Is There Pirate Treasure on Oak Island?

Pronunciation note: Lagina is La-gee-na with a hard “g”. Not “La-jye-na” to rhyme with you know what.

The Mystery of Oak Island

Everyone loves buried treasure. The possibility that you might be inches away from a fortune is a siren’s call that’s lured people from across continents for hundreds of years. Most will end up disappointed and probably worse off than when they started but it’s those lucky few who strike it rich that keeps the dream alive for everyone else. One such hotspot for treasure seekers throughout the years has been Oak Island, a small, privately-owned island off the southern shore of Nova Scotia, Canada.

The mysterious tale of what could lie beneath has had people searching since the 18th century in what has become the world’s longest running treasure hunt. But what are they looking for and why do they think it’s there? Is there a curse protecting the treasure? Let’s dig into it.

Sorry.

The History of the Mystery

We’re going to start with the popular treasure hunter version of the story. Oak Island itself is pretty small, covering an area of about 57 hectares or 140 acres. Early European settlers to the Nova Scotia area in the 1750s had long whispered about a dying pirate from the notorious Captain Kidd’s crew who confessed on his deathbed to having buried about 2 million pounds worth of treasure on Oak Island.

He couldn’t recover it himself as it would reveal him to be a pirate and he’d probably be arrested before being able to enjoy his spoils. Fast forward a little to 1795 and fresh-faced teen Daniel McInnis, aware of the local legend of a dying pirate whispering about his buried loot on the island, was going about his business one day when he found the remains of some sort of pulley or tackle block in a tree. Nearby, he noticed a depression in the ground and immediately thinking of the buried treasure, he decided to try digging it up.

Along with a couple of friends, he got to work. A couple of feet down, they hit some flagstones which would probably have signalled the end of my excavations but they were evidently made of stronger stuff. They kept going, the earth under the flagstones being looser and easy to dig through.

At ten feet down (just over 3 metres), they uncovered a platform of oak logs. Weird. A sure sign that this was a level created by humans and not a naturally occurring geological feature.

The logs were removed and the digging continued. A further 10 feet down they went and once again encountered a log platform. At thirty feet deep, they found yet another level of logs and, being quite out of puff by this point, asked some townspeople for help.

None was forthcoming so they had to abandon the dig as it was just getting too hard for three young fellows to do by themselves. I am presuming they were also using ropes or ladders or something as a thirty foot hole in loose earth is one heck of a climb back up. It wasn’t until several years later, between 1802 and 1804 that the excavation of the pit resumed.

A group called the Onslow Company which included Daniel McInnis and his two friends, returned to the island and the area which has since become known as The Money Pit. They kept digging down, still finding the wooden platforms every 10 feet and also incongruous materials such as coconut fibre. When the dig hit 90 feet (27 and a half metres), a strange dark stone was found.

Inscribed on it were symbols that nobody could translate at the time but were much later decoded to read: “Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried.”

Eventually the Onslow Company hit something hard which some people thought to be a treasure chest and decided to stop for the night and save the excitement of the discovery for the next morning. This turned out to be a foolish decision, however, as the shaft they had dug flooded with water overnight. After trying to get around this by digging a secondary tunnel which also ended up flooding, the project was once again put on hold.

Some 40 years later, in 1848 or 1849, an outfit calling itself The Truro Company tried to become the next group to claim treasure hunting glory. Also stymied by the now regular flooding of the main tunnel, the Truro Company expanded the search to other areas of the island where they found further underground tunnel systems in an area known as Smith’s Cove. After digging yet another shaft to try and negate the flood tunnels, the bottom of the original Money Pit hole collapsed, possibly sending the treasure even further down. The Truro Company uncovered a few artefacts such as some gold chain links and some wire but admitted defeat and abandoned the dig in 1851 after funding dried up.

The Oak Island Association was the next group to have a go and, armed with pumps to try and keep the tunnels from flooding, they again dug more shafts to try and access the original money pit and to divert the floodwater. They were also unsuccessful as the water kept coming back and Oak Island claimed its first victim when a pump exploded in 1861, killing one of the workers. Their search was abandoned in about 1865 when funding again ran out.

Undeterred treasure hunters kept coming to the Island throughout the rest of the 19th century, deepening the money pit to almost 160 feet (49 metres) underground. At this depth, a box was found containing pieces of parchment that allegedly pointed to documents by 16th century author, Francis Bacon, being part of the treasure trove. In 1897, the Island claimed its second victim when a man fell to his death down one of the shafts. In 1898, excavators tried to discover which areas the floodwater was coming from by pouring paint or dye into the hole but the dye fed out from several different locations around the island, not really helping them.

