The Oak Island Mystery

238 Pages·1996·11.33 MB·English

by  Lionel Fanthorpe

THE
OAK
ISLAND
MYSTERY
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THE
OAK
ISLAND
MYSTERY
The Secret of the
World's Greatest Treasure Hunt
LIONEL & PATRICIA
FANTHORPE
HOUNSLOW
The Oak Island Mystery: The Secret of the World's Greatest Treasure Hunt
Copyright © 1995 by Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording, or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without
the prior permission of Hounslow Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested
from the Canadian Reprography Collective.
HOUNSLOW PRESS
A member of the Dundurn Group
Publishers: Kirk Howard & Anthony Hawke
Printer: Metrolitho Inc., Quebec
Front cover photograph: Sky-Shots Inc., Chester, Nova Scotia
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Fanthorpe, R. Lionel
The Oak Island mystery : the secret of the world's greatest treasure hunt
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-88882-170-0
1. Oak Island (N.S.). 2. Treasure-trove - Nova Scotia - Oak Island.
3. Oak Island Treasure Site (N.S.).
I. Fanthorpe, Patricia. II. Title
FC2345.023F36 1994 971.6'23 C94-931401-3
F1039.035F36 1994
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book.
The author and publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any refer-
ences or credit in subsequent editions.
Hounslow Press Hounslow Press Hounslow Press
8 Market Street 73 Lime Walk 250 Sonwil Drive
Suite 200 Headineton, Oxford Buffalo, NY
Toronto, Ontario, Canada England U.S.A. 14225
M5E 1M6 OX3 7AD
Printed and bound in Canada
Second printing: February 1998
This book is dedicated to our special friends
Dr. Bob and Zoh Hieronimus,
their daughter Anna, and
Laura Gartner,
in appreciation of their kindness and admiration
for their professional work.
CONTENTS
Foreword (by Canon Stanley H. Mogford) ix
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1
CHAPTER 1
OAK ISLAND AND ITS BACKGROUND 7
CHAPTER 2
SMITH, VAUGHAN AND MCGINNIS IN 1795 17
CHAPTERS
THE WORK OF THE ONSLOW COMPANYIN 1803 27
CHAPTER 4
THE TRURO COMPANY'S ATTEMPT IN 1849 37
CHAPTERS
THE DRAIN AND TUNNEL SYSTEM 49
CHAPTER 6
THE SECRET OF THE ANCIENT TIMBERS 57
CHAPTER?
THE ELDORADO ADVENTURE 65
CHAPTERS
THE OAK ISLAND TREASURE COMPANYS GREAT
DISCOVERY 73
CHAPTER 9
INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 87
CHAPTER 10
TRITON ALLIANCE TAKES OVER 109
CHAPTER 11
PIRATES AND PRIVATEERS 121
CHAPTER 12
CELTS AND VIKINGS 135
CHAPTER 13
RELIGIOUS REFUGEES 141
CHAPTER 14
THE INDOMITABLE TEMPLARS 153
CHAPTER 15
THE FRENCH CONNECTION: RENNES AND GLOZEL 165
CHAPTER 16
FRANCIS BACON'S SECRET CYPHER 179
CHAPTER 17
SOMETHING OLDER AND STRANGER 189
Appendix 1
Terry Ross Investigates 203
Appendix 2
George Young, Glozel and the Yarmouth Stone 207
Bibliography 209
Index 215
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FOREWORD
The coming of television has no doubt made a difference
but at one time card parties were for many years a fea-
ture of family life. Not many households were without
packs of cards, fifty-two in each pack divided equally
between Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades. The choice
of such symbols was perhaps purely arbitrary on the part of
the original designers, but in themselves they represent
some of the basic impulses by which human nature has
been consistently driven. Whether intended or not they rep-
resent very real motives for living.
Some love power. They rise to the top. They struggle for
authority. Woe betide any lesser mortals who dare to get in
their way. The Club is their natural symbol. Others accu-
mulate money as their life's ambition. Diamonds may be a
girl's best friend but getting rich attracts ambitious people
of both sexes and all ages. For others the only conceivable
inspiration for life is love, the kind which is gentle, compas-
sionate and self-sacrificing. St Francis of Assisi became one
of them and Mother Teresa of Calcutta is another. There
are others like them, always have been and always will be.
Their symbol is the heart. For another grouping work is the
mainspring of their lives. They know nothing else; they
value nothing else. It could be said of one, 'He was born a
man; he died a grocer.' All else is subordinated to work:
good name, health, family, all, in their turn, sacrificed to it.
For this group the natural symbol is the Spade.
By such motives, in lesser or greater degrees, our people
are driven. But these are not the only driving forces that
take control of us. There are others just as all-consuming
and one such is curiosity. A cat is said to have nine lives
but curiosity is the thing most likely to kill it. Dangerous
x The Oak Island Mystery
for the cats of this world it may be but without its driving
force many of our advances in life and much of our knowl-
edge would have been far slower in arriving.
It was our curiosity, the desire to know, that led
Christopher Columbus over unknown seas to the New
World, and curiosity that compelled him to continue in
spite of having to use ships inadequate for such long voy-
ages and rough seas, and discontented frightened sailors to
man them. He was driven ever onwards to discover what
lay beyond the horizon.
It was the desire to know that led Lord Carnarvon and
Howard Carter through years of frustration and failure
until one day they discovered in the Valley of the Kings the
tomb of Tutankhamen, and, within it, the most complete
collection of funeral trappings and properties in the whole
history of Egyptology.
It was the desire to know at all costs that led to the
search for electric power, immunisation against disease and
success, finally, in landing men on the surface of the moon.
Curiosity has been one of the greatest impulses of life, dri-
ving people into uncharted territory, over unknown seas,
and all with no thought of surrender whatever the odds.
Curiosity on its own then is one of the great driving
forces of life. When allied to certain other motives, some
good some bad, it becomes even more formidable. Greed
and perseverance can often be found associated with it, and
no more so than in the long struggle to penetrate the mys-
tery of Oak Island and the so-called Money Pit.
In the early years the searching of Oak Island appears
to have been dominated mostly by curiosity, the simple and
uncomplicated desire to know what was to be found there.
The young men who first found the Pit, all of them under
twenty years of age, were initially simply intrigued by what
they saw. They found, in a forest clearing, a sunken inden-
tation wide enough to resemble the head of a large well,
and above it the remains of a ship's tackle block, suspended
from the branch of a large oak tree cut to support it. As
they began to dig and found first a slab of stone and later