WI They Actually Found Something on Oak Island?

[weasel_airlift]

I would question it, too, if the person is trying to tell the truth. If they’re trying to sell the next dig to promoters, then that’s an entirely different matter.

But I do wonder about the growth of urban legends . . . when a person is legitimately trying to honestly repeat the details most important to them. Over several retelling by several different people, how much do the facts morph?

Say at the 50 percentile, where half the cases are more extreme and half are less.

I'll absolutely give you that. 300 years of the telephone game, and...

 

[DougM]

I think they will find Jimmy Hoffa...

 

[Zheng He]

I think they will find Jimmy Hoffa...

And Jim Morrison.

 

[Kaze]

It would have to be a lot of treasure to make the money pit worth it. Personally - I think that it is strange that nobody has sent down a drone (robot sub) down the main shaft or a frog-man down the main shaft to the treasure room.... Wouldn't that work?

 

[marathag]

It would have to be a lot of treasure to make the money pit worth it. Personally - I think that it is strange that nobody has sent down a drone (robot sub) down the main shaft or a frog-man down the main shaft to the treasure room.... Wouldn't that work?

The location of the shaft was lost after the 1860s, from all the digging by different parties. So all the activity since has been to relocate it. On the show now, they think they have found where that last 1860s shaft was, that was near the original money pit shaft

 

[Father Maryland]

It would have to be a lot of treasure to make the money pit worth it. Personally - I think that it is strange that nobody has sent down a drone (robot sub) down the main shaft or a frog-man down the main shaft to the treasure room.... Wouldn't that work?

As someone else said no one can find the main shaft. There's been like two hundred years of almost sustained mad digging. The islands more holes then solid at this point. That and underneath the bedrock is full of natural caves and caverns and the like carved by water from the relatively weak bedrock. It's like trying to find one hole in a wheel of swiss cheese.

Most Pirates were actually privateers, who were usually outfitted by the sponsoring nation. The free pirates of the Carribean became a thing after the 16th Century, plus they seldom ventured north to the cold barren New England and New France coasts. So tools originating in the Spanish Netherlands mid 16th Century would be odds on off a Spanish ship. If it had been a English or French ship one would expect at least some tools from the forges of Lille or Manchester to be mixed in.

Would be ironic if there actually was a ship load of treasure lying a fews hundred meters off the island, while two centuries worth of fools had been mucking about what amounted to a survivors camp ashore.

I would laugh my ass off.

Has there been any even half extensive offshore searches or surveys? Surely someone has thought that it might be under water off the island?

 

[Zheng He]

I have to agree, those shows are a bit of guilty pleasure here too. Most of them are outrageous, but at the very least I do get to see places I've never heard of before and objects that do exist that I've never seen.

That's why I love Ancient Aliens, I've learned a ton about ancient architecture and construction from that show.

 

[Zheng He]

As someone else said no one can find the main shaft. There's been like two hundred years of almost sustained mad digging. The islands more holes then solid at this point. That and underneath the bedrock is full of natural caves and caverns and the like carved by water from the relatively weak bedrock. It's like trying to find one hole in a wheel of swiss cheese.



I would laugh my ass off.

Has there been any even half extensive offshore searches or surveys? Surely someone has thought that it might be under water off the island?

I sure hope so but you never know.

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

It would have to be a lot of treasure to make the money pit worth it. Personally - I think that it is strange that nobody has sent down a drone (robot sub) down the main shaft or a frog-man down the main shaft to the treasure room.... Wouldn't that work?

They don't know where the original treasure shaft was, because so many people have dug random pits over the last century.

They did sink one shaft down to a void space, and sent ROV's and divers down there, but there was so much silt and sediment in the water you could not see anything.

 

[Driftless]

[QUOT

They don't know where the original treasure shaft was, because so many people have dug random pits over the last century.

They did sink one shaft down to a void space, and sent ROV's and divers down there, but there was so much silt and sediment in the water you could not see anything.

The propulsion from the ROV's stir up the muck so you don't see much.

Didn't they do some elementary scanning of the sea floor - closer to shore? IIRC, that was done to help locate the outlets of the drainage/flood tunnels.

