by Lee Lamb
At that time, only a few people were willing to risk their money, time, and energy to dig for treasure on an island where so many had tried over the years, but where no treasure had ever been found. Mr. Chappell had already had some bad experiences with treasure hunters. Everyone declared that he was “the one to bring up the treasure.” But when given their chance, they did not work as hard or as long, or spend as much money as Mr. Chappell had expected. Who should Mr. Chappell trust? Why not a plumbing contractor from Hamilton?
And then there was the fact that both Mr. Chappell and his father, William Chappell, had searched for the treasure themselves. Each had put in tremendous effort and spent a small fortune. Each had failed. Mel’s father was gone by that time, and Mel himself was in his seventies. Before his time ran out, it was extremely important to him to be able to prove that the treasure of Oak Island existed.
Then along came my dad, who seemed to be (and was) an honest man, and one who possessed technical expertise, knowledge about the island and its history, confidence that he knew how to get the treasure, and the intention to carry out his work without destroying the island. Also, he was a man who would stay on the island through the winter.
Starting up in October would be difficult, but my family knew that if they didn’t jump the moment they were given the chance, Mr. Chappell would find someone who would. Anyway, by starting in October, they would have several weeks to dig on the beach, set up camp, hunker down for the winter, and be ready for the big push when spring arrived.
Dad believed that one thinking man, working with care, would, in a matter of just months, be able to unlock the secrets of Oak Island and succeed where others, with huge amounts of money and brute force, had failed. Of course, my dad believed he was that “one thinking man.”
Although Dad’s contract was only for a few months, Mr. Chappell had promised to extend it as soon as he saw progress being made. “No problem,” Dad assured the family. “No long-term contracts needed. By next summer, the treasure will be ours.”
And so they set to work.
Dad and Bobby examined the Hedden Shaft. It appeared to be in excellent condition, even after all those years. They built a hoist so they could lower and raise equipment in the shaft. It was not long before it was also pressed into service as a refrigerator, since the Hedden Shaft was very cool just above sea water level.
Hoist setup at the Money Pit.
The hoist doubled as the family refrigerator. Photo by Louis Jaques.
Once that was done, they turned their attention the Smith’s Cove beach. The plan was to locate the sea water inlet tunnel and block it off. After that, they could take their time working down in the Money Pit (the Hedden Shaft) without the hazard of water pouring in.
They began by digging a series of test holes on the beach. Here they came across acorns and oak branches (oaks no longer grew at this end of the island) and great amounts of coconut fibre. Those signs of “original work” encouraged them.
Sometimes they would dig all day, but the next morning would find that rainwater had completely filled the hole overnight. So they would pump out the hole with a small gasoline-driven pump, and keep digging.
Bobby, digging a new beach hole, 1959. The caption in his photograph album reads, “Reaching stone and vegetation layer.”
Mildred Restall stands beside the first cribbed hole. Cribbing is cut from island trees.
They would often spend days digging a deep hole without finding any sign of the sea water inlet tunnel. They would then move to another spot on the beach and start the process again.
In November, Mom wrote that it rained almost every day, but that the “men” (Dad and 18-year-old Bobby) continued to work. She described the cramped living space in the shack, and how she had to paw her way through the wet work clothes that hung from the rafters. The clothes seldom completely dried, and many times had to be put back on while they were still damp; the smell of mould filled the shack.
My mother’s heart ached for city life. While the men worked away on the beach, she did her best to explore the island and enjoy nature, but she was homesick. Wisely, I think, my father convinced her to return to Hamilton to be with Ricky, who had stayed with me in Ontario to attend school. She would return to the island with Ricky after school finished at the end of June.
On December 21, my parents set out for Hamilton, Dad having hitched his empty box trailer to the car so that he could bring equipment and supplies back with him.
For five weeks, Bobby was left alone on the island to guard their belongings and equipment. My mother never mentioned it without looking a little ashamed — just 18 and all alone on the island. But now I realize that this must have been the moment when Bobby first went to the mainland alone and met other teenagers from the town of Western Shore.
My dad was convinced that the family would be on the island for less than a year, and he intended, during that time, to work every daylight hour, seven days a week. He expected Bobby to do the same, but Mom stepped in and said no, it was too much. Dad didn’t give up easily, but finally agreed to let Bobby have time off on Saturday nights. Soon they changed that to include Sunday mornings as well, because they didn’t want him rowing back to the island in the middle of the night. He was to be back on Sundays, ready to work by noon.
During those small windows of time, Bobby managed to establish a sliver of a life that had nothing to do with Oak Island. He developed lasting friendships and had great times with his new Western Shore friends.
Chapter Eight
And So to Work
Dad returned to the island from Hamilton loaded down with so much equipment in the old car and trailer that he had four blowouts on the way back.
Mr. Chappell had extended Dad’s contract to work on the island to the end of 1960. Under the Treasure Trove Act, if the treasure was located, the government of Nova Scotia would get five percent of anything found. The contract between Dad and Mr. Chappell was an agreement that after the government received its share, the rest of the treasure would be divided equally between the two of them.
