The Oak Island Mystery by Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe Page A
Authors: Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe
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they had already been able to study of the artificial beach with its drainage system and filter-blankets had given them a fair idea of where the flood tunnel would run.
They decided to try to intercept and block that main tunnel itself rather than attempt any further work on the artificial beach at Smithâs Cove. Drawing a line from the point where the beach drains seemed to converge back to the Money Pit itself, they selected a likely looking point on that line and began to dig. The expected course of events was as shown in the upper diagram: the interceptor shaft would meet the flood tunnel at a depth considerably less than the presumed junction with the Money Pit at 110 feet after which the lower course of the flood tunnel could be blocked.
Thirty, forty, fifty feet: the interceptor shaft cut deeper and deeper. Just short of eighty feet, they gave up: it couldnât be this deep and still connect with the ninety-five-foot level, or could it?
It did not seem to have occurred to the Truro team that the cunning artificer against whom they were pitting their wits might just have decided to take his flood tunnel deeper than anyone would dig to intercept it, and then allow the natural hydraulic forces to push the water up again to the critical ninety-foot level in the Money Pit, as shown in the lower diagram.
Rightly or wrongly, the Truro man began digging a second interceptor tunnel ten or twelve feet south of their seventy-five-foot failure. Between thirty and forty feet down in this new shaft they hit a substantial boulder. Prizing it out with considerable difficulty, they were deluged with water: they had found at least one of the flood tunnels, or, perhaps, an upper branch of a flood tunnel. As the diggers scrambled out of their newly dug interceptor shaft, salt water welled up rapidly until it reached sea level. Whatever passageway that boulder had been covering, it undoubtedly connected with the Atlantic.
Working with considerable difficulty, they did what they could to staunch the flow by driving heavy wooden stakes down into the base of their shaft and attempting to block the tunnel with clay. It was only a partial success. When they began trying to bail out the Money Pit again they lowered the level a little, but nowhere near enough to make further excavation possible.
Not really knowing what to try next, they resorted to the old formula of a parallel shaft either to drain the Money Pit or to make it possible to tunnel across to remove the treasure horizontally. Predictably, this re-run of previous failures led to yet another ignominious retreat up yet another flooded shaft.
This was the ironic end of the Truroâs teamâs endeavours: no more capital could be raised just when the explorers were more convinced than ever that a vast treasure lay in the depths of the Money Pit: inaccessible â yet tantalizingly close.
- 5 -
The Drain and Tunnel System
J otham B. McCully and his Truro men had discovered the amazing drainage system and the artificial beach at Smithâs Cove. It partly answered the question of how water was reaching the Money Pit below the ninety-foot level, but it raised many more questions than it answered.
Looked at as a problem in basic logistics, there is: the construction of the coffer dam; the removal of the natural sand and clay from that area; the location, transportation, and embedding of the stones and boulders; the planning and laying of the five fan-shaped drains; the digging of at least one â possibly two or three â flood tunnels; and the accurate connection of the tunnel, or tunnels, to the Money Pit at depths greater than ninety feet. By calculating the size of the coffer dam; the area and depth of the artificial beach; the amount of clay which would have had to be removed from the tunnel and dumped elsewhere ⦠and various other factors, a broad idea of the number of man-hours could be estimated.
Some types of work are totally flexible in their
They decided to try to intercept and block that main tunnel itself rather than attempt any further work on the artificial beach at Smithâs Cove. Drawing a line from the point where the beach drains seemed to converge back to the Money Pit itself, they selected a likely looking point on that line and began to dig. The expected course of events was as shown in the upper diagram: the interceptor shaft would meet the flood tunnel at a depth considerably less than the presumed junction with the Money Pit at 110 feet after which the lower course of the flood tunnel could be blocked.
Thirty, forty, fifty feet: the interceptor shaft cut deeper and deeper. Just short of eighty feet, they gave up: it couldnât be this deep and still connect with the ninety-five-foot level, or could it?
It did not seem to have occurred to the Truro team that the cunning artificer against whom they were pitting their wits might just have decided to take his flood tunnel deeper than anyone would dig to intercept it, and then allow the natural hydraulic forces to push the water up again to the critical ninety-foot level in the Money Pit, as shown in the lower diagram.
Rightly or wrongly, the Truro man began digging a second interceptor tunnel ten or twelve feet south of their seventy-five-foot failure. Between thirty and forty feet down in this new shaft they hit a substantial boulder. Prizing it out with considerable difficulty, they were deluged with water: they had found at least one of the flood tunnels, or, perhaps, an upper branch of a flood tunnel. As the diggers scrambled out of their newly dug interceptor shaft, salt water welled up rapidly until it reached sea level. Whatever passageway that boulder had been covering, it undoubtedly connected with the Atlantic.
Working with considerable difficulty, they did what they could to staunch the flow by driving heavy wooden stakes down into the base of their shaft and attempting to block the tunnel with clay. It was only a partial success. When they began trying to bail out the Money Pit again they lowered the level a little, but nowhere near enough to make further excavation possible.
Not really knowing what to try next, they resorted to the old formula of a parallel shaft either to drain the Money Pit or to make it possible to tunnel across to remove the treasure horizontally. Predictably, this re-run of previous failures led to yet another ignominious retreat up yet another flooded shaft.
This was the ironic end of the Truroâs teamâs endeavours: no more capital could be raised just when the explorers were more convinced than ever that a vast treasure lay in the depths of the Money Pit: inaccessible â yet tantalizingly close.
- 5 -
The Drain and Tunnel System
J otham B. McCully and his Truro men had discovered the amazing drainage system and the artificial beach at Smithâs Cove. It partly answered the question of how water was reaching the Money Pit below the ninety-foot level, but it raised many more questions than it answered.
Looked at as a problem in basic logistics, there is: the construction of the coffer dam; the removal of the natural sand and clay from that area; the location, transportation, and embedding of the stones and boulders; the planning and laying of the five fan-shaped drains; the digging of at least one â possibly two or three â flood tunnels; and the accurate connection of the tunnel, or tunnels, to the Money Pit at depths greater than ninety feet. By calculating the size of the coffer dam; the area and depth of the artificial beach; the amount of clay which would have had to be removed from the tunnel and dumped elsewhere ⦠and various other factors, a broad idea of the number of man-hours could be estimated.
Some types of work are totally flexible in their
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