Marco: Blackbeard’s Treasure, Bones, and Assateague Island

Tonight’s episode of Bones dealt with the legend of Assateague Island. Now, most people aren’t going to know what that legend is. Truth told, I didn’t know what it was until a coworker, come friend, The issue is that the show reignites, or will probably do more to do reignite the fervor behind the myth of Blackbeard’s treasure than anything else.

The problem I have with the episode, or with the myth, isn’t that Blackbeard didn’t hide treasure on the island in an old weapons cache, but that he dug it down two hundred feet, one hundred feet, or even seventy five feet. The problem is that the water table, due to elevation above sea level is only about thirty to thirty-five feet beneath the surface. What that means is that you go beneath that mark and the hole fills up with water. That’s how a well works. Hit the water table and seepage from ground water fills the hole.

Blackbeard may not have known about water tables, or he may have been a freaking genius, it doesn’t matter, either way, to me. What is true is that for his crew to have created traps that allowed seawater to enter this hole he would’ve had to create long channels from his cache to the sea to allow water in. On top of that these channels would have to remain watertight for, what, three hundred years. That means that no water can seep through until the traps have been tripped. Sounds a lot like an Indiana Jones plot more than actual pirate treasure.

It would be great for treasure to be down there; for Blackbeard to be genius enough to create this complex hole where he hid his treasure, and god forbid, no one else on the whole planet being smart enough to find it, work past the traps, or work through the interstitions and find what professionals and others have found impossible. The word used, rather than impossible or non-existent, is curse.

Now, when you look at satellite imagery you can see that the ground has not been disturbed to create furrows or channels to allow seawater in. What this means is that unless Blackbeard had midgets tunneling for him, he would’ve had to dig a channel down from the surface, created support structures, and then backfilled.

Why I bring this up is that geological data from around the world shows that something like this doesn’t heal within three hundred years. There would be evidence when pictures are taken through satellite imagery.

Further, anytime you drop below a water table you automatically lose integrity of a hole. The walls lose stability. There are cave-ins. People die. Oh wait, I just described Blackbeard’s alleged treasure pit on Assateague Island. Go figure.

Treasure? Nope. Nice myth. Oh yeah.

One of these days I will write about my fascination with treasure, buried, sunken, and otherwise. Not tonight.