Oak Island and Its Lost Treasure

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

Much has been written about the allegedly large cache of pirates’
treasure buried in the late 17th century on Oak Island, a small island
off Nova Scotia’s east coast. In 1795, local teenager Daniel McGinnis
made an unsuccessful attempt to dig a tunnel to the money pit. Similar
efforts by other adventurers over the next two centuries also met with
failure, mainly because of a flood tunnel that had been constructed by
the originators of the money pit to protect what may be there from being
recovered.

The authors of this book are mining engineers who have used their
extensive knowledge of underground mining to reconstruct the means by
which the various adventurers may have attempted to access the money pit
(e.g., through the construction of various shafts). They make a good
case that the original work was done by New Englander Sir William Phips,
who had recovered treasure from a Spanish wreck in 1687 and temporarily
buried it on Oak Island with the intention of recovering it later. When
a disaster occurred during the construction of the Money Pit, Phips’s
men built a flood tunnel to prevent anybody else from recovering the
treasure. Harris and MacPhie argue that Phips was part of a conspiracy
to overthrow the autocratic rule of King James and replace him on the
throne with William, Prince of Orange.

Although it contains considerable technical detail, Oak Island and Its
Lost Treasure is a highly readable book. Drawings of the various tunnels
are included.