Oak Island research turns up nine archive maps: The Complete 1685-86 De Meulles Atlas Reassembled
For years, Oak Island research has started in 1795 with the Money Pit.
These nine sheets move the documented European history of Mahone Bay back 109 years earlier, to a single, continuous French Crown expedition.
The Expedition Behind All Nine Maps
In Fall 1685, Louis XIV ordered Jacques de Meulles, Intendant of Justice, Police and Finances of New France, to leave Quebec and make a complete inspection of Acadia.
The English were encroaching from Boston, French fishermen were competing with English crews drying fish on the coast, and the harbors had never been systematically sounded for naval use.
De Meulles sailed down the St. Lawrence, around Gaspé, and wrecked in the Baye des Chaleurs near Miscou Island on October 31, 1685. He continued by shallop and overland portage, surveying every usable roadstead from Chaleur to Canso. When he returned to Quebec, royal cartographer Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin — who had migrated to New France in 1671 and been appointed the colony's cartographer — compiled the results in 1686 as a single atlas:
Carte générale du voyage que Monsieur De Meulles intendant de la justice, police et finances de la Nouvelle France a fait par ordre du Roy...
Today the set is held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département Cartes et plans, GE SH 18 PF 132 DIV 2 P 2 for the master and GE SH 18 PF 133 for the harbor plans. Same handwriting, same green and ochre wash, same fleur-de-lis compass roses, same ship vignettes. That is why they are one expedition.
What the Nine Sheets Are — In the Order I will Publish Them
1. OAK ISLAND Master Map — Carte Générale. The key that holds the other eight together. This is the full route chart showing the St. Lawrence, Chaleurs, Acadia, and the Nova Scotia coast. Without it, the harbor plans look isolated. With it, they become stops on a single royal tour.
2. OAK ISLAND Portage Route — TERRES Detail.
This is a close-up from the Master Map showing Baye de Ste Marie and the text Passage de Monts / Portage de Mons. de Meulles across the TERRES. It proves De Meulles was not only sounding harbors but measuring portages — the critical logistics link between Beaubassin and Baye Verte that French engineers would later want to canalize.
3. OAK ISLAND Wreck Site — Miscou, Oct 31, 1685. Close-up from the Master Map labeled Naufrage de Monsr de Meulles Intendant le 31 d'Octobre 1685, with a whale drawing for scale. This is the accident that turned a sailing voyage into a combined land-sea survey and explains why De Meulles spent so much time in small harbors like La Have.
4. OAK ISLAND Port Royal. Plan Très Exact du Terrain où sont situées les maisons du Port Royal. The capital of Acadia, with houses, gardens, fields and the river system. Any French activity in Mahone Bay would have been administered from here.
5. OAK ISLAND Port Rossignol — Now Liverpool. Port Rossignol, Autre une Riviere qui communique au Port Royal... Il y a une isle ou Mr. De Meulles... a trouvé les Anglois faisant sécher leur poisson. De Meulles caught English crews illegally fishing here, 40 miles southwest of Mahone Bay. It proves enforcement patrols were active in the area in 1685-86.
6. OAK ISLAND La Have & Mahone Bay — La Baye de Toutes Isles — The Sheet That Matters. Le Port de la Haive, dont on peut faire le plus beau Havre de toute l'Acadie. The 1686 description says De Meulles spent four days surveying it for the Crown and that it could hold more than 2,000 vessels afloat — not that 2,000 were there, but that its capacity was rated that high, a massive strategic assessment. At the time, Mahone Bay was called La Baye de Toutes Isles — Bay of Many Islands. The bottom right of this map, which I spotted, shows that archipelago — the hundreds of islands including what would later become Island No. 28 in 1762, Smith's Island in 1768, Gloucester Isle in 1778, and eventually Oak Island. Anyone searching French archives only for "Oak Island" will never find it. You have to search Merligueche, Mushamush, and La Baye de Toutes Isles.
7. OAK ISLAND Beau Bassin / Chignitou. Extrémité de la Baye Françoise — Chignitou Beau Bassin. The head of Fundy and the Chignecto Isthmus, linking to Baye Verte and the Gulf. For your hydraulic shipyard model, this is the other end of the portage system — where a batardeau (cofferdam), carénage (careening) and radoub (repair) vocabulary becomes relevant.
8. OAK ISLAND Isle Percée. Rade de l'Isle Percée. Percé Rock with fishing stages and fleet in the roadstead. Shows the Gulf entrance and how French charts recorded rade — roadstead — the protected anchorage term I argue is key to finding naval depot records.
9. OAK ISLAND Chedabouctou. Baye de Chedabouctou, avec les passages de Canceaux et de Fronsac qui font la communication de l'Acadie avec le Golfe de Saint Laurens. Canso and Chedabucto, the strait that connects the Atlantic side of Acadia to the Gulf.
Completes the highway from Percé to LaHave.
Why This Changes the Oak Island Timeline
These maps do not prove who built the Money Pit, that treasure is buried, or that Pierre Puget — Louis XIV's chief Toulon naval sculptor-engineer (1620-1694) whom I identify in my Zenodo paper Oak Island's Hidden Engineer: Pierre Puget and the 1683 Master Plan as author of the Zena Halpern French map with Le triangle de Pierre — personally sited the South Shore triangle.
What they do prove is that Mahone Bay was not an unknown wilderness until 1795.
French officials had settlements at LaHave and Port Royal, maritime routes running through La Baye de Toutes Isles, and documented, multi-day hydrographic surveys rating LaHave as one of the finest harbors in Acadia.
The Toulon archives that could explain a naval depot prototype were largely destroyed in 1793, which I argue explains missing records — the maps survive as primary evidence.
My next step, as I have outlined, is not to dig deeper underground first, but to dig deeper into French archives using 17th-century naval engineering terms: rade (roadstead), radoub (repair), carénage (careening/hull maintenance), and batardeau (cofferdam), combined with historic place names Merligueche, Mushamush, and La Baye de Toutes Isles, rather than modern Oak Island.
That is what these nine posters show — nine sheets, one expedition, one Crown assessment — 109 years before the Money Pit was found.
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