\hNARRATOR: Tonight on The Curse of Oak Island...
Are you ready to put some coil to the soil, mate?
-MICHAEL J.: I’m ready. -Let’s go for it.
(chuckles): Oh, what have we got here?
-Oh, yeah. -GARY: Ooh! Look at that, mate.
-Is that something? -GARY: Wow.
That is spectacular.
-SPENCE: Why does it have these angles? -Does it cry "ship"?
It could easily be part of a ship.
Well, how about that? (chuckles)
-TEDFORD: Hey, Craig! -CHARLES: I think they might have it.
-TEDFORD: There it is. -TERRY: Oh!
What the...? Check that out!
That’s a phenomenon right there.
NARRATOR: There is an island in the North Atlantic
where people have been looking for
an incredible treasure for more than 200 years.
So far, they have found a stone slab
with strange symbols carved into it...
...man-made workings that date to medieval times,
and a lead cross whose origin may be connected
to the Knights Templar.
To date, six men have died
trying to solve the mystery.
\hAnd according to legend, one more will have to die
before the treasure can be found.
♪ ♪
TERRY: A-13 is underway.
Hoping to connect into the same structure that gave us
-all that compressed air. -Yep.
NARRATOR: An especially hopeful day
has begun on Oak Island
for brothers Rick and Marty Lagina,
their partner Craig Tester
and members of their team as they
begin drilling a borehole known as A-13.
TERRY: Game on, Charles.
-CHARLES: Game on. \h-TERRY: A chamber
-could lay beneath. \h-NARRATOR: It is their belief
that they may be within striking distance
of something that has eluded searchers
for 227 years:
the legendary Money Pit treasure vault.
That was good.
We are very close to where we started
to get all that air eruption from what we thought was
a subterranean chamber.
-I-I think it’s got to be a chamber or something. -TERRY: Sure.
CRAIG: Something man-made.
CHARLES: It’s quite possible.
But the only way we’re gonna
find out, we drill down and get to it.
Yeah.
So, what we’ve got here on the screen...
These, I’m almost very certain
that they are some sort of a tunnel.
Interesting.
NARRATOR: One week ago,
geophysicist Jeremy Church
presented the team
with seismic data...
JEREMY: So, if we go right in...
NARRATOR: ...that revealed a possible underground tunnel
extending through the area
that the team has dubbed the C-1 cluster.
It has to be from some sort
of human activity.
NARRATOR: It has been in this same area
that they recently detected evidence of both silver and gold
in numerous boreholes.
JEREMY: The other thing is
this low-density cave-type feature right here.
I call it "the structure."
NARRATOR: However, Jeremy also noted
a second compelling discovery.
What size is that structure? Just approximately.
12 feet by 12 feet tops.
Oh! Oh!
-Oh! -TERRY: Holy cow.
We’ve never seen that before.
-That’s unusual. -Blowing water up.
NARRATOR: When the team drilled a borehole known as AB-13
in the hopes of locating the structure...
-Oh, boy. \h-NARRATOR: ...at a depth \hof some 60 feet,
massive amounts of air
suddenly began shooting up to the surface.
Okay, guys.
-Explain the air to me. -TERRY: Okay, so,
one thing’s for sure: there’s a cavity.
NARRATOR: The mysterious burst of air
offered evidence of something Marty Lagina
has long suspected.
And this same phenomenon would occur
-for the famous offset chamber, wouldn’t it? -Exactly.
NARRATOR: A so-called offset chamber
constructed away from the original Money Pit
where the elusive treasure vault has been safely hidden
for more than two centuries.
CHARLES: We got a core coming.
NARRATOR: Now as the team drills Borehole A-13
just two and a half feet to the north...
ADAM: 48.
-CHARLES: 48. -TERRY: Thank you.
NARRATOR: ...if they can penetrate the mysterious void
or chamber once again
and recover evidence
of anything valuable inside of it,
they will dig a massive ten-foot-wide steel-cased shaft
in an effort to finally solve the Oak Island mystery.
The presence of air trapped underground
at relatively shallow depths
indicates some sort of cavity, cavern.
Something that can trap air.
So, that’s kind of what we’re looking for.
We’re getting loose already.
I wonder if it’s gonna be loose enough
for us to run into a chamber or a cavern.
MARTY: What it merits is
\hsome delineation, some more drilling
around this air pocket to see what the heck it is.
TERRY: Mother Nature’s finest.
That’s how loose I want to see it.
