Oak Island with the Masons and the Lagina Brothers
Oak Island with the Masons and the Lagina Brothers
Ever since I was a young boy I have been fascinated with pirates and in particular Captain Kidd and his connection to Nova Scotia’s Oak Island. I can date this fascination exactly, as it started with a box of cereal. In the late 1950’s or early 1960’s Shreddies, (my favourite cereal after Sugar Pops which we were only allowed to have on special occasions) started putting treasure maps in their boxes. To a youngster they were fascinating things of great colour and detail and I believed every word that was on them. From what I can gather on the web they were a Canadian promotion only and the drawings were done by one of the Golden Books’ illustrators. To my recollection there were four maps setting out the exploits of Captain Morgan, now more famous for his rum than his pillaging of Spanish colonial cities, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, Anne Bonny the infamous female pirate and of course Captain Kidd.
The map associated with Captain Kidd was that of Oak Island and I was able to actually find a copy of on the web. Looking at it now I can see why it would hold tremendous interest and become a thing of great wonderment to the point that I carried it with me everywhere until it gradually disintegrated from repeated foldings and unfoldings. You can see the money pit on the left hand side, his ship the Adventure Galley flying the Jolly Roger, the map of Oak Island and Captain Kidd regaled as befittingly as any pirate you will ever see. The only thing missing was the parrot.
This one little piece of parchment propaganda sent me on a mission of reading everything I could find in the school and town library on pirates, Captain Kidd in particular. Turns out he was actually a pretty shitty pirate; not very vicious, not very successful and not around for a very long time before being hung. However, the one thing that he did do that has become an absolute staple of pirate lore is that he unquestionably buried a treasure. We know this because, in an attempt to defend himself, he led authorities to where it was buried and it was duly recovered. However, the treasure was not on some remote Caribbean cay or on one of the thousands of islands off Nova Scotia, but on Gardiner’s Island nearby the very unromantic Long Island in New York. That fact, coupled with the reference to Captain Kidd in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island made sure that Captain Kidd became as famous as his more bloodthirsty and successful contemporaries. If he buried one treasure then surely he must have buried more and so the search was on from the Caribbean to the Arctic Ocean for Captain Kidd’s purloined loot. I personally have climbed a hill not far from Red Bay, Labrador and stood on the banks of a pond that searcher’s are convinced contains one of the captain’s many hidden treasures. Why in God’s name he would haul his treasure over a thousand feet up to throw it in a pond is not a question they want to ponder.
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Home › Destinations › Oak Island with the Masons and the Lagina Brothers
Oak Island with the Masons and the Lagina Brothers
Dale Dunlop
Dale Dunlop
The Maritime Explorer
31,338 Tuesday, August 26th, 2014
Ever since I was a young boy I have been fascinated with pirates and in particular Captain Kidd and his connection to Nova Scotia’s Oak Island. I can date this fascination exactly, as it started with a box of cereal. In the late 1950’s or early 1960’s Shreddies, (my favourite cereal after Sugar Pops which we were only allowed to have on special occasions) started putting treasure maps in their boxes. To a youngster they were fascinating things of great colour and detail and I believed every word that was on them. From what I can gather on the web they were a Canadian promotion only and the drawings were done by one of the Golden Books’ illustrators. To my recollection there were four maps setting out the exploits of Captain Morgan, now more famous for his rum than his pillaging of Spanish colonial cities, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, Anne Bonny the infamous female pirate and of course Captain Kidd.
The map associated with Captain Kidd was that of Oak Island and I was able to actually find a copy of on the web. Looking at it now I can see why it would hold tremendous interest and become a thing of great wonderment to the point that I carried it with me everywhere until it gradually disintegrated from repeated foldings and unfoldings. You can see the money pit on the left hand side, his ship the Adventure Galley flying the Jolly Roger, the map of Oak Island and Captain Kidd regaled as befittingly as any pirate you will ever see. The only thing missing was the parrot.
The Shreddie’s Map
The Shreddie’s Map
This one little piece of parchment propaganda sent me on a mission of reading everything I could find in the school and town library on pirates, Captain Kidd in particular. Turns out he was actually a pretty shitty pirate; not very vicious, not very successful and not around for a very long time before being hung. However, the one thing that he did do that has become an absolute staple of pirate lore is that he unquestionably buried a treasure. We know this because, in an attempt to defend himself, he led authorities to where it was buried and it was duly recovered. However, the treasure was not on some remote Caribbean cay or on one of the thousands of islands off Nova Scotia, but on Gardiner’s Island nearby the very unromantic Long Island in New York. That fact, coupled with the reference to Captain Kidd in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island made sure that Captain Kidd became as famous as his more bloodthirsty and successful contemporaries. If he buried one treasure then surely he must have buried more and so the search was on from the Caribbean to the Arctic Ocean for Captain Kidd’s purloined loot. I personally have climbed a hill not far from Red Bay, Labrador and stood on the banks of a pond that searcher’s are convinced contains one of the captain’s many hidden treasures. Why in God’s name he would haul his treasure over a thousand feet up to throw it in a pond is not a question they want to ponder.
