About This Artifact
Fragments of china were brought up from below 123 feet during drilling in the Money Pit area in 1934. The work was carried out by the Canadian Oak Island Treasure Company, formed in 1933 when Frederick Blair, who held the treasure rights, reached an agreement with Thomas Nixon of Victoria, British Columbia. The company was capitalized at $225,000 and in 1934 put down fourteen boreholes to depths of up to 176 feet. Graham Harris and Les MacPhie describe the results as tantalizing: bits of oak came up alongside the china, with the china recovered from below 123 feet. The company disbanded shortly afterward.
The find is one in a long sequence of ceramic recoveries from depth at the Money Pit. The Becker drilling program of 1967 brought up blue and white china from below 180 feet in Hole B24, and Hole B25 produced china from a bedrock cavity at 202 to 209 feet. How the 1934 fragments relate to those finds cannot be established, since no description, photograph or analysis of them survives in the published record. By 1934 the Money Pit had been dug, flooded, collapsed and dug again by searchers for well over a century, so fragments from an earlier searcher's camp could also have found their way into the fill.
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 Boreholes in the Money Pit area, below 123 ft. Location: the original 1795 excavation shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia.
