Arcadia Discussion Zone

Hello to all here.
I have been watching the forum with interest for some time and finally decided to join. Only know the popular history (media hype.... whatever) about the Oak island mystery but as a a builder I am interested in learning what it took to build the shaft. Open to advice and look forward to participating.

c2518,

Allow me to take this opportunity to welcome you to this forum. This is not the best place in the world to talk about Oak Island.

As you can see from the many previous posts, there is a lot of nonsense going on here so I would like to invite you to a place where we can discuss Oak Island in a much better environment.

Visit www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk and join the forum to talk to those who wish to discuss everything Oak Island related. I can guarantee there will be no name calling tolerated, no personal insults thrown around and the vast majority of the posters have a firm grasp on reality.

c2518,

Welcome to the Arcadia Discussion Zone. You've probably noticed how some of the Oak Island threads can become fairly heated at times, so exercise caution. It doesn't take much to tick some people off on this forum.

Indy

Let me add to the welcome. Oak Island is certainly a mystery. There are several books by people directly involved in it. I'd search those out.

Hi c2518, let me also wellcome you the website and offer you alturnative theories regarding Oak Island, you will not find them on any other websites. Unfortunately my Oak Island Revelations as I call them are not always wellcome by some people who may need (for reasons of their business interest) to do anything to undermine or eradicate what I have put in the public domain for free. After supporting the forum for several years I no longer post on the Oak Island Treasure.com website actively anymore, ever since the owner Jo joined the OITS it has become their unofficial website, some of my topics were getting twenty thousand viewing hits there so I must have pleased some people.

In my view c2518 the Money Pit was dug like this, a twelve foot diameter hole was excavated and at approxamatly every ten foot level a raft like platform of logs were fitted into recess ledges right across the shaft. Then about four feet of those fitted logs were hauled back up top and stored away, this allowed further decent by a crude ladder untill the next ten foot down level recesses were picked out to recieve the next layer of logs.

The second platform level of logs were fittted right across then four feet of those were hauled up for storage, this process continued with several ten foot ladders down to about 180ft and the excavated clay was constantly hauled up in bags or buckets by horse drawn block and chain through the four feet gaps, some of the clay was later disposed of in the deep waters of Mahone bay.

At a later stage two tunnels were dug up on an angle to Smiths Cove and South Shore, the deepest platforms were no longer needed so they were dismantled and hauled up to the surface. The middle level platforms were then completely logged over and back filled solid but the upper level platforms were temporarilly utilized as sleeping quarters.

The so called putty you will read about was wood ash trodden into clay and like the charcoal discovered was simply evidence of the fires they lit below to keep warm in the harsh winter months.

There wetre early reports that the clay walls in the Money Pit was discovered to be very hard, I'm not surprised they were practically baked. The Coconut Fibres were spillage from soft bags called Dunnage pads that were used to protect fragile cargos stored below in a ships hold, the miners simply slept on them.

You can see some of these things illustrated on my website, I don't sell tickets, membership or books or even ask to be believed, I leave that to amateur groups like the OITS.

Cerris

www.oakislandrevelations.com

Cerris
thanks for your reply and my apologies for not responding sooner as I have been ill.
By my calculations the shoring required would take approximately 38 x 12" planks to go around a 12' diameter shaft. If we use your hypothesis that the layers (and therefore shoring) was done in 10' intervals then some 6840 planks would be needed for a shaft 180' deep. As you are no doubt aware rough hewing that amount of timber would require extensive timber and work. By making a educated guess that the average tree felled would supply a maximum of 2 x 12" boards and possible additional timber for shoring then the people who constructed the shaft would have to have felled some 3,420 trees (not counting those which supplied the timber for platforms, etc.) this would have devastated the local landscape and the after results would be noticeable today. I think it highly unlikely that the materials would have been shipped in. What do you or others think?

Hi c2518, the only shoreing was the log platforms at approxamatly ten foot intervals, the circular shaft walls were not discovered to be planked. Pick marks were however clearly seen in rock hards clay walls so either the clay was baked by fires (like pottery in a kiln) on each level or the log platforms were considered to be sufficient support.

If you look at my website you will note that Captain Henry Every (John Avery) was one of the people I believe was involved in the construction of the great subterranean system, although he was a pirate he was formerly the captain of a Logwood Frieghter and would know where to get all the precut logs stored in timber yards that he needed.