Is that just indication we’re close to a chamber?
TERRY: Well, if there’s an opening,
that opening is partially full of air,
partially full of water.
And that looseness that’s created
is gonna soften everything up
and make everything all the more saturated
-and could lead to a chamber or a cavern. -Okay.
TERRY: Next two or three cores will tell the tale.
CRAIG: All right. Continue on.
NARRATOR: While the drilling operation continues at the Money Pit...
GARY: There’s the first spicy meatball coming up.
NARRATOR: ...near the southern edge of the triangle-shaped swamp...
-We should pull up some interesting stuff. -PETER: Yeah.
We’ll, uh, we’ll get in there with you and keep an eye out.
NARRATOR: Metal detection expert Gary Drayton
along with Rick and Marty’s nephews Peter and David Fornetti
search alongside heavy equipment operator Billy Gerhardt
for important clues that may lie buried in the muck and mud.
This is, like, the...
the main triangle of activity in the swamp.
I’m hoping that Billy and this long-range excavator
is the difference this year in this area.
-PETER: Mm-hmm. -And that’s what we’re doing.
Getting boggy with it.
(all laugh)
NARRATOR: Over the past several years,
while searching this area, which is just west
of the potentially ancient stone ship’s wharf,
the team has discovered compelling evidence
that the swamp was not only man-made
but ingeniously designed
to hide something of great importance
and possible value.
These include pieces of wooden cargo barrels,
fragments of a ship
and even seismic data
that identified a 200-foot-long object
resembling the size and shape
of an ancient treasure galleon.
RICK: Every time we do dig,
we find things.
We found the stone road.
We found the stone path.
We’re now digging in the edge of the swamp road,
and we’re finding artifacts.
We can start putting the puzzle pieces together,
and hopefully, we’ll finally, once and for all,
understand what happened in the swamp.
GARY: What’ve you got, Pete?
-Is that something? -GARY: Oh, yeah.
Wow, that is spectacular.
Definitely an unusual-shaped piece.
No idea what it is.
Perhaps part of a tabletop.
And look, you can see where this has been beveled a little bit.
This was... Had a specific use.
You’d assume that something like this would have been
maybe inside a ship.
-Yeah. -Not part of an outside.
But very, very cool piece.
I love the shape.
MARTY: There’s a trapezoid piece of wood from the swamp
that’s absolutely, positively, clearly shaped by human hands.
There’s no doubt.
Who knows what it was,
but it might have been from a bigger ship.
We need to test this thing.
I’m convinced something happened here.
Something pretty big.
So, this is just another piece that corroborates that.
Piece just came out of the bucket there that’s cut.
GARY: Oh, yeah, I see it.
Good eye, Billy.
Yeah, it’s tough to tell whether it’s a piece
of planking. I...
If it was a barrel stave,
it would be more curved but...
Could have been like an oar or a paddle.
NARRATOR: Part of an oar? Could it be connected
to ancient ship-related activity
and offer more evidence
that the swamp was once an open harbor?
-Another one for the collection, for sure. -Yeah.
Good eye, Billy.
We’ll put it with the rest
-of the interesting wood. -PETER: Sounds good.
GARY: Here we go. Next bucket up.
NARRATOR: As the investigation continues at the swamp...
SCOTT: How we doing?
TERRY: Not bad. How you doing, Scott?
NARRATOR: ...back in the Money Pit area, Craig Tester
and members of the team
are approaching their target depth
of approximately 60 feet in Borehole A-13,
where they hope to encounter a mysterious cavity or chamber.
TERRY: Starting to look maroon-ish.
-Yeah. -TERRY: Anyway,
it’s pretty... It’s maroon till, but...
where’s our indication of an open cavern?
(loud whirring)
(grinding)
Hey, Craig!
CHARLES: Might have it.
TEDFORD: Hey, Craig! There it is.
-It’s coming? -I could see air coming out.
NARRATOR: While drilling Borehole A-13
in the Money Pit area,
the team has just encountered
a burst of air at the surface,
offering evidence that they \hhave once again penetrated
a mysterious cavern or chamber
some 60 feet below ground.
SCOTT: It’s almost like
there’s a bladder effect there or something
where you’re pushing the water in
and it’s compressing the air.
When you break the rod, it pushes it back out again.
-It shouldn’t do that. -TEDFORD: Yeah.
TERRY: Well, you can’t compress air,
so maybe we got our cavern, which is our bladder.
Yep.
