by Steven Sora
In 1935 Gilbert Hedden read a book entitled Captain Kidd and His Skeleton Island.33 The book included a map that appeared to Hedden to depict Oak Island. The author, however, claimed that the island was in the South China Sea. At great expense and after much time, Hedden finally caught up with the author in England only to be told that the map was the author’s creation. Despite the fact that pirate treasure rarely stayed buried for long and was usually placed in shallow locations, the theory of a pirate “bank” was advanced by Dunbar Hinrichs, the same man who had come up with the notion of the Huguenot banks. The Money Pit, it was said, had been built as an elaborate treasure trove where wandering pirates could deposit their stolen goods in a protected vault. The construction allowed protection not only from outsiders but also from other pirates. Although such banks were supposed to be located in Haiti and Madagascar, they have never been found. After the execution of Kidd in England, treasure searching became the rage all over the world. There has never been any hard evidence that Kidd was ever in Oak Island, but that did not stop anyone from believing he had buried a treasure on the island.
Military Payrolls
The turbulent eighteenth century history of the New World provides us with a few more ideas about just what might be hidden in the Money Pit. The Louisbourg fort of the French had been the recipient of substantial funds from France to rebuild the fort and to pay France’s soldiers. The fort itself had cost millions to build, and the ongoing payment of soldiers, engineers, and common laborers required that the French have a more convenient local source of funds. In 1744 Louisbourg was lost to the English after a two-month seige, only to be handed back to the French again. It was clear that the fort was not invincible and was likely to be attacked in future hostilities. One theory has it that a secret repository was built away from the fort. While this theory provides motive and means, it remains untested and unproved.
The possibility of a lost payroll ship is another theory. Several ships sank in the Saint Lawrence Seaway and off the coast of the dangerous Sable Island. Other ships simply disappeared in storms, their location unrecorded. Still others were captured. No incident, however, points to the building of the Money Pit or to its use as a repository for funds. In 1746 a fleet of sixty-five ships was struck by a storm in the Atlantic. Many of the ships were lost, including several that went down off Nova Scotia’s Sable Island. Many of the survivors were killed by disease. A fortune in the form of coins must have been aboard one of the ships just to pay the three thousand soldiers who were being transported by the fleet. Speculation has it that the surviving payroll ship may have made it to Oak Island, where the pay of the French soldiers was buried to save it from English hands.
The same type of hypothesis later applied to the British in Halifax. It is said that in 1775 George Washington had discussed invading the city. The British then allegedly constructed Oak Island to hide their payroll. In The Money Pit Rupert Furneaux says the Royal Corps of Engineers in Halifax could have constructed the shaft, but never buried the war chests of its army.34 The army and their pay presumably were both sent home. By that time, however, such a project would have led nearby residents of Mahone Bay to discover the construction that could have taken a year to complete. After 1775 there was little opportunity to construct the Money Pit in secrecy.
UFOs and Ancient Civilizations
If pirates and payroll ships, Huguenots and Acadians, Shakespeare and Spanish conquistadors are not enough, William Croocker, in The Oak Island Quest, brings us theories not found elsewhere. He ties together Easter Island, the Bermuda Triangle, ancient Egypt, and UFOs to come to the conclusion that the Money Pit is evidence of an ancient civilization.35 Looking at the idea logically, if aliens from another planet had spent the time to construct the pit, they would have been more imaginative in their choice of materials than spruce, oak, and flagstones.
The Secret of the Money Pit
To Mel Chappell’s credit, no theory, even those of the “off the wall” category, went uninvestigated. One such theory was outlined in a letter dated 1934 from Charles B. Thomas of Great Falls, Montana. Thomas, an eighty-year-old insurance salesman living at a YMCA, said the “treasure of far greater value” than a pirate treasure or payroll ship consisted of “gold and sacred things of the temple of Jerusalem.” It is unknown where Mr. Thomas had gained his supposed knowledge, but his revelation to Mr. Chappell may just end up being the closest to the truth.