 

[Dilvish]

As someone else said no one can find the main shaft. There's been like two hundred years of almost sustained mad digging. The islands more holes then solid at this point. That and underneath the bedrock is full of natural caves and caverns and the like carved by water from the relatively weak bedrock. It's like trying to find one hole in a wheel of swiss cheese.

Ah, then it could be drow, dwarves, mermen, etc.

Or, "I hear something. What is it? Drums! Drums in the deep!"

 

[Zheng He]

Ah, then it could be drow, dwarves, mermen, etc.

Or, "I hear something. What is it? Drums! Drums in the deep!"

They are coming...

 

[Father Maryland]

Ah, then it could be drow, dwarves, mermen, etc.

Or, "I hear something. What is it? Drums! Drums in the deep!"

Well in case of any of those freaks start acting up I suggest sending in the Navy equipped with a few Kilotons of Instant Sunshine.

Mermen and Dwarves really hate being nuked. Not sure what a Drow is but I'm guessing there none to fond of it either.

 

[GeographyDude]

Theres academic studies on that. One of my acquaintances David Sedivic was doing research on this back in the early 1990s at Purdue University. Specifically in this case on office rumors.

In an office rumor, I think it could be 20 minutes. And it would be a combo of plausibility / believeable and then, how way out and neat the story was, those are the ones which would spread like wildfire.

In the case of Oak Island, maybe just a couple of days, to friends, acquaintances, friends of friends. Or slower, if people are doing a better job of keeping it secret, but of course that's part of the spiciness. So maybe a matter of several years. And then perhaps a newspaper article, even a minimally investigate "human interest" article.

 

[GeographyDude]

Skeptical Inquirer Volume 24.2, March / April 2000

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/secrets_of_oak_island

' . . . Doubts begin with the reported discovery in 1795 of the treasure shaft itself. While some accounts say that the trio of youths spied an old ship's pulley hanging from a branch over a depression in the ground (Harris 1958, 6-8), that is “likely an apocryphal detail added to the story later” and based on the assumption that some sort of lowering device would have been necessary in depositing the treasure (O'Connor 1988, 4). Nevertheless some authors are remarkably specific about the features, one noting that the “old tackle block” was attached to “a large forked branch” of an oak “by means of a treenail connecting the fork in a small triangle" (Crooker 1978, 17). Another account (cited in Finnan 1997, 28) further claims there were “strange markings” carved on the tree. On the other hand, perhaps realizing that pirates or other treasure hoarders would have been unlikely to betray their secret work by leaving such an obvious indicator in place, some versions of the tale agree that the limb “had been sawed off” but that “the stump showed evidence of ropes and tackle” (Randle 1995, 75). . . '

They probably should have went with one or the other. Either the youths found the sawed off stump, or found a limb showing evidence of ropes and tackle, over the depression in the ground.

And then, we come to the very interesting aspect that people will sometimes argue from the fact that the story isn't perfect to the conclusion that it hasn't just been made up. Because if someone had simply made it up, they would have done a better job of it. I think this overlooks the way urban legends develop in an almost organic fashion, imperfections and all.

 

[GeographyDude]

I'll absolutely give you that. 300 years of the telephone game, and...

I think you mean 200+ years, right?

 

[Ditzy Vixen (RossN)]

I think it depends on two different but related things:

a) What they find & b) when they find it.

A discovery of buried pirate booty in the 19th century would make someone (or a group of someones) rich but would quickly be forgotten by most. A similar discovery in the era in which Oak Island is internationally famous would bring a lot more fame and probably spur a lot of interest in other 'legends' like the Lost Dutchman's Mine.

 

[weasel_airlift]

I think you mean 200+ years, right?

Yes. I was thinking the whole hullabaloo was 1690s, it was a century later.

 

[wtw]

I think it is the oldest con game in history, you look at the island, its probably shit for farming and the original owners told a story to pass it off and its grown and grown over the centuries to where it is now. They are never going find anything of any real value there.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

.... Has there been any even half extensive offshore searches or surveys? Surely someone has thought that it might be under water off the island?

In the 19th & early 20th Centuries there were searches in & near the tide zone for the mouths of the flood tunnels.