The season opens in the War Room with Dr. Ian Spooner telling the team he has found a lab at Queen's University in Ontario that can test water samples for gold. He plans to collect from over thirty boreholes in the Money Pit area, selected based on findings from the previous year that indicated silver in the wells. By using mineral analysis the team will be able to locate the areas with the highest concentrations of silver and determine where gold is present. Rick confirms that Irving Equipment has been contacted for a quote to place ten-foot caissons, and after the water analysis is reviewed the team will drill up to twenty new boreholes before launching their biggest and most expensive digging operation to date, including shafts ten feet wide and up to two hundred feet deep. The team also discusses the stone road and cobblestone pathway found the previous year, where artifacts including pieces of 15th-century keg barrels, iron ringbolts, and a trade weight were recovered. Rick asks Laird Niven to explain the changing regulatory landscape: the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage now wants more oversight of the search. In the spring of 2021, CCH informed the team that previously unrestricted areas of the eastern drumlin now require permits, more formal testing, and more excavation by hand.
Dr. Spooner, Dr. Lukeman, Steve Guptill, Charles Barkhouse, and Scott Barlow arrive at the Money Pit to begin collecting water samples from 2017 and 2020 boreholes using a single-valve sampling bailer, starting with Borehole E-8. Rick and Craig Tester then meet with Choice Sonic Drilling to discuss the plan for approximately twenty boreholes across a grid area they are calling the C-1 Cluster, aiming to locate the source of the gold and silver near C-1. Once results are in, Irving Equipment will dig up to four ten-foot shafts. The first borehole is DE-7, thirteen feet from C-1, with core samples extracted every ten feet. Terry Matheson examines the first core and describes a mixture of pad gravel and disturbed soil. By the time the drill reaches 164 feet, Terry notices disturbed and blackened material at about 145 feet and recovers a small piece of wood. Craig requests carbon-14 dating. The team then moves to Borehole CD-6, less than ten feet from C-1. At 85 feet, Terry describes the material as slightly loose and possibly close to an open water cavity beneath a tunnel. The next sample from 90 feet contains wood that Terry identifies as a beam with a cut surface, which he believes to be the remains of a collapsed structure. Craig asks for a water sample to test for gold and silver.
In the southeast corner of the swamp, Rick, Craig, and Laird oversee a new investigation near the stone road. Billy Gerhardt begins excavating while Gary Drayton metal detects for artifacts. Craig finds pieces of a barrel resembling the 15th-century keg fragments recovered the previous year, and Laird is called over to examine them. Gary notes that barrels without metal hoops are generally older. As the team continues, Gary pulls out what appears to be a gear from a pocket watch, a timepiece developed in 15th-century Europe and owned exclusively by the elite until the 17th century. Gary also recovers a piece of pottery that Laird identifies as European, and Rick finds two pieces of wood, the second of which appears to be a hand-carved dowel with a square end that the team agrees could have been used on a ship.
On Lot 13, Gary and Peter Fornetti search under the new CCH protocols, which require flagging targets in advance and having Laird document the area before any digging. The first point reveals aluminum, but the second produces a man-made spiral object that Gary initially thinks is lead before deciding it is iron. On Lot 17, the pair search for clues that could explain the stone pathway. Peter digs out a modern nail and then a piece of scrap lead before they find an iron band with a square hole that could have come from the mast of a ship. At the archaeology trailer, Laird first cleans the pocket watch gear with an ultrasonic machine before Dr. Spooner tests it with the XRF, revealing it to be brass. Kelly Bourassa then examines the spiral from Lot 13, confirming it is 90 percent lead, and Rick asks Kelly to track trace elements in all lead artifacts brought in so they can compare compositions to the lead cross found on the island. At Northville Farm in Centreville, Doug Crowell and Peter bring the Lot 17 iron band to Carmen Legge, who identifies it as a handmade hub band from a wagon wheel or cart wheel, dating it to 1650 to 1790.
In the War Room, antiquities expert Terry Deveau presents new research on the stone road. Using previous aerial imagery, he identified underwater features and boulders that align with the road, along with what could be the remains of dock materials. Terry tells the group this type of road was built in Europe in the 1500s and notes the Portuguese were active in Nova Scotia from 1522 to 1583. He also shows a photograph from the 1930s depicting a stone path running from the ship's wharf to the Money Pit. Dr. Spooner and geoscientist Dr. Peir Pufahl, codirector of Queen's University's Centre for Isotope Research, then meet with Rick, Marty, and Craig by video conference. Twelve samples were sent to Dr. Pufahl's lab, and some were found to contain gold. The gold-bearing boreholes are in the vicinity of C-1 and mirror those that tested positive for silver. Craig notes that F-4 sits north of the Chappell Shaft, long believed to be the location of the Money Pit, and Marty suggests the gold and silver could be leaching from the Chappell Vault. In a final War Room session, Dr. Spooner, Dr. Lukeman, and Dr. Pufahl deliver the complete report: gold was confirmed in C-1, F-4, E-8, and K-7, with F-4 registering the highest levels of both gold and silver. Spooner tells the team that if the gold is coming from the soil, it would take a substantial deposit to produce the concentrations they are seeing in F-4, and the next step is to check till samples.
