Customer Reviews

Oak Island Gold: Startling New Discoveries in the World's Most Famous Treasure Hunt

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William Crooker delves into the ever-deepening mystery surrounding the alleged treasure trove on Oak Island in Nova Scotia. He follows the 200 year history from the discovery of a depression in the ground under a solitary tree to the present devesation and attempted preservation of the most baffling puzzle ever discovered. He adds new insight and debunks some very popular theories about the origins of the "Money Pit." Crooker's native roots lend credibility and authority to his investigation. If you are a fan of mystery and intrigue, this tale of pirates, ghosts, and booby-traps is a MUST READ! The gold foil-embossed cover alone will knock your socks off!

I grew up just down the road from Oak Island (in Bridgewater, N.S.), so have always been passingly familiar with the legend of buried treasure on the island. The folk wisdom in Lunenburg County is that there is a pirate's treasure trove buried on the island, probably Captain Kidd's (as evidenced by the proliferation of that particular buccaneer's name in restaurant and gift-shop titles). That it has an immense value is also "self-evident" because of the booby-traps set up to foil treasure hunters - and the traps have had the upper hand for the last 230 years!

Crooker takes us through the various searches on the island, starting with the original find in the latter 18th century. Interspersed are chapters dealing with the various legends surrounding the island, including some of the superstitions (pirates would bury someone with the treasure so their ghost would guard it, for instance). Oddly, he does not repeat the local legend that the treasure will not be found until 10 lives (I think that's the number) have been claimed, or until all the oak trees on the island are cut down. He convincingly debunks the idea that pirates could be responsible (they wouldn't be disciplined, educated, or have the time to construct such elaborate traps). He then procedes to present and eliminate a host of other theories - conquistadores, Incas, Templars, Marie Antoinette, etc. He eventually settles on a favourite of the English king George III as the most likely suspect - why and how I'll leave for you to discover.

Unfortunately, the book is somewhat dry - Crooker is an engineer and the description of the various digs are analysed as an engineer, complete with the number of holes drilled, depths, distances from landmarks, etc. In addition, the Oak Island mystery is going to leave a reader unsatisfied because the treasure hunt has not been solved, and is currently bogged down with lawsuits and ownership battles. Crooker does his best to make such wranglings interesting, and in fact the last few chapters are by far the best of the book.

Very interesting tale of one of the many searches for pirate treasure, rumored to be one of Captain Kidd's booty's hidden on Oak Island in Nova Scotia Canada. The book arrived as expected in like new condition. I would recommend this dealer for book purchases and will search his stock for more in the future.

William S. Crooker has written an extremely interesting chronicle of the public "treasure hunt" on Oak Island, Nova Scotia which dates from the end of the 18th century. This is not a dry scholarly account but the narrative of a man obviously very familiar with the local Nova Scotia situation and acting as advocate for the "powers of the island". From the earliest accidental discovery of antiquated subterranean construction on the island to the modern bulldozer level operations, Crooker describes in detail punctuated with exclamatory, humorous asides the saga of "experts" in sequence who attempted to excavate and probe the mysterious underground structure and lost lives and fortunes in that contest with the unknown.
Notable in this book is the inclusion of unsolved aspects of the Oak Island quest which may relate to the supernatural, other unexplained environmental causes and a larger view of the strangely punishing enigma located there. Mr. Crooker, a trained surveyor and engineer who died of pulmonary fibrosis in 2005, was canny enough to objectively observe the odd subtext of the Oak Island situation. He includes in his book the instance of Harold T. Wilson of London, England who wrote a fictional book about the privateer Captain Kidd published in 1937. Wilson, who later claimed to be the reincarnation of a pirate, had not been aware of the actual existence of Oak Island, NS but had drawn as a book illustration a fictional "pirate map" so close to the actual scale of Oak Island that it was used as a possible source of information for real treasure hunters. In his narrative of this odd dilemma, Mr. Crooker captures, as other writers on the island's enigma have omitted, the sense of supernatural (rather than conspiratorial) connectives extending into social and political contexts beyond the region of Maritime Canada. He was by all accounts the only reporter to date who has been able to obtain unique information on Nova Scotia surveyor Fred Nolan's mystical involvement within a nexus of serendipity and accident involving ownership of a key area of the island. The reader will be most intrigued to contemplate how Mr. Nolan actually came into possession of the Oak Island property by a clerical omission which singularly indicated as free property a certain area of land later surveyed by Nolan as containing significant archeological markers. It seems also from other occurrences as narrated that the island itself may be indicating "areas of interest" and blocking certain excavations in a mysterious way.
Perhaps the fate of maritime explorers who stumbled upon and roundabout Oak Island is closely linked to an unspoken historical subplot in the fate of nations. Whether or not one agrees with Mr. Crooker's recent opinion that an unexplained subterranean structure on Oak Island , NS, relates to intrigues between rival commanders then under the British Crown or his earlier view, detailed in a previous book, that an early civilization with advanced technology wished to conceal something on the island, this book gives an intelligent panorama of the "treasure hunting" situation and should be read by serious scholars. Certainly, the realistic, detailed accounts of underground cavities given in this book have provoked in the present reviewer inquiry related to limestone caves beneath Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia which may figure in the larger enigma.

Crooker's research travels the reader through time; time spent by individuals who lost their resources and lives in search. He is not defiant of those myths and stories that give possibility to what lies below but is observant to these fables as a tool in which to build and solve the puzzle of "the money pit." Crooker's research into the sacking of Havana during the seven year war indicates a keen and logical approach to the "who," "what," and "when." This is a must read for those with interest in lost treasure and the unfathomable chase of their childhood dreams. Edward J. Palmer, VA, USA