Enough about Captain Kidd, what about Oak Island? Well I will try to say in one paragraph what others have taken many books to describe.
Books on Oak Island
Books on Oak Island
The actual facts surrounding the discovery of a potential treasure site are themselves now a matter of legend and there is no contemporary documentation available, but the story goes that in 1795 three teenagers were visiting the island and found a depression in the ground under a large oak tree and observed a pulley or block and tackle hanging from a limb of the tree. They immediately assumed it must have meant that something important had been buried here and returned to get shovels to dig with. Why anyone would leave behind such obvious signs of a burial remains an enigma. The bottom line is that neither the initial treasure seekers or scores of others have found anything of real value on Oak Island in the 219 years that the hunt has been on. However, what they have found is something that has become one of the world’s greatest mysteries – a series of engineered shafts that go down to depths still unknown, false beaches and incredibly complex drainage systems that long ago dispelled any suggestion that this was a simply buried pirate treasure. Somebody with amazing resources and engineering skills must have spent months at least on the island building this system to protect or hide something, but what.
There are more theories on what may be hidden on Oak Island than on who wrote Shakespeare’s plays and in fact, Shakespeare’s plays is one of the theories. Others involve any number of countries hiding something they thought could be lost to other countries if not secreted, the treasure of the Knights Templar and my personal favourite – the Holy Grail. Since the area was settled not long after Halifax was founded in 1749, it seems to be common sense that it must have occurred before then as such an undertaking could not have gone unnoticed once settlers and fisherman started to frequent the area. However, to my knowledge there are no Indigenous legends surrounding events on Oak Island.
Getting on to Oak Island is technically easy – it is connected to the mainland by a small causeway, but for the past thirty or forty years the treasure mad owners of the island have kept public access to a minimum. There have been periods of years where no one was allowed on, but the treasure seekers. It was during one of these periods in the 1970’s that my desire to visit Oak Island was first partially satisfied when I first sneaked on to the island and made a clandestine visit. At that time there were no permanent residents and the workers returned to the mainland after their shifts. I remember the feeling of trepidation I had as I slinked across the causeway in a stooped over scurry. I remember more the absolute feeling of crushing disappointment on arriving at what I thought was the money pit. Stupidly expecting to see the giant oak tree with a shaft underneath it, I instead saw an industrial mess of broken and rusted machinery amid a huge excavation partially filled with water. There was nothing romantic whatsoever about what had taken place here – it was just a bloody mess. I returned to the mainland disillusioned, but that didn’t stop me from reading every new book about Oak Island that came out or following the sporadic reports of new finds on the island.
About ten years ago the quarrelsome owners of the island decided to sell it and offered to to the Province for about $15,000,000.00. At that time Alison was a deputy minister in the government and I was certain the Province would jump at the chance to acquire it. I knew from visiting the nearby Chester and Mahone Bay tourism bureaus, that Oak Island was by far the most popular place that tourists wanted to visit in the area and that they were always disappointed to find that it was not open to the public. Now the Province would have an opportunity to cash in on the world wide interest in this unique place. To my shock and disgust the Province said ‘No’. Some idiots in the bureaucracy and politicians with no vision decided that the aura that surrounded the island was not worth paying a premium for and declined the offer. Thankfully someone with vision did buy in and that brings me to my recent visit.
Since 1967 most of the island was owned by Dan Blankenship and David Tobias under the corporate name Triton Alliance. In 2006 Tobias sold his interest to Michigan brothers Rick and Marty Lagina and they and the Blankenship interests now operate as Oak Island Tours Inc. They have done three really good things. First they have brought a new supply of money, ideas and enthusiasm to the project and serious efforts to get to the bottom of the mystery are once again underway. Second in collaboration with Friends of Oak Island they have reopened the island to the public on a limited basis with guided tours offered for a very reasonable $10 a person every second weekend or so. Third, the Lagina brothers have made themselves into reality TV series stars with the The Curse of Oak Island on The History Channel, the most popular show ever on that channel and now shown in over seventy countries. The first episode launched in January 2014 and was such a success that it is now into its seventh season. This has led to a greater interest and desire to visit Oak Island across North America and that is a great thing for Nova Scotia tourism.
