Treasure hunters again probe island

Charles Mandel, CanWest News Service

HALIFAX, N.S. - So far the island has refused to yield its secret. But in the next few weeks a team of five men will try once again to uncover the treasure believed to be buried on Nova Scotia's Oak Island.

The 43-hectare island in Mahone Bay is rumoured to hold everything from a wealth of Spanish gold and silver to the lost manuscripts of William Shakespeare, but years of searching has confounded any and all treasure-hunters to date, including Franklin Roosevelt and John Wayne.

The most tenacious of the Oak Island treasure hunters, Dan Blankenship, has teamed up with four Americans and they are prepared to sink $200,000 into drilling and research. Now in his early 80s, Blankenship -- a former Miami construction contractor-- lives on the island which he has explored for more than 30 years.

Craig Tester, a partner in a Michigan-based oil and gas drilling firm and one of the consortium members, said in a phone interview Wednesday he believes the island holds gold and silver that came from the Inca or Mayan empires. Tester figures Spanish or British ships raided the fabled empires and buried it on the island.

Tester compared treasure hunting on Oak Island to prospecting or wildcatting for oil wells.
Tester said he didn't have a clue what the treasure might be worth since he wasn't certain what might be buried on Oak Island. However, when Blankenship tried to sell the island for $7-million in 2004, he said the price tag should really be $50-million to take into account the legendary riches.

The consortium plans to focus some of the work on the so-called Borehole 10-X, a 235-foot-deep hole which Blankenship drilled in the 1970s and which nearly took his life. The hole nearly became the treasure hunter's grave one year when, just as he began climbing out, the shaft collapsed beneath him.

The group hopes to carbon date some of the material excavated. Tester said they'd like to get a good scientific analysis on some of the material, something not done previously. Anywhere from 50 to 100 holes have been drilled to date.

The belief Oak Island harbours treasure began in 1795 when a teenager discovered a man-made underground shaft, since infamously called the Money Pit. It is believed Captain William Kidd or other pirates stashed their treasure there, although new theories hold that undiscovered manuscripts of Shakespeare are in the shaft which regularly floods.

Claire Campbell, a historian at Halifax's Dalhousie University, said she thinks the greatest treasure of Oak Island is the place itself.