after that, we always brought the boat right out of the water. We never left it moored out again.
One day, late in November the owner of the Island came to visit just to see how we were getting on. As we all sat in the shack, huddled around the heater, he told us of the many people who were interested in Oak Island, and how anxious they were to get permission to work on the island. We felt very lucky indeed to be the chosen ones. Without mentioning names, he also told us that a party from the West Coast was very eager to come treasure hunting, but the trouble was, this group wanted a three-year contract and that was not acceptable to Mr. Chappell. Silently, we were thankful.
The lobster season opened December 1st. We hadn’t seen any boats around for a long time because of the bad weather. Now everything was calm and clear as if the weather were behaving itself to give the fishermen a break. December 1st came on Sunday that year, so the season couldn’t open until Monday. The official opening time was set for 10:00 a.m. It was just as if a gun had been fired. Precisely at 10:00 on the dot, boats scooted out from the mainland in all directions — big boats, little boats, all piled high with lobster pots. They raced one another for locations, and jockeyed for position along the way. Some dropped their pots around the islands near shore and some on the shoals in between, while others headed further out to sea. One fellow we knew screamed and waved “Hello” as he shot by, while we stood on the beach, amazed by all the commotion.
For a few days activity was hectic. Boats were chugging around the bay from early morning to sunset, and sometimes in the middle of the night. We often speculated about those midnight runs, wondering Who was taking Who’s lobsters. By the end of the first week the new enthusiasts had dropped out and only the regular fishermen remained. It was again raw and wet, and lobstering is a cold, miserable job.
It was getting close to Christmas and I was anxious to get home to our other son, Ricky. On this initial move to the island, we had left him with my daughter and her family so that he wouldn’t miss school. I was also homesick for people, lights, noise, anything but this deadly quiet. I tried to talk the others into leaving with me and coming back in the spring, figuring that once I got them off the island, that would be the end of this idiotic business, but they wouldn’t hear of it. We knew that we couldn’t leave our possessions on the island for there wouldn’t be a thing left when we got back. We already had a hoist and motors set up at the pit head. They would be extremely attractive to looters. The shack was livable, so Bob decided that he and Bobby could manage on the island for the winter and get some work done. [In December 1959, Chappell wrote Dad advising that he would extend Dad’s original three-month contract on the island for all of 1960.]
So it was settled. My husband would take me back home and Bobby would stay behind to look after things until his dad returned. Our eighteen-year-old son lived alone on the island for five weeks.
Back in Hamilton, Bob collected more equipment and left for Nova Scotia at the end of January. I wondered how long it would be before they would miss me. Who would do the dishes, make the beds, do the cooking? How long before the loneliness would get on their nerves? I think I was the one who was lonely. I heard over the radio of the terrible winter Nova Scotia was having and I expected to hear any day that they were on their way home. But still they stayed. By the end of March I knew that they were determined to carry on with their treasure hunt.
Adjusting to life on an island wasn’t difficult only for Mom; it presented challenges for Dad and Bobby too. Almost everything that had to be done was done by them. They built, maintained, and repaired equipment. They dug, they chopped, they heaved, and they hauled, side by side.
For Dad, there was much more to Oak Island than recovering gold or jewels. Of equal importance to him was discovering precisely how the treasure had been put down and how those who buried it had planned to bring it up. Dad and Bobby were determined to recover the treasure in such a way as to preserve the magnificent underground systems that for so long had confounded every recovery effort. After all, how could Oak Island become the Eighth Wonder of the World if evidence of this extraordinary engineering feat was destroyed in the lust for gold?
Before they’d arrived on the island, Dad had read countless articles and books on Oak Island. He knew the Money Pit as it would have been before anyone dug into it and discovered its first secrets. He also knew that little of the original work remained. Many years before, each layer of earth and logs in the Money Pit had been removed to see what lay beneath. Now the island was riddled with shafts, holes, and tunnels created not only by those who buried the treasure but also by the succession of treasure hunters who had sought to recover it.
In October, when Bobby and Dad set to work, there was no longer any sign of the original Money Pit. All that could be seen where it had been were two adjoining rectangular holes bordered by broken timbers, encircled by a rickety log fence.
Bobby and Dad started digging a shaft in Smith’s Cove beach in an attempt to locate and block the sea water inlet tunnel. If they could stop the water, they would be able to search for treasure in the Money Pit area at their leisure. They spent each day in arduous physical labour, and at night they reviewed the day’s progress, discussed options, and debated theories of what was meant by various findings. During the long, cold winter nights of their first six months, they carefully reread every publication on Oak Island that they could find. They compared the information in those sources each with each other and related them to the signs of earlier expeditions that were still visible on the island. In this way they were able to calculate what lay where underground. This informed the direction of their work on the island.
It was like detective work. Every time they encountered previously dug earth, marker stones, timbers, or other objects, they tried to determine if they were part of work done by other treasure hunters or by those who had buried the treasure. They hoped to find the original work because that could lead them more directly to the treasure. However, other searchers’ work could be useful too; Dad and Bobby could add to that previous work or use it to calculate new directions for their own search. Conversely, whenever they encountered earth that had never been dug before, they knew they had gone beyond anything of interest.
Just living on an island presented special problems. They had neither electricity nor a telephone. They used propane lamps and stove; they rigged a battery charger, then charged a battery connected to an old car radio to listen to the news once a week. Obtaining food necessitated a trip to the mainland by boat, then a fifteen-minute car ride into Chester, where they kept a post office box and where the Shamrock Food Store supplied their groceries on a running tab, as it did for local fishermen. Phone calls for the family came in to a service station. Dad collected messages each time he went ashore. Return calls were made from a pay phone. Often letters or phone calls were of vital importance to their work. But whenever a call out was placed, it might be necessary to wait by the phone for the return call for long periods of time. Sometimes communications were missed. All of this was time-consuming and frustrating.
Large shipments of supplies were ferried to the island by a hired boat (usually Gerald Stevens’s Fury), but smaller supplies of lumber, machine parts, gas, and oil were brought to the island in the family’s outboard motorboat. Every journey to the mainland resulted in valuable time lost from what they considered to be their real work of searching for treasure. Once on the beach at Smith’s Cove, supplies needed to be carried up the steep hill to the flat grassy plateau that held the Money Pit.
After the first six months on the island, Bobby began a daily journal of the work. Many of us would try to keep a journal in circumstances as extraordinary as these, but most of us would eventually miss a day or two, and then another, until gaps outnumbered entries and we finally gave up. But Bobby never gave up. There is a journal entry for every day from March 20, 1960, to August 17, 1965, the end of his search.
The rhythm of island life comes through clearly in Bobby’s journals. The following entries were written that first winter, when my mother was in Ontario with