Entering the Twentieth century, people were still as convinced as ever that there was a giant haul of loot somewhere on the increasingly holey island. In 1909, future President of the USA, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of a group to further investigate the money pit although nothing of much interest was found. After a constant stream of other attempts, Robert Restall arrived in 1959 with a small group to try his luck.

Unfortunately, while digging in Smith’s Cove in 1965, he passed out due to hydrogen sulfide fumes. In the rescue attempt, Restall, his son and two other workers all lost their lives, bringing Oak Island’s treasure hunting victims to 6.

Excavators were getting serious now and heavy machinery was starting to be used to help dig out those annoyingly flooded tunnels. Later in 1965, a 200 metre (656 foot) long causeway was built to attach the island to the mainland so a crane could be brought across. This causeway is still in place today.

In 1969, most of Oak Island was bought by the Triton Alliance and a new shaft, known Elon Muskily as Borehole 10-X, was dug, going down to a whopping 235 feet or 72 metres. Cameras lowered into the hole recorded images of human skulls, tools and treasure chests but unfortunately the shaft collapsed before further work could be done.

In 1981 another intriguing line of enquiry opened up. One member of the Triton Alliance, Fred Nolan, found 5 boulders that formed a symmetrical cross. Not quite an “X marks the spot” but in the middle was a sixth boulder with the image of a sword and a face.

These are symbols linked to the Knights Templar, which in turn created the theory that legendary lost treasures, the Ark of the Covenant or even the Holy Grail, might be hidden on Oak Island. While the Island was still being explored over the course of the 80s and early 1990s, legal battles over ownership and other financing problems brought most of the work to a halt.

In 2007, yet another group was set up to search for the lost treasure. Oak Island Tours consisted of Dave Blankenship, an original founder of Triton Alliance, and rich Michigan bros, Rick and Marty Lagina. Not Ricky Martin, not Rick and Morty, Rick and Marty. In 2014, the brothers Lagina started documenting their explorations via a show on the History Channel called The Curse of Oak Island. In case you were wondering, the curse refers to a legend saying that 7 people would die before the Oak Island treasure is revealed. If you recall, 6 people have already died in the search so place your bets on which brother is going to have to cop it before the other gets all the glory.

The Real History

Alright, you’ve heard the “legend” version, featuring pirate treasure, a curse, a mysteriously engraved stone and tantalising glimpses of possible riches. Let’s go through and basically crap all over it. Starting at the beginning, the whole story about teenager Daniel McInnis or McGinnis is open to debate.

As you can see, there’s not even a consensus on how to spell his last name. Most sources say that he was a teenager but apparently he was actually a man in his late 30s, on Oak Island to potentially buy a farm. While it’s not a massive deal that he was 20 years older than most people thought, it does set the tone for the story of the island treasure: it’s all just hearsay.

Nova Scotia has been explored by the Europeans since at least the 1500s with the Portuguese, Scottish, French and English variously calling it home. This does mean that pirates could also have been paying visits to the small island over the years, stashing their loot away for future retrieval. Unfortunately, the whole “dying pirate deathbed confession” story that the settlers brought with them is just that.

A story. There is absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever and also makes no real sense. Why would a pirate give away his lifetime of booty to anyone in the future who cared to have it?

Surely 2 million quids worth of treasure in those days would be more than enough to keep you out of the reach of the law for pirate-related activities. And were pirates really the saving type? How did one man become the last person in the world with knowledge of this gigantic stash?

Anyway, legends have a habit of sticking in our mind so it’s quite possible that McInnis was thinking there might be something buried under the ground. Now, again, this whole next part of the story is totally unreliable. Nobody wrote anything down or recorded the initial dig in any way.

The story was not related until years later. We only have passed down hearsay that the men found these log platforms at the random spot McInnis had decided to dig. There are rumours again of trees forming a triangle and cut marks in the bark to give him a clue but this was probably just made up later to add to the mystery.

Nothing was documented until the Onslow Company started searching in 1804 but this was not particularly detailed and they didn’t carry out the excavation as an archaeological project, they (and every subsequent search party), just dug straight down and through whatever they found, potentially destroying useful information along the way. In the legend version, there are log platforms every ten feet down the original money pit to about 90 feet deep. In recorded versions, it’s only stated that there were “markings” every 10 feet or so which could really mean anything and reduces the impact of the idea that these were man-made platforms.

