The Oak Island Mystery...What lies at the bottom of the Money Pit?

The Oak Island Mystery ^ | FR Post July 2002 | Bradley Keyes

[forsnax5]

There was an article about Oak Island published in the March/April 2000 issue of Skeptical Inquirer.

Here's the conclusion:

In summary, therefore, I suggest first that the "Money Pit" and "pirate tunnels" are nothing of the sort but are instead natural formations. Secondly, I suggest that much of the Oak Island saga-certain reported actions and alleged discoveries-can best be understood in light of Freemasonry's Secret Vault allegory. Although it is difficult to know at this juncture whether the Masonic elements were opportunistically added to an existing treasure quest or whether the entire affair was a Masonic creation from the outset, I believe the mystery has been solved. The solution is perhaps an unusual one but no more so than the saga of Oak Island itself.

You can read the whole thing here.

[muawiyah]

Or, the Conquistedores, in order to get that gold to Europe, stopped over on Nova Scotia.

You would have two conveyors going - one would take gold from South America and Mexico up to Nova Scotia. Another conveyor would transport the gold from Nova Scotia to Brussels (then Spanish territory).

The best times to travel each leg occur at dramatically different times of year, and Northern sea ice was a real threat to everyone taking the return trip to Europe.

Oak Island would have served as a relatively safe place to stage the gold shipments.

Notice that the French settled Port Royal (Annapolis Royal) directly West of Oak Island. By their day the ship designs could handle the strength of the currents in the Bay of Fundy, so the West coast was safer than the East coast (Oak Island).

[Axenolith]

While it may be economically infeasable it seems that this problem could be, and could have been, solved with the suitable application of bentonite and cement. At the least, people drilling it could just continue around in a circle and backfill the bores with cement bentonite grout until they create an impermiable grout curtain around the entire structure...

[Prodigal Son]

I don't know how expensive it would be, but might it be possible to get down there using a caisson: a large diameter steel pipe open at the bottom and closed at the top except for an airlock?

If I'm not mistaken, this was how the Brooklyn Bridge was built. The workers who worked down in the air chamber kept suffering from a mysterious ailment, in some cases it was really debilitating. I believe the bridge's developer/designer himself went down into the air chamber and was also afflicted by the ailment.

Medical science later had a name for this affliction suffered by the Brooklyn Bridge workers- Decompression Sickness or commonly known as "The Bends".

I saw a program about that and being a scuba diver, it made me cringe to hear about those poor bastard's plight.

I have always found this Oak Island mystery so fascinating and it is a wonder that with today's technology we haven't figured out what's down there.

[Rebelbase]

That picture looks like Alfred E. Newman on steroids.

[aculeus]

The Wall Street Journal did a number of articles on this many (20?) years ago.

Interesting that it still isn't solved.

[ContentiousObjector]

Didn't President Rosevelt have some interest in Oak Island?

[Age of Reason]

Right.

I read McCollough's The Great Bridge twenty years ago, which is the story of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Yes, they excavated the foundations for the bridge by using caissons filled with compressed air (the caissons were later filled with cement; above them rest the granite blocks that form the piers and towers of the bridge).

Washington Roebling suffered from the bends after a visit to the caisson and was said to have been incapacitated from it for the rest of his life--though it's likely what he suffered from was more mental than physical.

(Washington Roebling's old man, John Roebling, died from a tetnus infection that resulted from having his foot crushed in an accident while surveying the bridge site.)

[Age of Reason]

Medical science later had a name for this affliction suffered by the Brooklyn Bridge workers- Decompression Sickness or commonly known as "The Bends".

At the time of the bridge building, they referred to the illness as caisson disease.

[strela]

Crap - multiple water channels, eh? Where's Lloyd Bridges when you really need him?

[suni]

Someone once told me that there was a movie made about this. Does anyone know the name of it?

[PA Engineer]

My favorite movie also. I think this song might be closer to the "Money Pit". ;-)

"Paint Your Wagon" "Best Things in Life"

Thanks for the link.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

FR THer Bookmark Bump.

[Prodigal Son]

I didn't mean to imply that they didn't have a name for it then- there's always a name- just like the Africans used to call AIDS "Slim". I was mainly getting at they didn't have any idea what was causing it which was unfortunate because they were doing the very thing that causes it. Applying a few simple rules would have drastically cut the instances of it in the Brooklyn Bridge case although they still would've occured most likely because they didn't have the Navy decompression charts that came along much later.

That particular case always just struck me because that's always a big thing in the back of every scuba diver's mind after you surface. Particularly if you've been pretty close to the limits on the chart or on your dive computer. You find yourself worrying about every little twinge or slight pain and thinking 'sh!t, I hope I didn't get bent'. Just to imagine that the workers were in a compressed chamber at depth for hours at a time and then took an elevator up- Man! It makes me shudder to think about it. And they were just a load of Irishmen trying to make a buck.

[Prodigal Son]

I read McCollough's The Great Bridge twenty years ago, which is the story of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I'll have to see if I can't lay hands on that book. I saw a one hour show about it a couple years ago on the British History Channel or some other program. It was fascinating and that was a brilliant solution to the problem, in my opinion, aside from the decompression sickness. But the guy wasn't a doctor and that wasn't a disease medicine was to understand until much later- so it's hard to blame him for it.

What I was also struck by was that after they had the towers up they had a catwalk strung up across it- very precarious it was. On weekends apparantly the catwalk had become quite a local sensation as people tried their hand at walking across it, ladies in their skirts included. Could you imagine someone even suggesting that today? It wouldn't be allowed. Seems that even the ladies of that age had more balls than the men of ours.

[Age of Reason]

I didn't mean to imply that you meant to imply.

Anyway.

I know all about the bends--I grew up watching Lloyd Bridges in Sea Hunt!

As for the McCullough book, it was pretty good and certainly worth reading.

McCullough also wrote "Truman," "Mornings on Horseback," "The Path Between the Seas."

"Mornings on Horseback" was good, but I found Morris's book, "The Rise of Theordore Roosevelt," on the same subject more enjoyable (I must have read it at least four times).

"Truman" is on my bookshelf, waiting its turn to be read.

And "The Path Between the Seas" I read about twenty years ago--also worth it; like "The Great Bridge," it's the story of another engineering marvel: the Panama Canal.

As I remember, "The Great Bridge" was lighter reading than "The Path Between the Seas," which was about a more complex subject to begin with.

All good books.

[mdittmar]

Thanks,my favorite song/scene from the movie.

Those guys had it tough back then.

[Prodigal Son]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that you had implied that I was implying...

Thanks for the book ideas. Have to put some of those on the list. ;-)