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.
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