RICK: We certainly have an interest
in the air bubble phenomenon around Shaft 12
indicating the possibility
of an offset chamber in that area.
But there was definitely air coming out when I was threading
-on that last joint. -Okay.
RICK: If it is and we confirm that,
that may be the beginning point of all the features
that we see around the C-1 cluster.
That’s a phenomenon right there.
It’s got to be a void.
I would keep going.
I mean, ’cause what’s in the core barrel
is probably more important to us.
Just drive ahead till you hit something hard.
Okay.
NARRATOR: Is it possible
that the team has drilled
into an offset chamber connected to the original Money Pit?
And if so, could they have finally pinpointed the source
of the silver and gold they detected earlier this year
in the so-called C-1 cluster?
-78, two. -Oh, really?
-It’s going in? -Yeah.
-Going... Oh, going in there? Okay. -ADAM: Yeah.
RICK: Empirical data like this is what’s gonna drive us
to the Bravo Tango call
where we succeed, where we are completely
and utterly successful in understanding
who, what, when, where, why about the Money Pit.
Here it comes.
ADAM: 82.
TERRY: Bottom is at 82. (grunts)
Well, we got some fairly dense material at the bottom.
-CHARLES: I see that. -TERRY: But a lot of slush and murk
up here in our recovery.
I don’t think that anything can open this up
in a natural sense. This has to be people
with a will to dig and open up a space.
Oh!
There we go.
TERRY: Ladies and gentlemen,
what the heck?
CRAIG: Here’s another one right here.
TERRY: It almost looks like grass.
Maybe eelgrass or something washing in.
NARRATOR: Eelgrass?
Found in the mysterious void some 60 feet underground?
Back in 1850,
when members of the Truro Company
discovered the five stone box drains at Smith’s Cove
which converged into a single flood tunnel
leading toward the Money Pit,
they found the drains covered by layers of coconut fiber
and eelgrass.
These durable, organic materials
worked as a natural filtration system
to keep sand and debris out of the drains.
Is it possible
that the mysterious void the team encountered
was not the long-sought treasure chamber
but instead a flood tunnel ingeniously designed
to protect it?
MARTY: There is no aquifer at 55 feet.
We hit some sort of loose material
that carried air, and it wasn’t cribbed.
That sort of sounds like a flood tunnel to me.
Baffling, that’s for sure.
Baffling all the way around, no question.
NARRATOR: Although the team is disappointed
\hwith the results of Borehole A-13,
the fact that they have already detected
treasure in this area
and may have just encountered a flood tunnel
gives them hope that they could still be close
to the ultimate breakthrough.
You know, we’re not done exploring the area,
but I think, you know, we need to keep digging.
-See what else is there. -TERRY: Sounds good to me.
CRAIG: Let’s get going.
NARRATOR: The following morning...
TEDFORD: Yeah, baby.
NARRATOR: ...while the drilling operation
in the Money Pit continues...
-I think today’s gonna be good, mate. -No doubt.
NARRATOR: At the southern edge
of the triangle-shaped swamp,
heavy equipment operator Billy Gerhardt,
metal detection expert Gary Drayton
and treasure hunter Michael John
continue their search for more clues
and hopefully valuables.
GARY: All right, Billy.
We’ll get stuck in, mate. We’ll keep our eyes
and the metal detector to the ground
-and see what we pull up. -BILLY: Yep.
-GARY: All right, mate. -Good luck.
(beeping)
GARY: Here. What we got here?
What’s that?
-Ooh, yeah. Look at that. -MICHAEL J.: Wow.
-That is definitely shaped. -Yeah. No doubt.
And I don’t think it’s a barrel stave.
The heck is it?
To me, it looks like probably a-a piece of oar
-or a paddle or something. -Yeah.
NARRATOR: Another piece of a possible oar?
Could this artifact
and the similar object found one day ago be connected
to the ship-related discoveries
-the team has recovered in the swamp? -GARY: We recover
a wide variety of pieces of wood out of the swamp.
Are we getting closer to finding that ship in the swamp?
One thing for sure,
it’s definitely been shaped by man.
-Does it taper? -GARY: Yeah, it tapers. -MICHAEL J.: Yeah.
All right, mate. We’ll put this to one side
-and let you keep scooping, mate. -BILLY: Yep.
RICK: We have found a number
of what we believe to be nautical items.
We could possibly infer that there might be
or might have been at one point a ship in the swamp.
It’s hard to think that it’s mere coincidence.
