A Shocking Find in 900-Year-Old Well (S10) | The Curse of Oak Island

JACK BEGLEY: The well looks rather full. Looks clean, though.

HELEN SHELDON: Mm-hmm.

NARRATOR: Jack Begley, along with archaeologists Laird Niven and Helen Sheldon, arrive on lot 26 to continue searching the 900-year-old stone well for clues that might explain who built it, as well as evidence that it contains something of value.

JACK BEGLEY: What’s our plan today?

LAIRD NIVEN: We’re going to pump it out, and then I was thinking if you wouldn’t mind scooping out the debris. But we’re going to save it on a tarp as best we can. And hopefully find an artifact.

LAIRD NIVEN: Yep. If we find something that’s datable down there, even better.

JACK BEGLEY: All right, well, let’s get started. All right. We’re going to need the– Jenny turned on and stuff? Jenny turned on. I’ll do that, OK.

NARRATOR: The team is especially interested in the well, not only because it is one of the oldest manmade features ever discovered on Oak Island, but also because a recent water test conducted inside it by Dr. Spooner revealed high trace evidence of silver. Here go.

RICK LAGINA: The well on lot 26 is interesting because we’ve got an elevated level of silver in the water. How do you explain that?

HELEN SHELDON: The jet pump works really quickly.

RICK LAGINA: It’s been speculated before– there are constructs across the width and breadth of the island that possibly could be used as a, quote unquote, “bank.” And you have to remember that Oak Island is somewhat remote, so where would you put something that you fancied or that you thought was precious to you? Well, you might hide it in an old well. Jack will do the, when we get down there, the scooping. I mean, I can already start to scoop it, right? Yep.

NARRATOR: While Laird works to keep the pump clear of debris, Jack will scoop the muck and detritus out of the well onto a tarp, which Helen will carefully sift through for clues once it all dries out.

JACK BEGLEY: I feel like I’m getting to a more gravelly, rocky layer.

LAIRD NIVEN: OK, good. There, now you can see it. It’s actually beautifully rounded here. It’s a nice, round well to a certain point, and then all the angular rocks start coming in.

JACK BEGLEY: Yeah. Like, these up here seem quite out of place.

LAIRD NIVEN: Yeah.

HELEN SHELDON: Those big ones.

MARTY LAGINA: Lot 26 has become very interesting. The well is as old as the 11th century. What do I do with that? But it does fit a couple of other outliers on the island. We have the paved area in the swamp. We have a so-called ship’s railing. So it’s astounding. I can’t explain it.

JACK BEGLEY: Oh yeah, there’s still a lot of muck down there.

LAIRD NIVEN: There’s a lot of debris. Yeah.

JACK BEGLEY: It’s going to kind of be a process over days to be able to clean up the water enough to pump it effectively. But it might have the answers we need at the bottom. I must say, I’ve never excavated like this before.

JACK BEGLEY: Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?

LAIRD NIVEN: Yeah.

JACK BEGLEY: [laughs]

NARRATOR: Later that afternoon–

HELEN SHELDON: Which bucket do you want to do first, that one? Sure.

NARRATOR: Outside the Oak Island Interpretive Centre, Helen Sheldon and archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan begin carefully sifting the dried spoils that were collected earlier from the stone well on lot 26.

HELEN SHELDON: Nice and misty

EMMA CULLIGAN: It’s just a lot of organics.

RICK LAGINA: Emma and Helen have taken the initiative to create a sifting station, if you will. Then if you’re sure there’s nothing in, just flick it over the side.

RICK LAGINA: Hopefully there’ll be an artifact or two within that material. I just think there’s something uniquely strange about this well, and I hope, no pun intended, that we get to the bottom of it. Want to give it a soaking? Mm-hmm.

HELEN SHELDON: Oh, there’s something. Look at that. It’s definitely– definitely iron.

HELEN SHELDON: Looks hand-wrought. The shape is really weird. Maybe a file.

EMMA CULLIGAN: Yeah, because it looks broken or torn off here.

HELEN SHELDON: Yeah, it does. Which is weird, unless that’s the tip that’s come off. But would you say that’s a nail? ‘Cause I–

EMMA CULLIGAN: I wouldn’t say it’s a nail.

HELEN SHELDON: Nah, doesn’t look right.

EMMA CULLIGAN: So the tip right here is rounded and it seems intentional.

HELEN SHELDON: Mm-hmm. While down here, it’s– it seems like it could been a long gun, yeah. Really sulphuric, actually. – Is it? Yeah.

EMMA CULLIGAN: Which makes it old. We’re finding more and more sulfur content in iron this year. It just means it was made within a furnace of lower temperatures. So that is an indicator that it is an older iron. So just from that alone, I’m thinking around 1700s.

HELEN SHELDON: So maybe we should give Rick a text and see if he wants to come and see this.

EMMA CULLIGAN: All right. OK, sent.

HELEN SHELDON: OK. So what have you found? So we found a piece of metal that we think is not a nail. Where’s that?

EMMA CULLIGAN: So this is the piece.

HELEN SHELDON: It’s nail-like, but we’re pretty sure it’s not a nail.

RICK LAGINA: What do you mean, it was a nail but not a nail?

