The Oak Island Mystery by Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe Page B
Authors: Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe
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December of 1900, Fred Blair had very astutely gained complete control of the Oak Island Treasure Company. A fifty-year battle with the Money Pit lay ahead of him. For the time being, however, with insufficient resources to launch another large scale onslaught on the treasureâs defences, Fred contented himself with keeping up his $100 annual lease with Sophia Sellers and his Nova Scotian treasure trove licence with the government. His long-term future strategy was to find enthusiastic adventurers with ample financial backing who would take over the Oak Island action and divide the spoils with him when the treasure was eventually recovered.
Throughout the long years until his death in 1951, Fred never doubted that something of immense value lay below the island. Through two world wars, the Great Depression and the rush of technology from horses and buggies to nuclear bombs and computers, Fred Blair was totally dedicated to solving the mystery of the Oak Island Money Pit.
The first of his many partners did not turn out well. Captain Harry Bowdoin was a flamboyant adventurer with a flair for publicity and a background in engineering. His energy and confidence were boundless: his financial resources were not. He founded âThe Old Gold Salvage and Wrecking Companyâ in April 1909. It had an authorized capital of $250,000 but sold barely $5,000 worth to shareholders.
Bowdoin was widely publicized in an article in the New York Herald of March 18, 1909, as a master mariner and pilot. He was said to have wide engineering skills covering machinery, mining, and marine work. His alleged experience included government contracts for harbours and bridges. He was also reported to be licensed as a diver. Bowdoin was brashly confident that he could â⦠solve in a jiffy the difficulties Captain Kidd had made to guard his treasure â¦â Bowdoin claimed that he could clear up in a fortnight the problems all the previous treasure hunters had failed to solve over the past hundred years. It would be little more than a casual vacation for him.
There is a particularly relevant line from I Kings 20: 11, âLet not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.â
The Bowdoin offices at 44 Broadway, New York, were prestigious. So were the companyâs front runners: Bowdoin himself was president; Fred Blair had the vice presidency; the company secretary was an accountant named G.D. Mosher; a New York lawyer, L.H. Andrews, was their treasurer, and the same Captain Welling who had lost $4,000 during his previous entanglement with the Money Pit served on the board of directors. Among the $5,000 worth of shares, a few had been sold to a singularly able young lawyer named Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then working for Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn of New York.
As a child, F.D.R. had spent many summer vacations on Campobello, an island between Maine and New Brunswick. Already a competent sailor by the time he was six years old, he met and talked to many seafarers in the area about the Oak Island mystery. When he was only sixteen, the young Roosevelt sailed with a friend to Grand Manan Island in search of Captain Kiddâs treasure, which legend said lay buried there. Their expedition is strangely reminiscent of the adventure which the youthful Smith, Vaughan, and McGinnis had on their first visit to Oak Island in 1795. Small wonder, then, that F.D.R. was interested in supporting Bowdoinâs treasure hunting syndicate in 1909. It was an interest that never died. Even as president, with the New Deal and the Second World War to occupy his attention, Roosevelt was always glad to receive reports about the latest events on Oak Island.
In his wide-ranging and abundantly confident prospectus, Bowdoin outlined his plan to locate the treasure by drilling and then to cut off the flood tunnels by driving interlocking steel sheets into them. Once heâd located the treasure and cut off the water,
Throughout the long years until his death in 1951, Fred never doubted that something of immense value lay below the island. Through two world wars, the Great Depression and the rush of technology from horses and buggies to nuclear bombs and computers, Fred Blair was totally dedicated to solving the mystery of the Oak Island Money Pit.
The first of his many partners did not turn out well. Captain Harry Bowdoin was a flamboyant adventurer with a flair for publicity and a background in engineering. His energy and confidence were boundless: his financial resources were not. He founded âThe Old Gold Salvage and Wrecking Companyâ in April 1909. It had an authorized capital of $250,000 but sold barely $5,000 worth to shareholders.
Bowdoin was widely publicized in an article in the New York Herald of March 18, 1909, as a master mariner and pilot. He was said to have wide engineering skills covering machinery, mining, and marine work. His alleged experience included government contracts for harbours and bridges. He was also reported to be licensed as a diver. Bowdoin was brashly confident that he could â⦠solve in a jiffy the difficulties Captain Kidd had made to guard his treasure â¦â Bowdoin claimed that he could clear up in a fortnight the problems all the previous treasure hunters had failed to solve over the past hundred years. It would be little more than a casual vacation for him.
There is a particularly relevant line from I Kings 20: 11, âLet not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.â
The Bowdoin offices at 44 Broadway, New York, were prestigious. So were the companyâs front runners: Bowdoin himself was president; Fred Blair had the vice presidency; the company secretary was an accountant named G.D. Mosher; a New York lawyer, L.H. Andrews, was their treasurer, and the same Captain Welling who had lost $4,000 during his previous entanglement with the Money Pit served on the board of directors. Among the $5,000 worth of shares, a few had been sold to a singularly able young lawyer named Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then working for Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn of New York.
As a child, F.D.R. had spent many summer vacations on Campobello, an island between Maine and New Brunswick. Already a competent sailor by the time he was six years old, he met and talked to many seafarers in the area about the Oak Island mystery. When he was only sixteen, the young Roosevelt sailed with a friend to Grand Manan Island in search of Captain Kiddâs treasure, which legend said lay buried there. Their expedition is strangely reminiscent of the adventure which the youthful Smith, Vaughan, and McGinnis had on their first visit to Oak Island in 1795. Small wonder, then, that F.D.R. was interested in supporting Bowdoinâs treasure hunting syndicate in 1909. It was an interest that never died. Even as president, with the New Deal and the Second World War to occupy his attention, Roosevelt was always glad to receive reports about the latest events on Oak Island.
In his wide-ranging and abundantly confident prospectus, Bowdoin outlined his plan to locate the treasure by drilling and then to cut off the flood tunnels by driving interlocking steel sheets into them. Once heâd located the treasure and cut off the water,
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