That’s a little bit of dimensional lumber here.
MICHAEL J.: Yeah.
GARY: Yeah, you see those little scrapes
that are taken out? There’s a little concave area?
That means it was cut with an adze.
Uh, to me, it looks like it’s a piece
-of, like, decking even. -MICHAEL J.: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Another possible piece of ship decking?
And potentially shaped by an adze?
GARY: Oh, look at that.
\h-NARRATOR: Four weeks ago... -GARY: Is it an old adze?
-Could be. -NARRATOR: While searching Lot 4
on the western side of the island,
Gary and Rick Lagina
discovered one of these ancient cutting tools.
One that Carmen Legge dated
to between 1620 and 1740.
This looks like it was adze-cut.
NARRATOR: Could that ancient tool
have been used to shape this wooden object?
So, we’ve got the piece of wood which was adze-cut,
-and we’ve also found the adze. -We have... Yeah.
It’s brilliant. You know what, mate?
We got so many fascinating pieces of wood
-out of this area. I’m gonna text Rick. -Mm. Okay.
-Get Rick over here, \hcheck all this out. -Check it out. Yeah.
GARY: I mean, this is getting interesting now,
-isn’t it? -MICHAEL J.: Yeah.
-Hey, guys. -Hey, Rick. How you doing, mate? -How’re you doing, Rick?
NARRATOR: At the southern edge of the swamp,
Rick Lagina arrives after being alerted
to several new and potentially important discoveries
and joins Gary Drayton,
Michael John and Billy Gerhardt to search for more.
Because you’re not dancing,
I’m assuming you haven’t found you-know-what.
No, mate. Unfortunately, I haven’t got a wood dance yet.
-(chuckles) -If I did,
it would be over some of these.
If you had a wood dance, you’d be exhausted
-by now, Gary. Come on. -(laughs) Yeah. I’ll show you want we found.
We found some really, really \hinteresting pieces of wood.
Check some of these out, mate.
This, to me, was one of the-the cooler ones.
Almost looks like a piece of decking or planking.
And look, you see that?
-RICK: Yeah. -GARY: Almost like it had been hit
-by an adze. -RICK: Yeah. Yeah.
-Yeah. -GARY: And remember, mate, we found the adze
-on Lot 4. -Yep.
GARY: This... I mean, it’s heavy.
If you feel the heft of that,
-it’s a hard wood by the feel of it. -RICK: Mm-hmm.
GARY: And then there’s this one.
That’s a little mystery object.
-RICK: Hey, Bill. -BILLY: Hey.
RICK: Look at all these.
It kind of looks like a barrel stave to me with that.
Well, we thought barrel stave,
but even if it was a top, it goes in so thin.
BILLY: It’s tapered like an oar.
You know an oar is tapered like that?
Like a broken paddle.
Oh, a paddle.
Yeah, that could be.
Our only methodology here is C-14 testing,
so I would suggest this one.
This one because this is functional.
This was designed to-to serve a purpose.
-Yeah. -RICK: And this one,
this one because of noticing the adze marks.
-GARY: Yeah. \h-RICK: We have
such a quantity of wood finds from the swamp.
As we look at the items that have been found,
any piece of wood that is obviously shaped,
whether there be dowels \hor holes or saw marks,
it demands for us to find a consulting expert
who can come in and tell us,
"This is important for this reason."
The hope is that we
maybe not find the reason why it was used
but really what is it
and why is it there?
GARY: I’m hoping,
Rick, that you guys can get
a shipbuilding expert.
Well, we do have a marine archaeologist coming.
Dr. Spence.
World-renowned, world-class.
So, we’re gonna do exactly what you suggest:
round up all the things that even have
a bit of suspicion that they’re maritime-related,
present them to him and see what he has to say.
Excellent.
And this is the type of stuff that hopefully will
lead us to some of those round things that I like.
They’ve got to be here.
Yeah.
Keep it all, wash it, catalog it.
-And then the only thing to do is keep going. -Yeah. Okay.
RICK: Okay. Let’s do it.
-NARRATOR: The following morning... -CHARLES: Did I tell you
that when we get close to 50, we got to give Craig a call?
-No, no, I heard that. Yeah. -CHARLES: Just to be...
NARRATOR: ...while the drilling operation
continues at the Money Pit...
RICK: So, gentlemen, we welcome Dr. Lee Spence.
-Very esteemed in marine archaeological work. \h-NARRATOR: In the war room,
Rick, Marty, Craig and other members of the team
are meeting with underwater archaeologist
and author Dr. Lee Spence.
