Читать книгу The Oak Island Mystery - Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe - Страница 11

The Drain and Tunnel System

Jotham B. McCully and his Truro men had discovered the amazing drainage system and the artificial beach at Smith’s Cove. It partly answered the question of how water was reaching the Money Pit below the ninety-foot level, but it raised many more questions than it answered.

Looked at as a problem in basic logistics, there is: the construction of the coffer dam; the removal of the natural sand and clay from that area; the location, transportation, and embedding of the stones and boulders; the planning and laying of the five fan-shaped drains; the digging of at least one — possibly two or three — flood tunnels; and the accurate connection of the tunnel, or tunnels, to the Money Pit at depths greater than ninety feet. By calculating the size of the coffer dam; the area and depth of the artificial beach; the amount of clay which would have had to be removed from the tunnel and dumped elsewhere … and various other factors, a broad idea of the number of man-hours could be estimated.

Some types of work are totally flexible in their homogeneity and their consequent man-hour implications. For example, some jobs can be done equally well by one man taking eighty hours, by ten men taking eight hours or by 160 men taking half an hour. Other tasks have specific requirements which make team work more effective than individual work. Some work theatres’ physical and spatial limitations make large teams impractical.

Only one or two men at a time can cut away at the same narrow seam face in certain mines, for example. Other occupations need forty or fifty powerful workers operating simultaneously to raise a heavy mast, or to haul a ship up a beach to be careened. A work-study expert could devise an optimum number of workers for each of the various sub-tasks involved in creating the Money Pit and its ancillary drainage and tunnels systems. Experts might reach marginally different conclusions, but they would be in broad agreement about the size of the work force required to complete the whole job in a reasonable time. Unless we are prepared to consider a project that would stretch into years rather than months, we must envisage a work force of at least thirty people, with the necessary picks, shovels, ropes, pulleys, trolleys, sledges, barrels, and carts to make the job possible.

At the back of all this physical effort there has to be inspired planning: careful, accurate designing and effective administration and organization. The Oak Island engineers and miners needed food, drink, clothing, and shelter — not just for basic humanitarian reasons, but simply to keep them functioning effectively. The least caring slave exploiter provided the minimal conditions necessary to keep his slaves working. It was enlightened self-interest.

To try to understand the Oak Island Money Pit mystery, the investigator must attempt to answer these questions in connection with the artificial beach, the drains, the filters and the flood tunnels:

(a) Who had the engineering and administrative skills to plan and organize all of this?

(b) Who had the necessary work force available: voluntary, coerced, enslaved, or otherwise?

(c) Who had the time to keep that workforce on site for several months while the huge task was completed?

(d) Who had the essential resources and equipment available to feed and supply that substantial work force for the duration of the original Money Pit construction work?

(e) Who had the necessary motivation to initiate the whole amazing project in the first place, and the stamina to see it through to a satisfactory conclusion?

(f) Who believed that the contents of the Money Pit, the mysterious “x” which the pit and its flood system was built to protect, was really worth all that time, effort, planning, and organization?