So what about the engraved stone stating that there was only 40 feet to go before you reached the treasure? Well, let’s have a look at it. Oh, we can’t.

No-one’s seen it since the late 1800s and there are varying reports of it having inscriptions or just being a big old stone with nothing on it. If there were inscriptions, nobody took a rubbing, copied them or seemed in any way curious as to what they might mean. The purported inscription you can find now is just made up of what look like standard symbols and was “cracked” by a simple letter substitution that apparently nobody was able to work out in the hundreds of years between it being found and the message being revealed.

The code was apparently passed on by people vaguely remembering what it looked like after maybe having seen it a couple of times so how it managed to survive intact and turn out to be this very specific message is incredibly suspicious. The message which was “Forty Feet Below, Two Million Pounds are Buried” is not in itself very much help so why was it even coded in the first place? Plus, the money pit went way further than 40 feet under the stone and nothing of value was found.

The stone seems to be an unprovable red herring.

Let’s move on to the mysterious flooding of the money pit just when they were getting to the good bits. Some people think that the treasure was protected by booby traps and the diggers had activated the flooding system as they got closer. Due to all the many other shafts dug, the natural geology of the island and the systems under it, it’s been difficult to tell where the water has been coming from, but a more recent dye test by the Laginas has shown that it’s likely connected to a channel from the Smith’s Cove area of the island, some 520 feet (158 metres) away.

It is still not clear whether this is just a natural channel or a pirate-made booby trap but I’m starting to swing towards the non-man-made explanations to this whole thing. Also, as the tunnel has been flooded for 2 centuries, what are the chances that anything there is still worth having?

And what about the cameras put down Borehole 10-X in the early 1970s? Reports came back of human remains and possible treasure chests but watching it today, the footage is pretty grainy and the shadows, water and video quality make it hard to even work out the orientation of things you might be looking at. It’s just a matter of seeing what you want to see. There is no obvious chest, skull or anything really, and the tunnel collapsed shortly afterwards, reburying whatever might have been there in the first place.

Which was probably nothing.

Let’s side step this whole mess and talk about some of the things people have thought might be buried on the island. It’s a pretty crazy list and just imagine if all this totally unconnected stuff is actually there. That’ll have me eating my words at a tea party thrown by the Loch Ness Monster.

Treasure Theories

So we know the one about pirate treasure, possibly from Captain Kidd who sailed the seas in the late 17th century and was really, yes, really known to have stashed small amounts of treasure in various places. The thing that makes this whole pirate loot theory fall apart for me is just that it seems to involve way too much effort. If you’re a swashbuckling scurvy sea dog who’s doing quite well, it makes sense to hide a bit of gold here and there for future use. I get that.

But how much effort would you go to to hide it? Would you dig a hole over 200 feet (61 metres) deep and then construct multiple log platforms to block the way down? Wouldn’t they serve as obvious markers that something was down there? And then would you have time to set up and dig out some elaborate flooding booby trap tunnel that nobody’s been able to figure out in over 200 years?

It all seems a bit far fetched.

Speaking of far-fetched, let’s look at what else is supposedly, possibly, buried on Oak Island. I mentioned the Knights Templar and the Ark of the Covenant or Holy Grail before. Yes, if you hear “buried treasure” and see a hint of religious iconography you’re going to jump straight to the biggest lost treasures there are.

The Knights Templar were disbanded in the early 1300s so if they did make it to Canada, they were pretty far ahead of the game. It’s possible that their treasures were passed on to other religious orders or the Freemasons and were then hidden on Oak Island at a later date but nothing substantive has been found so far. A couple of Templar-connected things have been found but most of them are symbolic like the supposed cross made up of boulders.

This also seems a bit suss. The island is very small and it was only in the 1980s that the five boulders were noted as being in a cross formation from above. The man who discovered the cross, Fred Nolan, dug in the centre of it and unearthed another boulder that was roughly in the shape of a head.

The legend version calls this a stone with a head and a sword on it but in reality it’s one of those objects that can look like a head if you want it to. And there was no sword symbol, just an indented area that excavators decided could be a place to rest a sword. The other issue I have with this is that the Nolan Cross from above does not look like the traditional Templar cross which is symmetrical with all arms of equal length.

The one Fred discovered on his land is much longer with the arms connecting nearer the top. I am not opposed to the possibility of there being Templar artefacts on the island but the Holy Grail? Give me a break!