RICK: The reason for Dr. Spence’s visit
to the... to the war room, of course, is these are
items that have been found, uh, this year.
Now, they’re not necessarily nautical,
but we thought you might like to take a look.
But before you get into that,
if you could just tell Marty and Craig
a little bit about your background?
Well, it’s something... something I’ve done all my life.
-I started finding shipwrecks when I was 12. -Wow.
I became one of the early pioneers
of modern underwater archaeology.
And I say "modern underwater archaeology"
’cause the first underwater archaeology
that I’m aware of was actually in the 1700s.
You describe yourself as a marine archaeologist
more so than a treasure hunter.
Well, that’s ’cause the objective is the history.
I absolutely love history.
It’s very real to me.
I think it’s very important.
NARRATOR: With a career that has so far spanned six decades,
Dr. Spence has discovered more than 100 shipwrecks,
including two American Civil War vessels,
the SS Georgiana
and the HL Hunley,
a Confederate submarine that was considered by experts
to be one of the key underwater archaeological finds
of the 20th century.
His exploration of sunken galleons
that dated to between the 16th and 19th centuries
has produced more than $50 million
in recovered artifacts and treasure.
The reason why Dr. Spence was invited here
was simply because he has a lifetime of experience
diving on wrecks.
We’ve never had that type of experience
to underwater archaeology
that Dr. Spence brings to the table.
MARTY: We have assembled here
what we think are the more \hship-like, I’m gonna say,
or more nautical things-- least to our untrained eye--
-that we pulled out of the swamp. -SPENCE: Okay.
And we’d really like your opinion.
And you could start wherever you like.
Let me start with this one right here.
You’ve got three holes here
that probably once had nails going through them.
And I can think of...
Maybe at one point, there was a board right here.
You have this curved edge here like you would on a paddle,
and it’s-it’s starting to make the curve back up.
So, it wouldn’t have had to have been much wider than this.
And they nailed this in, attached a handle to it.
-That’s likely a paddle, then. -SPENCE: To make
a paddle.
MARTY: Lee, take a look
at this one. This was, uh, clearly a worked piece.
We did radio carbon-date this one,
and the results are right there.
DOUG: So, this came off the swamp, found by Billy.
SPENCE: This is man-made.
And they came up with some real interesting possibilities
as far as the dates go.
I find this amazing.
It dates between 1520 and 1674.
I’m impressed with it.
But does it cry "ship"?
It could easily be part of a ship.
Very easily.
-MARTY: Does it cry "ship"? -SPENCE: It could easily be part of a ship.
Very easily.
NARRATOR: In the war room,
world-renowned underwater archaeologist Dr. Lee Spence
has just corroborated
that a piece of wood planking recently found
by the Oak Island team in the swamp
and which was carbon-dated to the 16th century
could be part of a large sailing vessel.
\hSuch an early piece that you’re finding,
I think this was worked.
I’m sure you didn’t find
the oldest piece of worked wood on the island.
And yet look how old this probably is.
-MARTY: Right. \h-Interesting.
-I’m impressed with it. -MARTY: So, it... Really,
to me, the most interesting item
-is right here. -SPENCE: Yeah.
I think that could be, \hlike, a belaying pin.
If that’s what it was,
it would be for a very small sailboat
’cause you wouldn’t have big line on it,
and you would lace it around to hold it in place.
Or it reminds me of a fid.
It can be spelled P-H-I-D or F-I-D.
-MARTY: Mm-hmm. -SPENCE: One with this diameter
would be used for working
a real heavy rope.
You know, like anchor cable.
-Oh. -SPENCE: Either way,
-it looks nautical to me. -MARTY: Okay.
That’s what I was trying to ask.
What does it do to a rope?
For a fid, you’re using it to pry the line apart.
-You know how you have the rope twisted? -RICK: Mm-hmm.
SPENCE: And it’s real tight,
and you take it, and you stick it between,
and you separate the line
so you can stick another piece in
-to splice it. -I see.
MARTY: If this was a fid--
and it... and it is rather large at the end-- it would’ve been
-a large line. -SPENCE: Yes, it would be.
Yes, and I think it’s more likely a fid
-than it is a belaying pin. -MARTY: Mm-hmm.
Okay. Well, that’s interesting.
RICK: When-when did it come into use?
About as long as they’ve had rope.
-(all laugh) -So,
-thousands of years. -RICK: Wow.
