The Oak Island Money Pit – legend, hoax, or reality?
June 23, 2021 2 Comments
I recently wrote about the legend of the Oak Island Money Pit for Popular Mechanics (in the May/June issue) and the lore that has sustained the search for treasure for more than 200 years. (The complete article can be found here if you are having paywall issues.)
I didn’t intend to write a debunking article (and have no beef with the popular TV series) and I was not surprised to find out that the Money Pit is a pretty sensitive topic among believers. I’ve definitely had some spirited encounters with people from various Oak Island camps but have personally come to the conclusion that misinterpreted history and the area’s sinkhole-heavy geology means that there is almost certainly no buried treasure 😔.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a ton of interesting history on the island (and numerous historians have written some really compelling accounts of who has inhabited the island and why), and maybe some day we’ll see an announcement that billions in gold, proof Bacon was Shakespeare, or the Holy Grail has been pulled from the depths?
I was also invited to be on the Diggin’ Oak Island podcast to discuss this article and the broader Oak Island lore and treasure hunt. Admittedly I was expecting to be taken to task on the podcast but was somewhat relieved to have a much more low-key (though no less entertaining/educational) discussion on the topic.
The Yawning Chasm 
The math in this story does not make sense. ”two million pounds of treasure” in the day would equate to about 15 tonnes if all in gold coin or ingots, or if all in silver pieces of 8, [the most likely] about 248 tonnes.[about 10,000,000 pieces of 8] WOW! what a mass of coin that would be to handle and lower by block and tackle over a tree branch, as each would have the size of a silver dollar. Read about the Lima silver captured in 1746 to get my point. ”Steel plates” preventing drills passing down the shaft in some places? according to early reports. I don’t think so, steel plate as such was not available until the 1860’s. No rolling mills, Bessemer converters, or steel in the17 th century Only small thin hand beaten iron sections from cast ingots were available, which would not last hundreds of years in such a damp salty environment in any case. And what a silly idea that people would go to such trouble to flood the ”money pit” and make recovery impossible for themselves or anyone else, as there were also no steam pumps or indeed even boilers to power them in those early days . If by a great stretch of imagination, such a project we’re indeed done, it would have been carried out by British army sappers, not ordinary pirates or sailors. Cornish sappers from the tin mines who had the mining skills. And even then the only way to deposit the ”treasure would be to run a lateral tunnel from the 150 feet depth to near the surface and above sea level, which in any case would end up hundreds of feet away from the money pit, because the angle would need to be around 25 degrees[simple maths] for ease of tunnelling, and dragging barrels or boxes up to an opened out space. It is impossible this mythical ”money pit” treasure could exist at the bottom of this flooded hole, and I would stake my 25 years experience as a Marine engineer on that! But it is a good story.
Thanks for this thorough analysis! I appreciate you putting all of this in context – it really helps to give a sense of how large a production this would have had to have been, as well as how large the myth must be to overlook this reality! I haven’t yet seen UFOs mentioned as a possibility – maybe their extraterrestrial capabilities could do this kind of engineering and move that kind of weight? Just kidding of course – thanks again for reading the article and taking time to pass this info along!