Geophysical engineer John Wonnacott, who helped design the Geotech grid with his partner Les MacPhie, joins the team at the Money Pit to review progress after 16 completed boreholes. Wonnacott and Rick Lagina agree to skip several lower-priority holes and concentrate on the area near the 1897 drill platform, where William Chappell first encountered the suspected vault. Separately, Alex Lagina, Charles Barkhouse, Peter Fornetti, and historian Doug Crowell travel 300 miles northeast to the Beaton Institute in Sydney, Nova Scotia, to examine documents donated by M.R. Chappell. Among them they find a sworn affidavit by Frederick Blair attesting that T. Pearly Putnam, the work manager for the 1897 drilling, privately confirmed the drill bit showed "unmistakable evidence of having gone through or into gold." Blair describes Putnam as a man of complete honesty and integrity whose testimony he considered beyond question. The team also uncovers Chappell Shaft dig notes revealing that the shaft deviated 10 to 12 feet north from top to bottom, meaning the Geotech grid has been missing a critical zone. The discovery prompts Rick and Marty to add eight new target holes to the drilling plan, focused on fresh ground that no previous grid had covered.
Borehole H-8, positioned directly on the 1897 drill platform, produces immediate results. At approximately 145 feet, driller Ivan Gough reports entering a void and clipping a hard object, matching the depth at which Chappell encountered the vault. Drilling continues to 195 feet, where blue glazed pottery surfaces in the cuttings. Geologist Terry Matheson and Rick are stunned: no searcher has ever operated at that depth, placing the fragment below all known human activity. A dense, heavy object recovered between 160 and 165 feet defies easy identification. Charles Barkhouse suggests it may be lignum vitae, a tropical hardwood used in shipbuilding from the 16th century onward.
At the Boulderless Beach on the island's northern shore, a stretch Dan Blankenship long believed to be man-made, Marty Lagina, Dave Blankenship, and metal detection expert Gary Drayton search with a GPX 5000 pulse induction detector. Gary pulls a large hand-wrought ship spike from the ground, and when archaeologist Laird Niven arrives to examine it, he dates it to the 18th century and suggests the beach may have served as a wharf or dock.
In the War Room, with Craig Tester joining by video from Michigan, Laird examines the artifacts from H-8 for Rick, Marty, Jack Begley, and Charles Barkhouse. He identifies the blue pottery as hand-painted pearlware from Staffordshire, England, dating between the 1780s and 1800, an imitation of Chinese porcelain found nearly 200 feet underground. Laird calls it the most significant discovery of the season. The dense object from 160 to 165 feet draws a reaction no one anticipated: Laird's immediate assessment is that it is bone. He points to its hollow structure and density as indicators, though he stops short of identifying whether it is human or animal without further testing. Marty admits he would not have guessed bone independently but agrees it does not look like wood. The team agrees to pursue carbon dating and chemical analysis to determine the bone's age and origin, recognizing that a pre-1780 date would place it firmly within the original works of the Money Pit.