NARRATOR: A possible fid? A tool designed
for maneuvering large ropes on sailing vessels?
Could this artifact be connected
to the other potential ship pieces
and the massive stone wharf that were found in the swamp
and also help explain
the 200-foot-long galleon-shaped anomaly
detected by seismic scanning
back in 2018?
This would’ve been used on a big rope,
which implies big ship visiting at some point.
-And to me, that’s the most likely. -MARTY: Mm-hmm.
RICK: The so-called fid...
I thought that was very interesting
because that instrument has been used
for a very, very long time.
What is a piece of a sailing ship doing
in the swamp? I don’t know.
I do know it’s worth continuing investigating this area.
-SPENCE: Now, let’s see this. -PETER: This one?
This was in the swamp
near swamp road,
and it was around ten feet deep.
SPENCE: When I look at this,
something that immediately jumps to my mind...
Why is... Why does it have these angles?
This piece is broken off here.
This is not a nice cut.
This is where it broke,
and so this probably continued on down farther.
-Sure. -SPENCE: I can also see
this as a step,
and you have a block of wood down here,
and you’re nailing the remainder that’s broken off here.
You’re nailing it in. At some point,
-this broke off. \h\h-RICK: Broke. \h-MARTY: Mm-hmm.
And that would explain why there are no nails.
-Yes, it would. -SPENCE: Yeah.
Which of these would you carbon-date?
SPENCE: I probably would do-do that,
but the bad thing about that
-is we really don’t know what it is. -RICK: Mm-hmm.
MARTY: But it’s clearly worked by man,
so if it came back to 1200 AD,
-that would be meaningful. -Yeah. (chuckles) Yeah.
MARTY: It’s certainly gratifying that Dr. Spence feels
that several of the items on the table
are nautical in appearance.
He says, "Yes, this could be from a ship. This is even..."
I think he might have even said "likely from a ship."
We need to test this thing more, though,
because it could have more information
based on what cultures did this.
We need to follow this one a little bit.
Found it very interesting.
Well, Lee, look, thank you. That was extremely informative.
It’s a fresh impression
on things we just didn’t think about,
and that’s always very valuable.
\hSo, I thank you again on behalf of the team.
SPENCE: Thank you for inviting me here.
-RICK: Thank you. -PETER: Thank you.
NARRATOR: As Rick, Marty and Craig
finish their meeting in the war room...
GARY: So, you ready to put some coil to the soil, mate?
MICHAEL J.: I’m ready. I’m ready.
NARRATOR: Metal detection expert Gary Drayton
and treasure hunter Michael John
arrive at Lot 32.
Different lot, different treasure hunting prospects,
-mate. All the time. -Yeah. Exactly.
NARRATOR: They are eager to search
for new and hopefully valuable clues and artifacts.
I expect there’s gonna be some signs...
-Yeah. -...of wharf activity
-in this area. -Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. Yeah.
And this could be a golden opportunity for us.
That’s right.
GARY: What have we got here?
-NARRATOR: Just one week ago... -Look at the size of that.
NARRATOR: ...working with Marty Lagina,
Gary uncovered a large spike
that may date back three centuries or more
and which blacksmithing expert Carmen Legge believes
was used to anchor ships to large boulders on the beach.
Oh.
NARRATOR: And it was also on Lot 32
that, one year ago, the team found
not only a large wharf spike
but also a lead cargo bag seal.
With there being a wharf here
and the artifacts we’ve already recovered, mate,
-I want to know what they were unloading here. -Yes.
And what connection this area has to the Money Pit.
I got a good feeling about this lot, especially having
-so many flags to go for. -MICHAEL J.: Yes.
-All right, mate. You ready to get stuck in? -I’m ready.
Let’s go for it.
RICK: We have made some significant discoveries
on Lot 32. Uh, close proximity to the ocean.
One could suggest or speculate
that people were in that area
carrying a load on and onto a wharf.
If we find that they’re headed in a certain direction,
we can draw that line.
So, every little clue is important.
-Ah, mate. Another good two-way repeatable signal. -(beeping)
-Oh, still in the hole, I believe. -Yes, it is.
Unless it’s on the edge.
Come, baby. Be in there.
-(beeping) -Oh, look at how deep
-that is, mate. Yeah. -That’s deep. Yep.
Like I always tell you, Michael.
-Yeah. -Deeper it is, the older it normally is.
-Well, mate, we’ll see if we got it out. -Sure.
