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Book Review: Money Pit: The Mystery of Oak Island, by Rupert Furneaux
Saturday, April 2nd, 2005 10:37 pmAt a secondhand book sale the other week, encountering a copy of Money Pit: The Mystery of Oak Island, by Rupert Furneaux, which I read and enjoyed as a child twenty years ago, I decided to buy it and read it again.
It tells the story of the attempts by people over the course of two centuries to recover the treasure supposedly buried on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Discovered by a teenager in 1795, the Money Pit was excavated down to ninety-two feet, where there was tantalising evidence of treasure chests just below. The workmen knocked off the day, when they came back the next day they found it filled with water to the thirty-three foot level.
It turned out the Money Pit is protected by an ingeniously engineered system of flood tunnels connecting it to the sea, and refilled faster than all early attempts to pump it dry. Just when the technology began to improve, the pit caved in and the presumed treasure dropped, it was thought, to the 150 foot level.
I went on to gleefully read how every further attempt to excavate the Money Pit either failed, or made matters more difficult for future excavators, or both. I firmly resisted the temptation to Google to see if any further developments have been made since 1972, when the book was written; the answer turns out still to be no. The Money Pit still retains its secrets - including that of who dug it, and why. Theories abound, ranging from Captain Kidd or other early eighteenth century pirates to... but no; you'll have to read the book to learn Furneaux's own theory.
I was also amused to see how less credulous I was than when I first read it all those years ago. :o)
In summary, a thoroughly delightful little book, if you can get hold of a copy of it. (I have no doubt that more recent books, still in print, have also been written on the subject.)
It tells the story of the attempts by people over the course of two centuries to recover the treasure supposedly buried on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Discovered by a teenager in 1795, the Money Pit was excavated down to ninety-two feet, where there was tantalising evidence of treasure chests just below. The workmen knocked off the day, when they came back the next day they found it filled with water to the thirty-three foot level.
It turned out the Money Pit is protected by an ingeniously engineered system of flood tunnels connecting it to the sea, and refilled faster than all early attempts to pump it dry. Just when the technology began to improve, the pit caved in and the presumed treasure dropped, it was thought, to the 150 foot level.
I went on to gleefully read how every further attempt to excavate the Money Pit either failed, or made matters more difficult for future excavators, or both. I firmly resisted the temptation to Google to see if any further developments have been made since 1972, when the book was written; the answer turns out still to be no. The Money Pit still retains its secrets - including that of who dug it, and why. Theories abound, ranging from Captain Kidd or other early eighteenth century pirates to... but no; you'll have to read the book to learn Furneaux's own theory.
I was also amused to see how less credulous I was than when I first read it all those years ago. :o)
In summary, a thoroughly delightful little book, if you can get hold of a copy of it. (I have no doubt that more recent books, still in print, have also been written on the subject.)
