About This Artifact
When Allan Dove, a senior development metallurgist at the Steel Company of Canada, examined the nails, spikes and tools from Triton Alliance's 1970 Smith's Cove excavation, he found that all but one were hand-forged wrought iron made before 1790. The exception, described in his report of 25 September 1970, had been machine-sheared from wrought iron plate about 5/32 of an inch thick. Graham Harris and Les MacPhie identify it as a cut nail, citing Henry Mercer's Ancient Carpenters' Tools, which dates the production of this type in America from about 1800.
Cut nails were sliced by machine from rolled iron plate rather than drawn out and headed one at a time by a blacksmith, and that change in manufacture makes them useful for dating. Harris and MacPhie conclude that the nails from the cove come from two separate periods of activity: an earlier hand-forged group and at least one piece from the nineteenth century or later. Smith's Cove was worked repeatedly after 1795, by the Truro Company in 1850, the Halifax Company in 1866 and the Restall family in the 1960s, so a later nail in the ground is no surprise. The find also shows that Dove separated the iron he received by period rather than dating every piece as early. The exact findspot and depth of the nail within the excavation are not recorded.
Historical Context
Graham Harris and Les MacPhie, Oak Island and its Lost Treasure, third edition (Formac Publishing, Halifax, 2013), chapter 6. Primary reference: Allan B. Dove, Steel Company of Canada, report on metal artifacts from Oak Island, 25 September 1970. Type dating: Henry C. Mercer, Ancient Carpenters' Tools.
Where It Was Found
Found at Smith's Cove, 1970 excavation inside the Triton cofferdam; exact findspot not recorded. Location: the cove at the east end of Oak Island where the flood system's box drains were found in 1850.
