New Scaratings

I was first exposed to the Oak Island Mystery via Reader's Digest in the late '60's. The article included some unattested documentation, but the likelihood that treasure had been buried there, by a 17th C pirate, seemed very convincing.

For the uninitiated, Oak Island lies off the coast of Nova Scotia, and would have been within the province of William Kidd, an English privateer whose adopted home was New York Colony. Most of Kidd's naval actions took place in and around the Greater Antilles, but he would have wished to secret his winnings well away from the French and Spanish who were his prey, or even from the English crown under which he sailed. Tried for piracy on the Indian Ocean, Kidd was executed under English law in 1701.

In conversation too detailed to relate, AUVA reported that he had been watching the History Channel on this very subject, and that Oak Island had yielded up a leaden cross dated to the late medieval period, but little else. The substrate of Oak Island is too unstable not to have shifted dramatically in the last 300 years.

Within this context, I invite your opinion. Those of you who have kept current with this topic on the History Channel are very welcome. Those who take an interest in modern Masonry, even more so.

My brother and I also discovered the Oak Island legend through the Reader's Digest account. It inspired us to bury a treasure ourselves (a few coins, some small toys and a note in an old Quaker Oats cylinder). We made the mistake of entrusting the secret to one of our fellow neighborhood kids who helped us dig the pit, and when we came back to excavate it later it was gone.

It was an important lesson learned for me, but it also made me wonder if something similar at Oak Island if there ever was a treasure there in the first place.

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

ANON's failure of secrecy might well speak to the fate of the Oak Island treasure. One of the very early finds there was a treasure map, or the fragment of one (or, possibly, a forgery) which obviously described Oak Island's geography. But no pirate worth his salt is going to leave behind a key for anyone one else. On the other hand, had the pirate who buried it returned and dug up the treasure, the map would be rendered useless, and discarded like a fast food wrapper.

My more general concern is a movement in North American Freemasonry to establish direct lineage from the Knights Templar, a supposition which I believe to be groundless.