-(beeping) -You have got it out. -I did. Yeah.
(beeping)
There we go.
Oh, I always get excited \hwhen you see this edge.
-You see that nice, round edge there, mate? -Yes.
Is it a coin? Or is it a button?
-GARY: You see that nice, round edge there, mate? -MICHAEL J.: Yeah.
Is it a coin? Or is it a button?
-MICHAEL J.: Let it be a coin. -GARY: It’s a coin,
-mate! It’s a coin! -Yes! Yes.
-Look at that. \h-Oh, my gosh.
NARRATOR: On Lot 32, just west of the swamp,
metal detection expert Gary Drayton
and treasure hunter Michael John
have just made a potentially valuable discovery.
GARY: Now, I don’t know how old, mate.
And it is always tempting
just to-to rub it,
-but we can’t just in case we damage it. -Yeah. No.
GARY: Get this to Kelly in the archaeology trailer, mate.
He’ll do his business on this.
-MICHAEL J.: Mm-hmm. -But why I’m excited
about this coin, mate. It looks like an old British copper.
And it wasn’t that long ago
when it was Rick, Marty,
uh, Dave and I.
We were on that ridge on the other side of the swamp.
We pulled two coins up. British coppers
-from the 1600s, mate. -Yeah. Oh.
GARY: That’s Charles II.
-Come on. -Yeah, that’s Charles. And I can see a carolus.
NARRATOR: Four years ago
on Lot 16
in the same area where the team has found evidence
of cargo being transported
between the swamp and the Money Pit...
\h-That’s way too early for people to be here. \h\h-NARRATOR: ...Gary,
along with Rick, Marty and Dave Blankenship,
discovered two 17th-century British coins.
-It means something! \h-That is fantastic.
This has been taking a dirt nap
for a very long time.
NARRATOR: Although the team has found evidence
\hdating as far back as the 14th century
of both French and Portuguese activity on Oak Island,
could this coin offer possible evidence
that a British operation to hide valuables here
took place sometime later?
Perhaps in the 17th century?
I can’t believe how thin the-the coin is, man.
Which is great for us. The thinner it is,
-the more chance that it’s an older coin. -MICHAEL J.: Yeah.
-Dang, mate. This is brilliant. -Yeah.
Oh, fantastic.
-You can’t beat it. -Yeah.
GARY: This is the reason why Michael John and I
came back to Lot 32.
The chance
of holding a beautiful old coin like this in our hands.
Uh, this has got 1700s written all over it,
and I’m fairly certain when this coin is cleaned up,
there is gonna be a king on it.
Oh, beautiful. Love it.
You can’t beat it.
GARY: What a sloppy mess, eh?
NARRATOR: While operations continue at both the swamp
and the Money Pit area...
Every day could be the day, Charles.
-RICK: Afternoon, guys. -CRAIG: Hi, guys.
-Hello, guys. -NARRATOR: Rick and Marty Lagina,
along with their partner, Craig Tester,
have gathered members of the team
in the war room to hear a scientific report
on two of their most recent discoveries.
These two items that we have here, both, I think,
we found quite interesting.
They were retrieved
from roughly ten feet down in the swamp.
NARRATOR: The first of these artifacts
was found one week ago
near the southern edge of the swamp.
The second, discovered in the same area this week,
was identified as possibly being part of a ship
by renowned underwater archaeologist Dr. Lee Spence.
Marty, you are well aware of the items in front of us.
We have a little one. It’s the one
that Tom Nolan mentioned had a rope burn on it.
Yeah. Yes, I’m quite aware. Yes.
RICK: And then we have this trapezoidal piece
that we thought was very old,
and I think that was really the impetus
for sending it in for C-14 testing.
But we have those results,
\hand Dr. Spooner’s intrigued by them,
I believe. So, he’s gonna tell us what his thoughts are.
So, the swamp is critical.
Uh, as I’ve said so many times before,
the swamp is a book.
Because every time we dig there,
there’s something very important that we might find out.
Not just about artifacts
but also about what’s gone on in the past.
You know, so, we have two pieces in front of us. Two...
Two wood pieces that I was very interested in
and because Billy found them at significant depth.
So we know it’s in an early chapter in the book.
Um, both of them look like nautical pieces to me.
And the trapezoidal piece there,
it dated out at, uh, 1683 to 1735.
IAN: The trapezoidal piece, it dated out
at 1683 to 1735.