Many of the extant theories are plausible, but the real story of the treasure that lies in the Money Pit could be even stranger. It starts in Jerusalem, where the treasures of King Solomon were stored in an underground complex. The temple was looted by the legions of Titus during Roman domination and the booty carried back to Rome, only to be stolen again. The same treasures were then taken by the Visigoths (who raided Rome) to the south of France and again protected underground. In France a secret society was formed to guard the treasure, and when the king and Church threatened the group, the treasure was carried to Roslin, Scotland, where one family was named as permanent guardians. In Scotland an underground complex took years to build; when it was complete, the trove was threatened by the armies of the English king. The threat of an attack on newly independent Scotland required the treasure to be moved once more, this time to Nova Scotia. The Scottish guardian family supposedly built the Money Pit. Stranger still, both the secret society and the guardian family who purportedly constructed and hid the treasure within the Oak Island Money Pit still exist today. The evidence for their existence and their operation lies on both sides of the Atlantic, and their treasure is said to be still intact.
Chapter 3
PRELUDE TO EXPEDITION
In June of 1398, ninety years before Cabot would reach America, a Scottish earl, Henry Sinclair, landed in Nova Scotia.1 The natives he came across were most likely reluctant to come forward at first, but during the time he spent exploring his new land, he inevitably spoke to some of them. “What do you call this land?” was the most natural question a European in a new place might ask. This very common question, posed in a strange language, often produced comical results. The conquistadors who landed on a certain peninsula of Mexico asked this question. The Mayan to whom they made the inquiry replied with another question, “What are you saying?” In Mayan, this response sounded like “Yucatan,” and thus the Spanish believed Yucatan to be the name of the peninsula of southern Mexico.
A Spanish explorer in Peru pointed to a strange animal he had never seen and said, “What is the name of that animal?” The Incan replied, “Llama?” he was repeating the Spanish word for “name” as he heard it. The misunderstanding gave the llama its name. In Alaska an early explorer posed the typical question, “What do you call this place?” The Eskimo replied, “I don’t know,” which in his language was “Ka-No-Me,” and so the soon-to-be city of Nome was named.
When the newly arrived Scotsman Sinclair asked the Micmac inhabitants of Nova Scotia where he was, they answered “Fertile Land.” In Micmac this was “Acadie.” To Europeans, “Arcadia” was nothing short of the equivalent of the “Promised Land.” While this name has little significance to us in the twentieth century, to a medieval European it meant an idyllic place, an unspoiled land, an Eden. To Henry Sinclair, the significance of a promised land of Arcadia was profound. In the chapters ahead, we will meet Henry and his family, the Sinclairs, which by the time of expedition were the hereditary guardians of a religious and monetary treasure. Henry and the Sinclairs ultimately made Nova Scotia their sanctuary and the place where they could protect the secrets entrusted to them.
In our own time we are slow to recognize the ability Europeans had to sail the Atlantic. In 1992 we celebrated the five-hundred-year anniversary of the voyage of Columbus. In 1997 a full-size replica of Cabot’s ship crossed the Atlantic, marking the quincentenary of his voyage to Nova Scotia.2 Other voyages made in earlier days by numerous fishermen of Breton, Portugal, and Bristol go largely unheralded for lack of proof. The question of the p
resence of Europeans in America before Columbus can no longer be debated, although acceptance of the notion outside Scandinavia was slow. The fact that the Norsemen reached the North American continent began to be accepted by many in 1837, when a Danish historian, Carl Rafyn, declared the Norse sagas to be history. The sagas are collectively the recordings of the Norse people who traveled outside their country. Many of these tales had been preserved in Iceland, but they had been considered fiction. Researching the sagas, Rafyn found that he was reading about real families in Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. Some were simply tedious listings of people and their goods. Others described Atlantic voyages, the natives encountered, and the harsh life endured by the Norsemen, who were not out to conquer and loot but simply to farm and trade.