Something else that might be on the island, apparently, is a load of documents by Francis Bacon that will prove he was the author of Shakespeare’s works. This is 16th century statesman Francis Bacon, not 20th century unsettling artist Francis Bacon although at this point it’s just as likely that a folio of his undiscovered works are also hidden somewhere on the island. To be honest, I have absolutely no clue as to how or why this Shakespeare theory is even a thing.

The only parchment to be found so far was just a tiny scrap with a bit of ink on it. This was found in 1897. No other paper or documents have been found since then.

It’s been stated that the visible ink must form the letters “v i” or “w i” but it is not conclusive and looks more like an “r” to me. Did someone extrapolate “William Shakespeare” from this total piece of nothing?? Theories also popped up that clues in Shakespeare’s works pointed to Francis Bacon being the author and someone even managed to wrangle a destination near Oak Island out of random capitalizations in his works but it all seems pretty ropey to me.

Let’s have another one! The jewels of Marie Antoinette, why not. This was the favoured theory of Franklin D. Roosevelt who was a bit of an Oak Island nut.

Prior to her arrest by the revolutionaries, Marie Antoinette gave her favourite jewels to a maid who smuggled them out of the palace and ended up hiding them in a deep hole on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Of course. This theory was considered fairly credible and seemed to be a very popular one until 2018 when a veritable treasure trove, you might say, of her jewelry was auctioned by Sotheby’s. Far from being in a damp hole in the ground this whole time, they were actually in the possession of Marie Antoinette’s heirs and the ten items, made up mostly of exquisite diamond and pearl pieces, sold for a combined $42.7 million.

So yes, quite a haul if they had been buried on Oak Island. But they weren’t.

Other Theories

There are other, less outlandish, theories as to what might be under Oak Island. A popular one is that it’s the spoils of a wrecked Spanish galleon found by English aristocrat William Phips. He had already looted it once before and was tasked with finding more funds to help overthrow unpopular Catholic King, James the Second.

Phips went back to his secret sunken ship and he and his crew decided to put a bit aside for themselves on Oak Island. While they were trying to do this, however, an underground cavern collapsed and flooded, effectively making it impossible to retrieve the treasure. The money pit, for that is what they dug, was sealed off and Phips went back to England and admitted that he’d lost all the loot on the island.

Sometime in the 1750s the British came back to dig more tunnels to booby trap the treasure, ensuring that nobody would ever be able to get their hands on it. There have been some wood and tools found which date to the right period and it seems more likely that if the tunnels were purposefully made to flood, an organized group with the remit to do just that are more likely to have done it than a group of pirates but I’m still hung up on why anyone even thinks there’s treasure there at all.

Another idea is that the money pit is actually a viking ship that’s been sucked into a sinkhole and is standing on end. The log platforms could be seat rests for rowers. Hmmm, not really convincing. Where is any other evidence of a ship?

And how did it get onto the mainland and then fall vertically into a hole? Also, as previously mentioned, we have no physical or written evidence of the finding of these wood platforms. It’s literally word of mouth from 1795 and while there might have been something there, it might have been lost in the retelling and something like branches or a few logs which might have naturally fallen in and been covered over time, turned into the regularly spaced wooden platforms in the treasure hunter version.

This leads on to another credible idea: that the whole pit is just a big old sinkhole. There has been at least one other sinkhole found on Oak Island and it would explain how the ground was easy to dig. Anything found in the shaft could just be flotsam and jetsam washed up and under the island over time or left behind from indigenous people, early Europeans or any of the many, many, previous digging parties.

The coconut fibres found in the tunnels seem to some people to be proof that humans created the tunnel system. Coconut trees are obviously not native to Canada but the fibres were commonly used as packing materials and were also made into ropes in the 18th and 19th centuries so any found since then might be remnants from previous excavations. As this was not an uncommon area for ships to be in, it might also just be debris left from other visitors to the island or has been washed up and accumulated from nearby shipwrecks or lost cargo.

And what of this very specific curse of 7 people dying before the treasure is revealed? Was it written somewhere and discovered during an excavation? Was it part of the original story from the dying pirate? No, it just sort of sprang up out of nowhere as these things do. I’m not even sure if it started before or after the current toll of 6 deaths of workers on the island but maybe one of the Laginas should do the decent thing which would finally solve this mystery either way.

Artefacts Found

And what have they found there in 225 years of digging? Well, not a whole lot. Probably less, in fact, than you’d find almost anywhere else on the planet.

OK, that’s not a fact but there is very little to show for the amount of work that’s been put into plumbing the depths of this island for all its worth. There is a list of artefacts on the oakislandmystery.com website and one of them is listed as “valuable item from money pit”. Ooh, sounds intriguing.