Now that he had a contract for a year, Dad was able to take in investment money from other parties. But Dad only wanted one financial partner — his long-time friend and fellow plumbing contractor, Fred Sparham, who came in for 25 percent of Dad’s share of the treasure.
The search couldn’t have gone ahead without Fred’s money, but Fred was more than investor, he was a friend who was keenly interested in everything that was happening on Oak Island.
To keep Fred up-to-date, Dad wrote him long letters. Calls from the payphone were too hard to arrange, and too costly — save for emergencies.
In February, Dad wrote to Fred telling him about the difficulties they faced on the island during the winter months:
We are getting a bit of work done, but this storm, the biggest ever here beating the record 1894 snowstorm, just can’t be overcome.… Just to get to the Mainland and get food and back takes best part of a day. The only good points are that we have no help to pay, and that Mildred is staying in Hamilton at least till the middle of March. We will have to keep the outboard out of the water for a month yet. There is about 24” of frost in the ground. The ice is quite solid in the bottom of the excavation [their last beach hole] but an air hammer with a spade will chew it up fast. [They would soon bring a compressor to the island]
To get to the mainland at that time, Bobby and Dad had to trudge the full length of the island in deep snow, dig out a skiff they kept there, row over to the mainland, then make their way up to the car and dig it out. Many times they then had to dig out the entire street to get to the highway.
And surviving those long nights on Oak Island in that flimsy shack must have been a special test of endurance. Neither Dad nor Bob ever spoke of it. When asked, Bobby would only shake his head and say, “It was grim.”
Storm after storm battered the island that February. At the end of the month, Dad wrote to Fred Sparham again. In it, he talked about the wor
k that Bobby and he had been able to accomplish. They had built a float for the boat so that they could put it in and out of the water quickly, and the weather had improved enough that week that they were able to launch the boat. They had nearly finished building the frame for the hoist to be used for removing the earth they dug out of the holes in the beach, and had pumped out the last beach hole and dug out the snow and ice, ready to set a hoist in.
They also attached the gasoline motor, the transmission, and the hoist together in one single unit so that they could use it to pull the boat in or out of the water and then move it over to lift the earth out of the hole. Once they located the inlet tunnel, they planned to pump cement into the hole to clog the five finger drains and stop the sea water from coming into the Money Pit. Then they could finally go after the treasure.
Bobby had been daddy’s little helper since he was around four years old — fascinated by all things mechanical. In high school, he had been a shop ace. So he was the perfect person to be working alongside Dad. Whether it was digging for treasure or merely trying to survive, Oak Island was all about mechanics.
In Dad’s letter to Fred Sparham in early March, he told him that he had been able to purchase a pump for the Money Pit that had been used by an earlier treasure hunter, Professor Edwin Hamilton. As soon as the weather improved, they would rent a heavy-duty barge and bring the big pump over to the island. Then they’d be able to pump out the Money Pit and go after the treasure.
In that March letter, Dad described the day when a group of local fishermen paid a visit to the island. He had shown them the shaft that he and Bobby were digging on the beach at Smith’s Cove. The fishermen had heard all the stories about searching for treasure on the island, but they had never seen proof of anything worth digging for. Now, looking down into the shaft, they could clearly see the layers of stone, sand, and coconut fibre. They were amazed. Each of them left the island that day with a small souvenir bundle of coconut fibre and a broad smile on his face.
A look into the “original” beach work. Layers of stones, vegetation, and clay could be seen in beach “pavement” created by the pirates.
The ’47 Plymouth arrives on the island.
Bobby thought that a record should be kept of all their work, so he bought a child’s lined scribbler and wrote his first journal entry on March 20. From that day on, he made an entry for every day that they were on the island.
They decided it would be a good idea to have a car and a compressor on the island. With the compressor they would be able to dig through the frozen ground and hard clay, and the car would allow them to ferry heavy equipment and supplies from beach level up to the clearing 32 feet above it.
The compressor crosses Mahone Bay on its way to the island.
Bobby’s second journal entry, March 21, described building a raft by using lumber and empty 50-gallon drums. When they tested it out, Bobby recorded that it was like an iceberg — two-thirds of it was underwater. To keep the 5,000-pound (2,268-kilogram) compressor above water, they had to add another eight drums to the 12 already attached to the raft’s underside. But eventually they managed to get both items over to the island.
On April 8, Bobby turned 19. For the rest of that month and well into May, he and Dad concentrated on searching for the inlet tunnel at the beach at Smith’s Cove.
As they dug, again and again they came across signs that they were not the first — a post here, a wooden box there, very old boards from a small retaining wall, and uniform layers of flat stones, sand, eel grass, and coconut fibre. Each find was examined with great care. They needed to know whether each was “original work” or just evidence of previous treasure hunters.
Whenever they found themselves in a spot that had never been dug before, they moved on. They wanted to dig in earth that had been dug before, preferably only by the pirates.
