About This Material
Specks of a silvery substance came up mixed with the clay at the end of a boring tool in a drill-hole put down near the Money Pit by a driller named Baker. On inspection the substance proved to be free mercury, the liquid metal in its elemental state. The only surviving reference to Baker's work is in The Oak Island Enigma, a 1953 booklet by Thomas Leary, which records a conversation between Baker and Gilbert Hedden, the businessman from Chatham, New Jersey, who took over the search in 1936. Because that conversation took place in 1934, the drilling came before it. Graham Harris and Les MacPhie suggest it may have been part of the 1934 program of the Canadian Oak Island Treasure Company, or a separate effort.
Harris and MacPhie note that free mercury does not occur naturally except in unusual geological settings. It is produced by roasting cinnabar, a mercury sulfide ore, and before the middle of the nineteenth century it was used to separate gold from ore and to back glass mirrors with tin amalgam. Because most New World sources of mercury lay within reach of the Spanish colonial empire, the authors see a possible link between the contents of the Money Pit and New Spain. The depth of the find, the quantity recovered and the fate of the sample are not recorded, and the account does not say whether mercury was ever used in the equipment or operations of earlier searchers at the site.
Historical Context
Graham Harris and Les MacPhie, Oak Island and its Lost Treasure, third edition (Formac Publishing, Halifax, 2013), chapter 5. Primary reference: Thomas P. Leary, The Oak Island Enigma (Omaha, 1953), recording an exchange between Gilbert Hedden and Baker in 1934.
Where It Was Found
Found at Drill-hole near the Money Pit put down by a driller named Baker; depth not recorded. Location: the original 1795 excavation shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia.
