About This Artifact
During Captain Henry Bowdoin's 1909 campaign, a bright disc of metal is reported to have come up in one length of drill core from the Money Pit. Bowdoin, a New York engineer who promised that modern machinery would solve the mystery in short order, cleared the old timbers from the pit with a clam bucket to 113 feet, sent a diver down to inspect it, and began drilling from 116 feet. His main hole passed through seventeen feet of gravel and sand, sixteen feet of blue clay mixed with stones, a six-inch piece of what looked like cement at 149 feet, and yellow clay before reaching bedrock at 167 feet. Twenty-seven further borings reached bedrock between 155 and 171 feet and showed cement six to ten inches thick, but nothing that could be read as chests or a vault.
Graham Harris and Les MacPhie record the disc in a single sentence and add that nothing else is known about it. Its size, metal and depth were not reported. The cement from the same campaign received two verdicts: Columbia University called it natural limestone pitted by the action of water, while another report described it as rock-like material that appeared to be man-made. Harris and MacPhie suggest that Bowdoin's holes ran toward the side of the old shaft rather than its center, which would explain why he passed through wood and metal without the difficulty the 1897 drillers met. Bowdoin left the island in 1911 after Frederick Blair refused to extend his permit, and later published an article in Collier's Magazine arguing that the treasure did not exist.
Historical Context
Graham Harris and Les MacPhie, Oak Island and its Lost Treasure, third edition (Formac Publishing, Halifax, 2013), chapter 5.
Where It Was Found
Found at Drill core from Captain Henry Bowdoin's borings in the Money Pit, drilled from 116 ft to bedrock at 155 to 171 ft; depth of the disc not recorded. Location: the original 1795 excavation shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia.
