In this video, we’re going to take a look at the developments that took place in Season
7, Episode 9 of The Curse of Oak Island.
But first I’d like to ask that, if you haven’t done so already, you please consider getting
yourself a copy of my book The Oak Island Encyclopedia, which you can find by clicking
the link in the description.
Season 7, Episode 9 of The Curse of Oak Island begins in the War Room, where the boys discuss
their next course of action in light of their recent discovery of the location and orientation
of Shaft 2- an old searcher shaft said to lie fourteen feet southeast of the original
Money Pit.
Shaft 2, also known as the Onslow Shaft, was built by members of the Onslow Company in
the spring of 1805, a year after the flooding of the Money Pit.
Knowing from their experience the previous year that the Money Pit could not be drained,
the company managers decided to avoid the water problem entirely by sinking a new 114-foot-deep
shaft 14 feet southeast of the Money Pit and then tunneling laterally towards it.
In this way, they reasoned, they could explore the Money Pit at a depth of 114 feet without
having to worry about the water, which they assumed would lie 24 feet above their heads.
The company labourers dug a shaft to 114 without incident and began to tunnel towards the Money
Pit.
The plan seemed to be going well until the tunnel reached a length of 12 feet- only 2
feet from the Money Pit- whereupon the hard clay that characterized that particular depth
gave way to soft mud.
When the end of the tunnel began to cave in, the labourers knew that a hasty retreat was
in order.
Less than two hours after the last of the workers was safely hauled to the surface,
the Onslow Shaft- or Shaft 2, as it came to be known- was filled with water to a depth
of 65 feet from the surface.
As was the case in the Money Pit, bailing appeared to be completely ineffective in lowering
the water level.
Back in the War Room, the treasure hunters agree that they ought to search for the remnants
of the Shaft 2 tunnel in order to pinpoint with greater accuracy the precise location
of the original Money Pit.
Later in the episode, the Choice Drilling crew sinks Borehole F-14 at a location prescribed
by the treasure hunters in the hope of intersecting the Shaft 2 tunnel.
Terry Matheson explains that they hope to encounter the tunnel somewhere between 89
and 105 feet below the surface.
Although the tunnel originally lay 114 feet below the surface in the days of the Onslow
Company, the entire surface of the Money Pit area is believed to be about 10 feet lower
today than it was in the past due to the heavy-duty excavations of treasure hunter Robert Dunfield
in the 1960s.
Borehole F-14 reaches a depth of 89 feet without encountering anything other than in-situ soil,
as expected.
A core sample taken from a depth of 99-105 feet- the crew’s approximate target depth-
contains a large chunk of wood at the 100-foot level, which Terry Matheson suggests must
constitute a piece of either the floor or ceiling of the Shaft 2 tunnel.
The treasure hunters agree that they must locate at least one more piece of the tunnel
in order to fully determine its orientation, which will lead them to the precise location
of the original Money Pit.
In the middle of the episode, Billy Gerhardt discovers an enormous wooden structure within
the bump-out area of the Smith’s Cove cofferdam consisting of large parallel and perpendicularly-aligned
logs attached by saddle notches, along with a handful of wooden pegs- the same materials
of which the U-shaped structure is comprised.
Doug Crowell and Laird Niven opine that the structure bears some resemblance to a wharf
or pier, while Rick Lagina puts forth the notion that it might be an extension of the
slipway, or perhaps a much older structure on top of which the slipway was constructed.
Rick notes that the structure appears to be surrounded by packed clay, prompting the narrator
to remind us that puddled clay was said to have been found on one or more of the nine
oak log platforms unearthed at regular 10-foot intervals in the Money Pit.
The treasure hunters reluctantly agree to postpone their excavation of the structure
and wait for an assessment by archaeologist Laird Niven.
Shortly after the discovery, the Fellowship of the Dig meets in the War Room with Corjan
Mol, the researcher who presented his own Oak Island theory involving the classical
French Baroque painter Nicolas Poussin and his famous painting Et in Arcadia Ego the
previous episode.
For an in-depth look at Poussin, his paintings, and their places in various theories regarding
Oak Island and other potentially-related mysteries, please check out my video on The Curse of
Oak Island’s Season 7, Episode 8.
In this episode, Mol is accompanied by his fellow researcher, Chris Morford.
Mol and Morford show the treasure hunters a 1650 self portrait of Nicolas Poussin and
point out an illustration of a painting in its background.
This painting depicts a lady wearing a hat in which is set the image of a human eye.
Mol and Morford propose that this lady is the shepherdess who features in Poussin’s
1637 rendition of Et in Arcadia Ego.
In the previous episode, Mol demonstrated that Poussins 1637 painting Et in Arcadia
Ego appears to have been modeled on a portion of a pentagram, and showed the treasure hunters
a map of Nolan’s Cross on which the painting and its pentagram were overlaid.
In this episode, he demonstrates that the centre of the pentagram on which Et in Arcadia
Ego was modeled appears to be the forehead of the shepherdess- the same place over which
the third eye appears on the hat of the lady in Poussin’s self-portrait.
Furthermore, Mol and Morford demonstrate that the centre of Et in Arcadia Ego, when the
painting is superimposed overtop of Nolan’s Cross, appears to lie just southwest of the
so-called ‘Eye of the Swamp’- a pond located at the tip of the Oak Island swamp around
which geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner discovered a ring of flat stones in Season 7, Episode
3.
The treasure hunters express some surprise at this connection between the eye on the
lady’s hat in Poussin’s self-portrait and the name which Marty Lagina dubbed the
pond.
The narrator then attempts to connect Poussin’s painting and the pond to the “All-Seeing
Eye”, a symbol of Freemasonry and the United States mentioned back in Season 4, Episode
2, when Tony Sampson discovered a rock in a water will in the town of New Ross, Nova
Scotia, bearing what he suggested might be a representation of the symbol.
The next day, Dr. Ian Spooner and three of his graduate students from Acadia University-
some of whom appeared in a flashback shown in Season 7, Episode 3, of a previous operation
which was not featured on the show- head to the Eye of the Swamp in a dingy and collect
several core samples of the swamp floor using a vibracore drill.
Dr. Spooner analyses these samples and presents his findings in a War Room meeting at the
end of the episode.
During his presentation, the geoscientist informs the crew that the samples contain
evidence that the swamp first firmed around 1220 A.D., and that the floor of the Eye of
the Swamp was disturbed by man sometime between 1674 and 1700- the latter being a date range
which corresponds with many of the Oak Island discoveries made throughout Season 5, and
the former corresponding with the popular theory that the medieval Knights Templar are
behind the Oak Island mystery.
As Spooner acknowledged in this episode, his analysis of the Eye of the Swamp core samples
differs from a previous assessment he made back in Season 7, Episode 3, when he extracted
core samples from the ‘Ship Anomaly’ in the Oak Island swamp.
In the earlier episode, Spooner concluded that the swamp was only three or four hundred
years old, and supported trees and other forms of terrestrial vegetation prior to its transformation
into a wetland.
Thanks for watching!
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my book The Oak Island Encyclopedia, which you can find by clicking the link in the description.