Photo Source: New England Historical Society
If you're not familiar with the story of Dungeon Rock and its legendary pirate treasure, I recommend you read this short article for the background of this intriguing tale that took place in the mid-1600s:
When I went out to see Dungeon Rock, I noticed a rock carving across the plateau. I noticed the same shape in the trail that loops around Dungeon Rock - it's a map that leads you to the "E" drilled into a rock nearly a mile away.
Photos: Lisa G. Robinton
Photo Source: Friends of Lynn Woods on Facebook
Luckily, I recognize what this means, pirates used these dots (or sometimes a slant mark) to designate distance.
It's based on the ancient measurement of "varas" which were the length of a Spanish soldier's stride. We adopted this into our system as "paces" but pirates would use this to also designate longer measurements, even miles. Note: At the time these pirates were here, metric had not yet been introduced. But what measurement did they use? Feet, hundreds of feet, or miles?
And how is the "E" oriented on the ground? Well, that's where the other part of the carving comes in handy.
The two dots are "anchors" which help to orient the E on the map. I tried several measurements, but a hundred feet for each dot worked best and put the treasure spot on high ground, as any decent pirate worth their salt would do! The red location marker on the picture below is the drilled E stone.
Source: Google Maps, with E plotted
Right at the spot that I thought the treasure should be was the depression of a perfect large rectangle - a bit larger than the size of a treasure chest! My instruments can see down 100 ft in 3D and unfortunately no sign of the treasure (left photo). It would show up in red, like the quick scan of this pipe (right photo).
Treasure chest-sized depression:
The pipe looks choppy because
I scanned too quickly.
It's very hard to see in the photo below but it was a relatively deep depression. When the hole was filled back in, the dirt settled. The depth of the depression was appropriate for 400 years of settling - OR - if the volume of the chest was missing and they couldn't completely fill in the hole. (I'll try to get better pictures and measurements in the spring - this photo was taken Dec 16, 2023.).
There were signs that someone may have tried to conceal their digging by setting up a screen of sorts. They used paracord to secure two large branches across two small trees next to the hole. The paracord has cut deep into the trees so this was done several years ago, possibly even a decade or more.
This would allow you to drape something (perhaps camouflage netting) across the top branch and the bottom branch keeps the diggers from being exposed if the wind blew the tarp. . . just a theory.
Or did Thomas Veale, the only pirate NOT caught during the raid, dig up the treasure since his partners were gone . . . perhaps to bury it closer to keep an eye on it?
Veale lived in the cave at Dungeon Rock and would make trips into town for food and supplies. Maybe he reburied the treasure or had it with him in the cave when the earthquake hit and the boulder cracked, falling in on itself, sealing him and the treasure inside.