Some of the earth they encountered was a formless, oozy mess that seeped through their cribbing. This led them to experiment with a number of different methods of construction. On the outside, they would usually place tree poles they had cut on the island and nailed together (known as “spiles”). Inside that they nailed horizontal or vertical boards, or both, one inside the other. Usually they would dig and hammer the cribbing down as they went. On at least one occasion they dug down to the clay layer in open-pit style, then placed the pre-built cribbing into the hole and continued down from there.
Their beach hoist and dump bucket system was run by a small gasoline engine, and the contraption moved the earth up and out of the new beach shaft and deposited it in the cove, where the tides carried it away.
The beach shaft with horizontal and vertical cribbing. The roof had been borrowed from their tent-trailer to keep rain and snow off the work.
Open pit with cribbing ready to go in.
Work was slow because they had to dig with care and inspect everything. Mechanical breakdowns were frequent, and many times they had to stop work and make a quick trip to the machine shop on the mainland to make a repair or to hone a new part. But they pressed on. Slow or not, hole by hole, they were gaining a clear understanding of the pirates’ work at Smith’s Cove beach.
Pump strainer and impellers go in.
The completed A-frame. Tourists were ever-present to inspect the work.
Near the end of May it was necessary to turn their attention away from the beach and focus on the Money Pit. Soon the pump would arrive on the island. When Professor Hamilton had used it, the pump had been able to remove 450 gallons (2,047.5 litres) of water per minute from the Money Pit. It was immense and very heavy, but it would get rid of the sea water while Dad and Bobby went after the treasure.
In preparation for receiving the pump, they set to work building a “bridge” or A-frame over Hedden’s Shaft so that the weight of the huge pump would not have to rest on the disintegrating timbers at the top of the old shaft.
Bobby’s journal records cutting down trees, stripping them, then either hauling them across the island or transporting them by the boat-float to Smith’s Cove. They also brought milled lumber from the mainland to the beach. Then, using the car, and with some hired help, materials were transported up the hill to the Money Pit, where they would form part of the A-frame. Bobby’s journal entries reveal a steady grind of hard, physical labour.
Chapter Nine
Summer in Paradise
On June 21, Ricky and Mom arrived on the island after their long journey from Hamilton to Halifax by train.
My mother believed that they would be there only for the summer, because, as Dad had said, it would only be a short time before the treasure was up, and then they could be on their way. Mom pushed aside any bad memories from the previous October and November — Oak Island could be endured for a few months. But to her amazement, she fell in love with Oak Island that summer. She wrote:
What a difference. The island was a riot of colour. The magnificent firs a rich green. The grass a thick carpet. And up in the clear, blue sky, the sun shone bright and golden. Sailboats were gliding over a sparkling sea and small craft skimmed around the bay. The air was fragrant with the perfume of wild roses that grew in abundance all over the island. Standing on the beach and looking out over Mahone Bay, with emerald islands dotted here and there, I thought that never, anywhere, had I seen a place more beautiful.
Mom and Ricky set about happily exploring their new paradise. Daily observations on these jaunts included a beaver family, foxes, numerous small red squirrels, a variety of birds, and the endless moods of the sea. Each day’s excursion brought fresh discoveries.
And Ricky, now nine years old, also enjoyed some adventure time alone. He became very good at rowing the skiff, and countless hours were spent manoeuvring the tiny boat through the waters near Smith’s Cove. And day in and day out, he swam inside the cofferdam.
One Sunday, a couple of scuba divers from New Jersey came to the island. Rick hovered about, watching them closely, and eventually they took a few minutes to teach him the art of sno
rkelling. Later, the divers shared their bounty with the family. Everyone squeezed into the tiny shack, feasting on freshly caught flounder and drinking tea. Before the divers left, they gave Ricky a mask and snorkel — a thoughtful gift that gave him lasting passage into the wonders of the underwater world.
My family was astonished by the number of visitors who came to the island. Through the week, local boatmen would bring small groups over to see the famous island. Sometime these men acted as guides, walking the tourists up to the Money Pit, explaining all that had gone before. At other times they just left the tourists on the island and returned for them an hour or so later.
On Sundays, even more visitors came to the island, not only tourists, but also many locals who came in their own motorboats or sailing vessels. All day, clutches of moored boats bobbed up and down in the water just beyond Hedden’s Wharf. Visitors toured the worksites, spread their picnic lunches on the beach, and stayed for the day. There was a kind of joyous, carnival spirit to it all.
The brigantine Albatross, an American floating classroom.
Bobby and Dad found that all this activity interfered with work, however. Tools, equipment, and the shacks had to be locked up at all times and extra log fencing and chicken wire had to be strung up to keep visitors from falling into the pits. And as Dad and Bobby laboured away, they often found a visitor right at their elbow trying to pull them aside for a private Oak Island history lesson.
Mom and Ricky had to fend off these strangers, too. But once in a while a visitor would arrive who already knew a lot about Oak Island and was fascinated by the work going on. My mother and dad enjoyed spending some time with visitors such as these.
