The Oak Island Treasure Map Hypothesis

[. . .]

Just for the record, I’ve re-published my Oak Island books under a slightly different title. The series is now called Maps, Mystery and Interpretation, and the books are available through Amazon. As before, there are three volumes:

1. In Search of Skeleton Island:
On the subject of treasure maps, but specifically the supposed Kidd maps.

2. Oak Island Speculation:
An essentially historical analysis of the thinking about the mystery, previously titled Oak Island Perspectives.

3. Sizing Up the Money Pit
Presenting a reconstructed ground plan of the island incorporating known ground markers and, by applying the instructions on the maps to this, suggesting a location for the assumed treasure other than in the Money Pit. It includes the proposed plan to test the hypothesis.

Book 2 is unchanged since the 2002 edition (and is much as my former website). Books 1 and 3 have been updated.

[DJ King]

Hi Geoff,
Congratulations. I have been able to find Volume 2 at the Amazon.com website, at this link http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Mystery-Interpretation-Island-Speculation/dp/1903140021/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400905803&sr=8-1&keywords=oak+island+bath but have been unable to find volumes 1 and 3 - can you post links, or has Amazon.com not got around to posting volumes 1 and 3 at their website yet?
As you already know, I am not a fan of geometrical interpretations of Oak Island, and indeed I am a thorough going skeptic of the Oak Island Legend, but I will likely read your volumes once they become available on Kindle, because based on your previous works they are likely to contain little known aspects of the Oak Island Legend and will contain (whether consciously or unconsciously) references to the Masonic Symbolism of Oak Island which is of interest to me.
Regards from the South Pacific,
Dennis King.

[. . .]

Hi Dennis

Thanks, and my apologies for changing the title of this thread. A number of people observed that the sarcasm was inappropriate, and would be lost on many.

As far as I'm aware, the books are certainly all present on Amazon. If you’re having problems, try the links at http://www.gjbath.com. At present, this is just a stub, to be built up later, but it provides working links to the books on Amazon.

I know of your wariness concerning geometrical interpretations, but have always found you open-minded, and fair in your comments.

Regards

Geoff

[. . .]

For anyone at all interested, so-called ‘experts’ on the origins of the Wilkins and Palmer treasure maps have got things all wrong. This emerges from correspondence I've tracked down between Harold Wilkins, Hubert Palmer and other treasure hunters of the time. The instructions on the six pieces of paper in question could well be part of the answer to the Oak Island mystery, but nobody is interested to discover whether this might be so, because they’re not prepared to take a dispassionate look at the subject. Forget about the validity of the pieces of paper, how they were found, and who once owned them, and focus upon what’s written on them.

Too many people are obsessed with the Money Pit to the exclusion of the other ground markers on the island, particularly the Drilled Rocks and the Triangles. The possibility that the Money Pit might be nothing more than just another ground marker, and that all of these features could have been arranged so as to identify the true location of the Oak Island deposit, has become unthinkable in the eyes of too many Oak Island ‘experts’. So much so that documentaries on the mystery now ignore them, together with the instructions that work with them.

Past experience has shown that it might be asking too much to expect anyone here to set aside their prejudice long enough to look at the maps as containing instructions for finding the real location of the Oak Island deposit, by reference to the very ground markers that people have been so keen in the past to move, destroy, belittle and dismiss.

I suggest that the import of the ground markers, working in conjunction with the maps, might be summed up in a fairly simple extract from just one possible reconstruction. The key length here is 30 rods (495 feet, or 150.9m), and the prominent angles are 30, 60 and 90 degrees. The angle of magnetic variation is 13 degrees, which is the angle represented by twice the tangent of tilt at the Welling Triangle (which was found to be one-fifth that of 30 degrees).



In the diagram, MP is the Money Pit, and WDR and EDR are the drilled rocks. WT and MT are the Welling and Mallon triangles. By employing this construction, and a set of rules for interpretation, the instructions on Wilkins’ four maps identify points A, C, E, and G on the extended rhombus. Palmer’s two maps identify points D and F. Point G is at the site of the Cave-In Pit. The focus is then the X at the centre of the rhombus, which also happens to be tied to the mid-point between the Head Stone and Cone D of Nolan’s Cross.

The rhombus rectangle at the top of the diagram is a similar figure, but on magnetic bearings. This appears to be what the maps in combination are telling us: there is a significant point, also marked X, NNE of the Money Pit, together with a Money Pit equivalent. However, it's been generally decided here in the past that this has to be wrong without even looking at it.

Too many people seem to need to believe that the answer is as simple as ‘keep digging at the Money Pit’. However, the solution may intentionally have been made more intricate in order to prevent the wrong people from discovering it. I've noted a consensus here that you don’t want a geometrical solution - that “wacky geometry” can have no part in it - but this may well be precisely what we’ve been presented with by the originator. Unfortunately, we don’t get to have a say in the matter. So, might it not be better to encourage a thorough investigation rather than make such peremptory decisions?

We’re not psychic - we can’t read the originator’s mind - but if we’re prepared to open our eyes we may be able to interpret what he left us: the ground markers on the island and, perhaps, the instructions on the maps. However, the former get destroyed, and the latter get ignored. Just how is this helping to solve the Oak Island mystery?

Note: The diagram above can be drawn very quickly and easily using CAD software. The process is explained in Book 3. I use TurboCAD, which can be obtained quite cheaply on ebay, and which I find much easier to use than AutoCAD.