NARRATOR: In the Oak Island war room,
geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner
is presenting a carbon-14 report on two wooden artifacts
recently found in the swamp
that he believes could be parts of an ancient sailing vessel.
-Let’s stop on that one for a minute... -IAN: Yeah.
...’cause I just want to say something with that piece.
We looked at that with Dr. Spence
in a... in a war room,
and it reminded me of something.
So Scott and I took a-a road trip,
and we went to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
And this is what it reminded me of.
It’s one of the longboats
that you would bring provisions and whatnot in
from a bigger ship to shore.
And inside that
is this.
It’s like a bulkhead.
-IAN: Bulkheads of the boat. -DOUG: Yep.
That’s what I think that is.
-Yeah, I’d agree 100%. -DOUG: So, that makes it really interesting
-because it is something nautical... -IAN: Right.
...in our swamp. Or-or it would appear to be.
So, does that mean that people are bringing
small boats into the swamp?
This may lend
a little bit more credibility
to that story.
NARRATOR: A fragment of a bulkhead
or cargo hold from a small sailing vessel?
And dating back to as early as 1683?
During the colonial period
between the late 15th and 18th centuries,
massive sailing vessels
that were too big to be docked at shore
were often anchored in deeper waters
as smaller boats were utilized
to carry cargo to shipping wharfs.
Since the team has unearthed the stone wharf
in the southeast corner of the swamp,
could Doug and Dr. Spooner be correct
that this artifact is evidence
of such an operation being conducted
in the 17th century on Oak Island?
\hThe dates that seem to be relevant more and more are
mid-1600s to the late 1600s.
Human beings were at that level doing some work,
some endeavor to hide something,
save something, store something.
I believe we must continue to do the work necessary
to come to a further understanding
of what the swamp can tell us
in terms of what the original depositional work was.
How about the other one?
The second sample, I’ve never seen that before.
I don’t know what it is.
-But there’s a rope burn on it. -SCOTT: Yeah.
-RICK: Mm-hmm. -IAN: So, again, we have
dates that range from 1680 to 1740.
RICK: Hmm. Interesting.
IAN: I’d say that those two are very, very similar age
but pre-searcher.
Oh, absolutely.
So, that’s sort of where my story ends.
The swamp is still a very important place.
I know we’ve done a lot of looking and searching,
\hbut there’s still areas that we haven’t really touched too much.
Well, for my part, the dates are wonderful.
They raise all kinds of possibilities.
And, okay, there was a lot of activity
between 1680 and 1750.
Well, who were those people?
Were they here looking for something themselves?
Or were they depositing,
which would be more exciting?
The swamp is more of a mystery than it’s ever been.
We found all kinds of things that seem out of place
and several pieces of wood
that could have been used on a ship.
Now we have hard science
from many different methodologies
that something significant happened here in the late 1600s.
The swamp continues, really, to be enigmatic
and a real puzzle.
How about you, Rick?
RICK: Mine is simply this:
that, you know, you’re always looking for science
to provide overlap information,
and I think we have it here today.
I think these dates are
interesting evidence of activity,
-but I-I want to know the why, obviously. -IAN: I do, too.
So, that’s where I’m at.
But we have to take every lesson
\hwe learn in this room and apply it out back,
you know, with the eyes and boots.
This has been very informative and-and, uh, and enlightening,
so we appreciate it, certainly.
Good.
-MARTY: Works for me. -RICK: Okay.
-CRAIG: See you later. -MARTY: See you the next time.
NARRATOR: At the close of another incredible week,
Rick, Marty, Craig and their team
have more scientific evidence
that something of great importance took place
on Oak Island long before the discovery of the Money Pit.
But perhaps more importantly,
they have evidence that something
so valuable was brought here,
it inspired the creation of a swamp
to hide the evidence
and a burial site so ingeniously engineered
that it has eluded seekers for more than two centuries.
The question now is
how much longer can it elude Rick,
Marty and the Fellowship of the Dig?
\hNext time on The Curse of Oak Island...
-TERRY: Today could be the day. -CHARLES: We got a core.
GARY: Oh, man. That’s cool.
DAVID F.: Were there certain boxes that would have that type
\h-of sheeting on it? -Only for valuables.
-Gary, what do you make of this? -Oh, yeah.
We’re looking for a ship. That’s the type of find
-you want to be pulling up. \h-CLARKE: We know
that Phips found silver on the Concepción,
and I believe
some of the treasure \hfrom the Concepción
-was secreted to Oak Island. -Wow.
That is remarkable.
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