Cerris

www.oakislandrevelations.com

I can't see the ground/sub strata being continuously cohesive enough to not require any shoring at those depths. does your hypothesis show the different strata encountered. this would give a better idea of the practicality of this type of construction. it isn't as if they were boring through rock. an additional problem would be the dewatering of the shaft. I would assume, based on shafts I have done, that some system for keeping the water level level from rising would be necessary. does anyone know the leel at which the water table is?

Hi c2518, I'm sorry but I can't help you with details of the sub strata, I can tell you that more modern shafts had cribbing but the original shafts may have been deliberately baked hard with under ground fires avoiding the need for shuttering.

Cerris

www.oakislandrevelations.com

Cerris
If the shaft sides were "baked" as you suggest then the side would in essence become hard and brittle. this would surely have been noted by previous excavators? also the practicalities of lighting fires at those depths, ensuring they remain lit and vent properly whilst not killing the people are unfeasible n order for it to succeed a separate form of chimney system would be required. also where would the air be drawn from for the fire to feed? in order for this theory to work the fire would need to cover the shaft diameter, it would need to generate phenomonal temperatures and this would consume large amounts of fuel whilst burning away the combustible layer on which the fire was laid. this doesn't even consider the dewatering necessary at these depths.

C2518,
At last,common sense and know-how prevail.Ive always understood the composition of the upper strata of OI to be a mixture of Glacial till and clay,in fact there are geological reports somewhere on the subject.Maybe Tank could help.

Dave

Dave

I don't want to demolish anyones pet theory but for me to give it any credence it must be supportable. I have constructed a variety of different types of shafts varying in depths in ground ranging from clay to sand to subsea and everyone of them required dewatering, ventilation and shoring. Diameters varied from 1.5m to over 100m and the construction used ranged from labourers with shovels and picks to drilling rigs and subsequently TBM's. At the moment I am working on a time study on how long it would physically take to excavate the shaft using pre-industrial age technology.

We know for a fact that the original treasure pit did not require cribbing because there was none when it was first cleared out by the 1795 discoverers. And it was not "Baked" as Cerris theorized either. That would have been immediately obvious and would have been commented on, which it wasn't. It was ordinary hard clay, which is what the island's soil is made of. It's very hard gray clay. It had to be dug with picks and it did not need cribbing at all because how is hard clay going to collapse? It can't even move much less tumble. All they had to do was build some kind of roof over it and short wall around it to keep out rain and they were good.

thanks for the input but...

"By the 1870's underground shaft mining was enabling large quantities of deeper clays to be worked in all three production areas. By the end of the century the availability of Cornish pumps did away with the depth limitations of hand pumps. As a result, shafts could then be used to extract potters' clays at a depth of 50 to 150 feet (15 to 46 metres) - the greatest depth reached being 200 feet (61 metres) - whilst square pits and open pits remained in use to work the shallower stoneware clays...Typical cross section dimensions of the shafts were 9 feet x 4 ½ feet (2.75 x 1.37 metres) and 13 feet x 6 feet (3.96 x 1.83 metres). The horizontal frames of larch supporting the sides of the shafts were separated vertically by timber 'studdles' between which boards and 'vraiths' or 'wreathes' of sedge grass or heather were rammed to hold back the sands through which the shafts were frequently driven. The shafts were divided into two compartments, one for hoisting by means of a crab and one for the access ladders and pump lines."
http://www.clayheritage.org/pages/history(3).htm

all well and good but the technology to work at the depths we are talking about did not exist until some 100 years after the "discovery" so IF the shear strength and soil cohesiveness would allow excavation to a depth of 180' without any shoring (in my experience unlikely) how did they manage to dewater and stop from suffocating? Also the builders of the shaft had no idea as to what the substrata was so would have had prepared some form of safety net to prevent delay to the works hence the need for shoring/etc. They didn't just stick a shovel in the ground and boldly state here lie 200 feet of solid clay and we shall dig safely here.

