Hello and welcome to this week’s breakdown of the latest episode of The Curse of Oak
Island. I hope that you and yours are well, and keeping safe and healthy. Before we begin
this video, I think I’d better make a little announcement. My book The Oak Island Encyclopedia
has just undergone a slight structural change. The publisher that I use very recently demanded
that I double all of the margins in my book. As a result, my book’s text and images will
now be slightly smaller than those in copies purchased prior to March 18th, 2020. The text
of The Oak Island Encyclopedia was relatively large to begin with, and so I don’t expect
that this change will terribly inconvenience most readers. If you’d like to get yourself
a copy of my book, please check out the link in the description.
Season 7, Episode 17 of The Curse of Oak Island begins at the Eye of the Swamp, beneath the
centre of which a stack of boulders was uncovered at the end of the previous episode. Geoscientist
Dr. Ian Spooner examines the formation, which Rick Lagina remarks bears some resemblance
to the subterranean makeup of the so-called ‘Paved Wharf’, and concludes that it must
be artificial. The treasure hunters are soon join by Laird Niven, who observes that the
feature resembles filled-in cellars that he has examined in the past.
The next day, Billy Gerhardt reopens the Uplands pit, which was backfilled in the previous
episode due to issues with its structural integrity. He uncovers what is believed to
be the remains of an old Truro Company searcher shaft called Shaft 5 and follows that structure
down into the earth. During the excavation, he brings up several large timbers, one of
which bears an axe-hewn notch and a drilled hole which Terry Matheson remarks bears great
resemblance to holes found in the U-Shaped structure.
At the bottom of Shaft 5, Billy Gerhardt uncovers what appears to be the remains of a transverse
tunnel. Immediately below this structure, he hits what he believes to be a boulder.
In order to verity the nature of the structure and the obstruction beneath, a camera is attached
to the excavator bucket and lowered into the hole. The feature proves to be a large indentation
in the side of the pit surrounded by planks running in all directions, apparently having
been torn from their original positions by the excavator. Lodged in the middle of the
cavity are what appear to be several large boulders. Several treasure hunters express
their opinion that the feature is indeed the remains of a tunnel- perhaps the Smith’s
Cove flood tunnel- and agree that they ought to submit the timber they extracted from it
for dendrochronological testing. Near the beginning of the episode, Laird Niven
and conservator Kelly Bourassa work on the archaeological trenches around the foundations
of the McGinnis family cabin, which were initiated back in Season 7, Episode 15. While excavating
one of the areas of interest indicated by the GPR scan conducted in Season 7, Episode
5, Laird discovers the remains of a stone wall which old photographs indicate might
be the foundation of a shed. Later on, the archaeologist discovers evidence of a trap
door in the cellar of the main cabin, as well as a decorated bone handle of a knife in the
cellar area, which he dates to the latter half of the 18th Century. The narrator informs
us that Laird will be unable to excavate more of the cabin’s foundations without first
acquiring another permit from the Nova Scotian government.
In the middle of the episode, the Fellowship of the Dig meets in the War Room to learn
the results of a laser ablation test performed on a formless lump of scrap lead which Gary
Drayton discovered in the previous episode during a brief metal detecting excursion on
the beach of Oak Island’s Lot 18. The crew members call up geochemistry professor Dr.
Chris McFarlane, who carried out the test. McFarlane informs the team that the lead contains
mercury and tin, and opines that the mercury must have been introduced after smelting.
“Mercury is one of the most volatile elements,” he explains, “so if you heat it up to 8[00
or] 900 degrees to smelt it, the mercury would be gone. So it had to have been introduced
by some other process. I’ve never seen anything like it, honestly.” Jack Begley then remarks
that mercury features in Petter Amundsen’s Oak Island theory, presented back in Season
1, Episode 4, which contends that Elizabethan-Jacobean scientist and nobleman Sir Francis Bacon is
the man behind the Oak Island mystery. I will outline Petter’s theory in more detail in
a later video. Jack Begley explains that, in his 1626 book Sylva Sylvarum, Sir Francis
Bacon described a preservation technique in which the object to be preserved is dipped
in mercury. Interestingly, a number of artifacts discovered on Oak Island over the years, including
fragments of broken pottery found in 1937 on Joudrey’s Cove and a fragment of parchment
brought up from the Money Pit area in 1897, are said to have borne traces of mercury.
After Jack’s exposition, Dr. McFarlane, in response to a question from Doug Crowell,
states that the artifact’s isotopic signature suggests that the lead was mined in the Greek
mainland, the Aegean Islands, Cyprus, or Turkey. Gary Drayton remarks that each of the places
that McFarlane mentioned were known to have been frequented by the Knights Templar.
At the end of the episode, Mike Jardine and the crew of Irving Equipment Ltd. begin to
dismantle the Smith’s Cove cofferdam, Oak Island Tours Inc.’s permit for the barrier
having expired. The cofferdam’s removal spells the end of any serious excavations
at Smith’s Cove for at least the remainder of the season.
Thanks for watching! If you enjoyed this video and would like to help support this channel,
please check out my book The Oak Island Encyclopedia, which you can find by clicking the link in
the description.