Was it, perchance, a piece of gold or anything at all that might give credence to there being actual treasure underground? No, it was reported in a newspaper that in 1849, a man with the possibly made up name of “Pitbladdo” was seen pocketing an item he took off the end of his drill. The person reporting this to the papers just seems to have decided for himself that it was valuable.

So maybe the nineteenth century teams just stole everything themselves. Also, the newspaper report was from 1862, some 13 years after the alleged pocketing. With razor sharp cataloguing and reporting like this, it’s no wonder the seam of hope has been left alive for future generations to mine.

Really, there has been barely anything of note found on the island. The “gold chain” that’s bandied about wasn’t a gold necklace or some nice thick links but rather something that could have fallen off a military uniform and it was found in 1849 with no other context given as to what else might have been with it. On the History Channel’s website, there is a list of the top 25 treasures found on the island so far but a quick peruse will tell you that “treasures” is a clickbait title if ever there was one.

Coming in at number 1 is the money pit itself which is not a treasure and has not divulged any treasure thus far. Also included on the list are the dull as all buggery coconut fibres and a Roman sword which would have been a colossal find as the Romans didn’t make it to North America as far as anyone knows. Well, as you might have guessed, this sword was just a modern replica and totally worthless.

In the present day, the Laginas haven’t found much either with their haul so far totalling about one coin and a silver button which can be topped in about half an hour these days by anybody anywhere else with a metal detector.

So why do people keep digging here when there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to keep going? The current owners are totally invested in the search now and have a History Channel show to prove it. They’ve dragged it out a bit though. The Curse of Oak Island started in 2014 and 8 seasons and 140 episodes later, the treasure is yet to be unearthed. Is this a canny ploy by the brothers to spin it out for as long as possible? How long can they go before admitting defeat? It’s not clear how much money has been spent on excavating Oak Island but it’s definitely spiralling into the multi millions now. While Marty Lagina and his business partner are apparently partially funding the current dig, they likely also receive funding from other investors, the History Channel, tourism to the island and possibly grants from the Canadian government. In researching the history of Oak Island, all I can conclude is that the “money pit” is so called not because there’s a ton of money in it but because of the amount that’s been chucked in by gullible fools throughout the centuries. And the so-called “curse” is not something that’s haunting the island to protect the treasure, it’s something intangible, the lust for gold, that’s taken hold of these people and won’t let go until it’s bled them all financially dry. If there ever was any loot in a hole on the island, with all the tunnel floodings and collapses, it’s likely past the point of retrieval by now. Of course I shall be as excited as the next person if anything ever does pop up but I’m not holding my breath.

Katy Watson

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Oak Island?

Oak Island is a small, privately-owned island off the southern shore of Nova Scotia, Canada. It has been the site of a long-running treasure hunt since the 18th century.

Who was Daniel McInnis?

Daniel McInnis was a man in his late 30s who discovered a depression in the ground on Oak Island in 1795, leading to the start of the treasure hunt.

What is the Money Pit?

The Money Pit is the area on Oak Island where Daniel McInnis and his friends began digging in 1795, finding various layers of logs and other materials.

What is the curse of Oak Island?

The curse of Oak Island is a legend that states seven people must die before the treasure is revealed. As of now, six people have died in the search.

What artefacts have been found on Oak Island?

Very few artefacts of note have been found on Oak Island. Some items include a gold chain link, coconut fibres, and a modern replica of a Roman sword.

What is the Triton Alliance?

The Triton Alliance was a group that bought most of Oak Island in 1969 and dug a shaft known as Borehole 10-X, which collapsed before further work could be done.

What is the Nolan Cross?

The Nolan Cross is a formation of five boulders that create a cross shape, discovered by Fred Nolan in the 1980s. It is linked to theories about the Knights Templar and possible hidden treasures.

What is the History Channel show about Oak Island?

The History Channel show is called ‘The Curse of Oak Island’ and follows the Lagina brothers and their team as they search for treasure on the island.

What is the theory about the Spanish galleon?

One theory suggests that the Money Pit contains the spoils of a wrecked Spanish galleon, which was looted by English aristocrat William Phips and later booby-trapped by the British.

What is the theory about the Viking ship?

Another theory proposes that the Money Pit is actually a Viking ship that has been sucked into a sinkhole and is standing on end, with the log platforms being seat rests for rowers.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Is There Pirate Treasure on Oak Island?
• Hero image source by A Disappearing Act / openverse, by-sa.