The sagas became a source of enormous controversy for more than a century because they told a history of America discovered well before Columbus.3 To accept the ability of a Scottish earl to reach Nova Scotia in 1398, it serves to understand just how common transatlantic sailing was four hundred years earlier. The oldest of the sagas that record the journeys of the Norse to America was written in 1137 and is entitled Islendinabok.4 The book calls North America “Vinland the Good” and recalls the travels of Ari Thorgilsson. Thorgilsson is mentioned again in another saga, the Landanamabok, as having been driven off course to Hvitramannaland, meaning “Greater Ireland.”5 Irish monks had preceded the Vikings to America (as they had to leave Iceland),6 driven west after Viking raids off the western isles of Ireland sent them packing. Their monasteries became more and more remote and one of the farthest from Ireland, on an island off Iceland, is called Papays, the Norse name for Catholics, which referred to their obedience to the Pope. From Iceland the Irish, too, had sailed farther west.
The story of the Norse and the Irish in Atlantic waters five hundred years before Columbus seems remarkable, but the source of this history was not meant to be sensational. The Landanamabok, for example, includes the names of three thousand individual Norse settlers as well as the location of their farms. It was not meant to be a mythical document. Another Norseman, Gudleif Gudlaugson, was also described as having sailed to a place in Greater Ireland, Eyrbyggja, and meeting people who spoke the Irish language.7 Gudlaugson was a trader, and Dublin was one of his ports of call, which is how he recognized the language. The most well-known Norseman, of course, is Leif Ericsson. In A.D. 1001 he had heard the tales of another trader, Bjarni Herjolfson, who had been blown off course and who actually might have been the first Norseman in America.8 As a trader, Herjolfson regularly traveled the icy North Atlantic between Iceland and Scandinavia. One year he landed in Iceland, only to find that his father had moved to newer settlements farther west, in Greenland. On his way to Greenland a storm blew his ship farther west and south of his destination. Afraid to land, he sought only to return to Greenland to which he was traveling to see his father. For this perceived lack of adventurous spirit, Herjolfson later was rebuked by Leif Ericsson.
Ericsson was from one of the more colorful Norse families. His father, Eric (or Erik) the Red, had been exiled from his home in Iceland as a result of committing several murders. The sagas give us little detail about him, except that he settled in Greenland. Naming his new land Greenland appears to have been an advertising ploy, since it was, in fact, harsh land for farming. The name and Eric himself brought more Norse to settle there, and Greenland grew in population. While many of the Norse were farmers, those who could trade prospered and became prominent and wealthy. Both the Ericssons and the Herjolfsons were among those traders.
Ericsson decided to see the lands that Herjolfson had described. He bought Herjolfson’s ship and traveled to Labrador, which the Norse called Helluland, meaning “Flat Rock Land.” From there he went on to Nova Scotia, calling it Mark Land, or “Forest Land.” Finally turning south, he arrived at Vinland, which may have been as far south as Virginia but more likely modern-day Massachusetts. Leif's brother, Thorvald, also made a voyage to Vinland in A.D. 1002 and most likely reached Massachusetts, where he named a cape Kiarlanes meaning “Keel-Cape” in the Old Norse language. Norse and American historians believe this to be the keel-shaped Cape Cod.9 At another promontory Thorvald and his crew were attacked by natives; eight natives were killed along with one Norseman, Thorvald himself. He was buried under a cross, and the crew dubbed the place Krossanes in his memory.
