Britannia copper, 1694 (William III, Lot 16)

About This Coin

An English copper coin recovered from Dunfield / Money Pit spoils on Lot 16 during Season 5, minutes after the 1673 Charles II piece on the same surface search. Gary Drayton's metal detector hit a second target. Dave Blankenship spotted the coin in the hole and pulled it out. Rick and Marty Lagina were present. The cast read the date on the rim as 1694. The obverse was too worn for the monarch to be read on camera. Charles II had died in 1685, placing the 1694 coin in the reign of William III. The reverse carries the same Britannia design introduced under Charles II in 1672.

The 1694 date placed English activity on Oak Island a century before the Money Pit's 1795 discovery and within decades of the seventeenth-century Spanish maravedi recovered from the swamp. Dan Blankenship, then 94 years old, examined both Lot 16 coppers at his home and confirmed they provided hard evidence of an English presence in the late seventeenth century, strengthening the case he had argued for decades that the island's history extended far beyond the 1795 discovery.

Because the coin came from Dunfield / Money Pit spoils, its original deposit point within the Money Pit zone cannot be determined. Robert Dunfield removed at least ten feet of surface soil from a large area surrounding the Money Pit in 1965 and moved tons of earth across the island.

The coin was recovered alongside the 1673 Britannia copper of Charles II, the first of the pair to surface that day. Eight seasons later, Katya Drayton, Gary's daughter, recovered a William III sixpence from Dunfield / Money Pit spoils on Lot 18, identified after laboratory XRF and CT analysis as a sixpence struck between 1697 and 1701. The 1694 Lot 16 copper and the 1697-1701 Lot 18 sixpence are the two William III coins so far recovered from Money Pit spoils on Oak Island.