Simple, they bailed out water with buckets but who says they ever hit any water? Why would there be water in waterproof clay? It obviously could hold water without it seeping through, or the flood tunnels would have disintegrated, at least the parts with water in them. We're not talking about pottery clay here, we're talking about real hard stuff almost rock-like.
I don't know how they did the actual excavation, nobody does, but they obviously did because the shaft was there in 1795.
How did they ventilate it? well, there was a lot of charcoal found in there. They must have made some kind of crude hot air ventilator from a small furnace or even pot bellied stove, the rising hot air in the stovepipe pulling down fresh air into the shaft. That's why they had those log platforms. They sit a furnace on the platform above them as they dig down. They had a long stovepipe which they would keep adding more sections onto as they went down and lowered the furnace to the next platform. Simple stuff really. The log platforms also serving to stabilize the walls.

Hi c2518, the clay walls were already hard that is a fact and to be honest I can't find out where I read that when they entered the Money Pit early searchers found the clay walls were rock hard. I personally believe that the miners lit fires below ground but they may not have always stayed below whilst they were burning, there would be nothing to stop them lighting fires at 180ft and getting out of the partially covered shaft without the need for a separate chimney. You can close the windows in your sitting room light your fire and watch smoke from your fire go slowly up the chimney, if you open a window it will go faster, the princible is the same when lighting a fire at the bottom of a deep unventilated shaft.

The hard shaft walls could have been accidently or purposelly baked on each decending level or not at all I really don't know. As for a through draft ventilation when the tunnels connected to what is known as the "Cave in Pit" there would have been plenty of through draft ventilation. Prior to that a system of connected canvas pipe sections covered in pitch and activated by a set of Blacksmiths bellows would ventilate the flood tunnels, similar methods were used by POW's during WW2 in very long escapes tunnels.

There is no record of any fresh water hinderance during the excavation process in the Money Pit by treasure hunters, if those original miners found fresh water during the shafts construction they would have baled it out, in any event they dug the 180ft shaft and they could not do that under water it and that's the bottom line.

Cerris
www.oakislandrevelations.com

I don't think the walls were baked, Cerris. That requires very high heat and really wouldn't have been necessary anyway. It may have gotten dried out from the air being ventilated through it but that's about it. They had log platforms in there. I don't think they would have lit a big fire with those platforms there. I suppose they could have used a bellows type contraption as you said but I think a furnace would explain the presence of charcoal more.

Hi Brian, I don't say that I fully believe that they deliberately baked the walls of the shaft to prevent cave-ins only that they may have, we'll never know. I did read somewhere back in the seventies that searchers found "Pick marks still visable in the rock hard clay walls of the Money Pit shaft."

If you pressed me for an opinion I would have to agree with you that the shafts were not actually baked solid. In my view the upper platform levels were constantly dried by small fires that kept the miners warm in winter months, over a period of six months or so maybe this did make the grey clay harder than normal, that is a feasible possibility.

In the recorded accounts of early treasure hunters there was no mention of finding cribbing or shoreing in any of the original shafts or flood tunnels anywhere on the island, this would suggest that you are correct in your opinion that the grey clay was firm enough and that is all that really matters.

If they did sometimes use some temporary shuttering in the Money Pit they could have gradually dismantled and retrieved it, this would be done when they systematically back filled all the platforms solid up to the surface rendering any temporary shuttering superfluous.

Cerris

Hi Brian, I just had a thought, we know Fred found the remains of a iron pot-bellied stove on his land, what if they used those on different platform levels. They would just raked them out accasionally leaving charcoal and white wood ash trodden into the thin surface layer of clay on each of the upper platforms they utilised as temporary sleeping quarters, just a thought.

I can just picture those miners after a hard days work languishing on a pile of soft bags of coconut fibres warmed by a hot stove, I bet they had fish stew cooking in a cauldron on it too.

They could even have cut their fish up on a flat slab of slate.

Cerris

www.oakislandrevelations.com

Yeah, Cerris, that pot bellied stove came to my mind too. I think that was a purposeful clue to something else, though, but I'm not saying what I think the meaning of that clue is. Still, it shows that they had such stoves on the island so they may have been used in the pit as part of a ventilation/heating system. It would have been nasty in the summer, but maybe they did most of the work in the fall and early winter. That would also have avoided mosquitoes.
By the way, I recently discovered how the OI Cross figure may have been concealed in a Poussin painting. Here it is. The only difference is its angle of tilt, which is 24 degrees here and based on Crooker's diagram about 30 degrees in reality.

Hi Brian, I've heard a bit about the mosquitoe problem, how bad is it? I imagine one would have to take shots and use repellants is that right?

Cerris

I would think there would be plenty with that swamp right there.