EMMA CULLIGAN: So it kind of does look like a nail, but– so the tip right here is rounded and it seems intentional, while down here, it bends. And the fact that the tip is torn off here, so it’s actually probably longer around here. Right. So a cut nail, maybe?

EMMA CULLIGAN: I don’t know. I can’t be for certain because I haven’t CT scanned it. Right. So one question– I heard that in the old days, when they used nails on shipbuilding, they’d hammer them in, but they’d bend. – And clench them. Clench them. Could that be a clench? Oh, possibly.

EMMA CULLIGAN: Yeah.

HELEN SHELDON: And to me, it looks hand-wrought. Yeah. So it is a pretty old metal. Oh.

EMMA CULLIGAN: Age-wise, it could be from the 1700s. Great.

NARRATOR: A possible hand-wrought nail, potentially related to a large sailing vessel? Because machines came into use for nail production beginning around 1800, could archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan be correct that this artifact may predate the discovery of the Money Pit in 1795? If so, just when was it made? And how might it be related to the 900-year-old well that it was found in on lot 26?

EMMA CULLIGAN: And the material itself, it’s like pretty heavy. Right.

EMMA CULLIGAN: You can see from the patina that it is rust. It’s the main ingredient. But it’s also pretty– in pretty good condition, like the rust itself, there’s not much build-up of it. Right. Doesn’t really surprise me much. Metal should last almost forever in that muck.

EMMA CULLIGAN: Yeah.

RICK LAGINA: You’ll have to finish going through this, I would assume, then. Put it in the CT scanner and see what it says, right?

EMMA CULLIGAN: Yeah.

RICK LAGINA: That’s interesting.

MARTY LAGINA: Yeah, at least there’s stuff to dig that’s human-made.

RICK LAGINA: Yep. We’ll wait and see what the machine says about that iron. Yeah.

EMMA CULLIGAN: Mm-hmm.

RICK LAGINA (VOICEOVER): This certainly would be a candidate for further investigation to allow that little item to possibly tell us a story.

RICK LAGINA: OK, well, we’ll let you continue with your work. We have another bucket to go.

RICK LAGINA: Good. – So, yup. – Good luck. Well, thank you very much. – Thank you. Appreciate it.

EMMA CULLIGAN: All right, see ya.

RICK LAGINA: Yup.

NARRATOR: Approximately 50 miles northeast of Oak Island, in Halifax, Nova Scotia–

CHRISTA BROSSEAU: Hi.

CHARLES BARKHOUSE: Hi, Dr. Brosseau.

NARRATOR: –Peter Fornetti, Oak Island historian Charles Barkhouse, and archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan arrive at Saint Mary’s University. So what are you bringing in today? We have a couple interesting finds.

NARRATOR: They have arranged to have chemist Dr. Christa Brosseau analyze the mysterious iron artifact found one day ago in the stone well on lot 26. So this was on the top layer of the well. So yeah, obviously iron.

EMMA CULLIGAN: It could be some form of file.

CHRISTA BROSSEAU: Right? – Yeah. You know, one thing you’ll notice is it has a sort of rectangular shape, which is quite characteristic of hand-wrought nails. So I’ll take a small sample of this one.

PETER FORNETTI: OK. Sounds great.

CHRISTA BROSSEAU: All right.

PETER FORNETTI (VOICEOVER): Lot 26 is one of the most unique lots on this island, so I’m always hopeful that we get that pre-1840s, no manganese result.

PETER FORNETTI: That sample is set, then? Yep. All right, we’re ready to have a look at these samples and see what lot 26 has to tell us today. All right. Let’s go downstairs.

RICK LAGINA: You could find all the artifacts you want, but at the end of the day, they have to tell a story. We need to try to figure out a timeline. How old is it? There’s potential here to uncover a mystery. – Hey, Xiang, how are you today? – Hello. Hi. I got some visitors here.

NARRATOR: Assisting Dr. Brosseau is her colleague Dr. Xiang Yang. Xiang, we’ve got two samples to look at today. OK.

NARRATOR: In order to analyze the artifact samples–

CHRISTA BROSSEAU: The first one we’ll look at is that bush site.

NARRATOR: –Doctors Brosseau and Yang will use a Scanning Electron Microscope, or SEM. By magnifying objects up to 200,000 times their actual size, the SEM can identify not only the chemical composition of the items, but also help determine their age and geographic regions of origin. So here we have a nice piece of iron. No manganese, so again, we do use that as a marker that it’s pre-1840, most likely. It does look like an older iron.

PETER FORNETTI: That pre-1840 is good for us because we have Carmen who kind of gave us the general idea that it’s 1650. So I would say that’s consistent.

CHARLES BARKHOUSE: With these artifacts that we’re finding, I think it just speaks to itself that there’s activity that happened on this lot prior to any inhabitants being on Oak Island. Mm-hmm.

CHARLES BARKHOUSE: It’s nowhere near the Money Pit. Question is, what were they doing there? And were they depositing something? Was that an access point or was it an exit point?

PETER FORNETTI: Yeah.

CHRISTA BROSSEAU: I think lot 26 still has a lot of secrets for you guys. Yeah. We have some really good information to share with the guys back on the island. So thank you, and hopefully we’ll be back in the future. There you go. You’re welcome. – Take care.

CHRISTA BROSSEAU: Thanks a lot for coming in.

PETER FORNETTI: I know.

EMMA CULLIGAN: You know?