Outside of L’Anse aux Meadows, the settlement discovered by the Ingstads in Newfoundland, we do not have proof of any permanent settlements in the New World. The Norse sagas report several trips to Vinland, but all had lasted three years or less. The long distances between New England and more established settlements in Greenland might have hindered the Norse ability to establish regular contact and trade on any long-term basis. Nova Scotia and Labrador at least were much closer. Because the Norse settlements in Greenland lacked one important commodity, lumber, trade was established between the new lands and Greenland. Just how many Norse settled in America we will never know. In Greenland, however, a modern archeologist found the remains of two large Viking settlements at Godthaab and Julianehåb, so it is possible that L’Anse aux Meadows was not the only North American community. The Norse maintained a presence in North America for three centuries, although Leif Ericsson might have stayed for only three years. During his stay, a son was born to Gudrid, Leif's sister, and her husband, Thorfinn Karlsefni. The child named Snorri is the first recorded birth of a European in America.
One of the reasons why historians have been reluctant to accept other claims of discovery such as those of several Norse voyages, is that such claims, until our present century, were followed with claims to territory. It was never simply a question of whether a particular group had the ability to cross the ocean, it was more a question of who was there first. It is then significant that besides the Norse claims made in the sagas, a neutral party also recorded their voyages to the New World. Even before the publication of the various sagas, a German historian, Adam of Bremen, writing in A.D. 1070 (Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis), told of a land called Vinland where wild grapes were found, as well as self-sown wheat.10 Today we are not completely certain why the Norse settlements in America died out. Defeat by Native Americans is one strong possibility—the Norse indeed recorded skirmishes with natives they had met. A second factor might be the bubonic plague in Europe, which wiped out at least one third of the population of Europe. The reasons to sail west for new lands were no longer valid, since there was plenty of land after the plague decimated the European population. The plague also might have impaired trade. Reduced trade with the western lands would have cut off the colonies in Vinland and Greenland, and new colonists were not forthcoming. The Norse who remained, isolated from their home, may have intermarried with North American natives or the skraelings, as they called the Inuit peoples. They also may have been wiped out by them.11
Besides the sagas and Adam of Bremen’s text, the Roman Catholic Church has preserved written records of their far-flung outposts in Greenland and Vinland. Thirteen bishops had served in Greenland starting in A.D. 1112. These bishops were always referred to in the Vatican as the bishops of Greenland and Vinland. And at least one, Erik Gnupsson (known as Henricus), was sent to Christianize the Norse settlers in America.12 In 1112, Henricus traveled three hundred miles across land from Maine to Rhode Island as a missionary. Another bishop, Olav, visited the Arctic lands to tend to the Christian flock.
Later, the pope in Rome became concerned for his missionaries in the Norse lands because of the prevalence of piracy. He instructed King Magnus to send an expedition westward and offered him half the tithes collected in Sweden and Norway for his efforts. The king sent Sir Paul Knutson to find out what had become of the western outposts. Knutson left in 1354, never to return. The next year, King Haakon, the successor to Magnus, took over the quest. He sent another expedition, which encountered piracy among the Inuit peoples in Greenland. This second expedition returned with two kayaks, which the bishop of Oslo hung in the ca
thedral of that city, a memorial to those who had not returned. With the Norse outposts in Greenland gone, trade ceased, and the cold barren islands toward the west were forgotten.
If the Norse sagas, published in 1837, and the earlier writings referring to Vinland did not advance what we know about the early history of North America, then the discovery of L’Anse aux Meadows by Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad in 1960 made the literary evidence all the more believable to those critics demanding more proof. Following the stories in the saga known as the Flatey Book, which described the settlements in Greenland, the Ingstads were led to believe that Newfoundland would yield proof of a Norse colony. They traveled from one remote village to another until a local man, George Decker, told Helge of ruins that he had seen. There, at L’Anse aux Meadows, the Ingstads uncovered the foundations of eight structures, including several of the “longhouse” style with six rooms. Nearby were cairns used by the Vikings as time markers, most likely as a primitive counting method. They also discovered a spindle whorl of Norse design, a soapstone whorl used for weaving.13 The Newfoundland settlement was typical of the Greenland settlements, which also had houses, each with five or six rooms and a central hall in the same longhouse design.