"There is a simple and natural explanation of how water enters the MP.

Bedrock of limestone lies at 160-180 feet and contains numerous faults and voids. Above that are sandy, rocky subsoils to 50-100 feet. The surface soils are composed of firm clay. Graham Harris, civil engineer and co-author of Oak Island and its Lost Treasure, provides this description of the island’s geology:

Geologically the island is a drumlin. Composed almost entirely of dense glacial till, it is a remnant of the last Ice Age. This till overlies anhydrite bedrock, with which is associated some minor limestone. Anhydrite possesses the dubious property of being exceedingly soluble, more so in salt water than in fresh. Paradoxically Oak Island is the only island in the region to be underlain by anhydrite. On the adjacent mainland, and on other islands in the region, sounder limestones and slates can be found at shallow depth.

…digging the first shaft through dense till into the underlying anhydrite is a simple operation fraught with little peril. But once the excavation fills up with water, drawn into it through systemic seepage paths within the anhydrite, these seepage paths will enlarge progressively. The greater the pumping activity the greater the rate of solution of the anhydrite and, of course, the greater the rate of inflow. Once started it is a vicious circle, and one likely to prove catastrophic as the solution passages enlarge"
http://www.criticalenquiry.org/oakislan ... nnel.shtml

this explanation appears to me to at least account for some of the anomalies involved. The premise regarding the Flood Tuneels, etc seems to be based on a long line of hearsay and assumption. at least this theory has some credibility and factual basis.

Yeah, sure, like the hearsay and assumption of the actual end of the tunnel being seen in the treasure pit with its 4 by 2 1/2 foot rectangular opening, filled with beach stones and gushing sea water with bird bones and other assorted beach debris. And the hearsay and assumption of the actual inlets being found under Smith's Coves beach, with its five collectors fanned out in a symmetrical pattern along more than 100 feet of beach, obviously constructed by man because they were carefully placed flat stones laid to form little square collectors/conduits which then converged at a point just in from the beach under ground.
Trust me on this, the flood tunnel system is beyond any doubt man-made. There is nothing ambiguous about it.

c2518,



Great theory presented about the alleged flood tunnels, but there is way more to the geology of Oak Island than meets the eye.

According to those who have studied it, Graham Harris and Les MacPhie included, the geology of Oak Island does not allow for natural ingress of salt water into the core of Oak Island, certainly not in the first 150 + years of treasure hunting on the island.

The existence of the flood tunnel has been put to bed a long time ago and only the most ardent skeptic like Joltes allows himself to discount the fact that the flood tunnel (at least one) exists. Not only has Joltes not been to Oak Island and depends on the research of others who have taken the time to visit, but he does not give out all the facts so a neutral observer can make an informed, unbiased opinion. He presents a great argument, but in a debate, his pre conceived notions fall far from the line.

As for here say and assumption, one only needs to read the original correspondence by numerous treasure hunters who testify this feature not only exists but allows for a protection that has not been seen before in nay other treasure hunt, it is unique. It is in black and white and first person testimony is always strong evidence held by the highest levels of a democratic people . Generally, those who don’t accept this type of evidence are those who have a special interest in the weakening of a story.

There is no upheaval of bedrock on the eastern end of the island that would allow for natural inclusion of salt water in a fissure or opening to flood the Money Pit area. As you pointed out, the bedrock in that area is quite deep, too deep to allow for natural water inclusion.

It has become fairly and widely understood that the suspected flood tunnel from the south shore may in fact be a natural water course inlet due to the massive pumping that has occurred on Oak Island in the past fifty years or so. As anhydrite is not only soft and easily worked by the hand of man, but it is also water soluble, and tens of thousands of gallons of salt water roaring through what were once fissures, became larger water tunnels that bring in salt water from the bay.

It would be nice to discount 212 years of evidence gathering and results that have been discovered on Oak Island, but that is not the case. It can’t be summarily discounted and it cannot be ignored. It is easily misunderstood and discounted by many until they have conducted a reasonable search for good information, not some of the dribble we see on the internet in places that have no credibility.

As Andrew has set up a site all about Rennes Le Chateau and there is no one here who can really speak with accuracy about Oak Island, I invite you to register with www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk for an informed discussion with people who understand the mystery of Oak Island in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. I can guarantee you that you will not be subject to insults, debasing comments and random nonsense as you read here regularly in these threads.