time to be in Nova Scotia, and particularly if you lived on, or near, its coast.
The French and English had long disputed the ownership of what was then termed “Acadie” (or, perhaps, more significantly “Acadia,” “Arcadie,” or “Arcadia”). Champlain had been there in 1603 and De Monts in 1604. The Treaty of Utrecht gave Acadia to the English in 1713, but in 1755 the danger of war with France led the English to deport the Acadians to New Orleans. This caused great hardship, and many personal tragedies of the kind Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described so poignantly in “Evangeline.”
There is an evocative and mysterious tone to the opening lines of the poem:
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green indistinct in the twilight,
Stand Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
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
