NARRATOR: Tonight on The Curse of Oak Island...
- MARTY: So it begins! - VANESSA: Shaft number two.
MARTY: Come on, be something good.
- Oh, wow. - That's incredible that that's down there.
Oh, wow. Wow.
It looks like parchment, but it's got something shiny on it.
JON: You can see those very, very bright spots?
- Mm-hmm. - That could actually be some of the writing.
Some of the older inks were made of iron-based ink.
That is pre-1840s iron and has been known
- since the 1500s. - Well, how about that.
(laughs)
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.
And according to legend, one more will have to die
before the treasure can be found.
♪ ♪
MARTY: Here we are, Dan.
NARRATOR: A morning full of renewed hope has arrived
on Oak Island for brothers Rick and Marty Lagina,
their partner Craig Tester and the rest of their team
as they continue a quest
to solve a 227-year-old treasure mystery.
Front and center, young man.
- DAN: Uh-oh. - Gentlemen!
Quite a crowd here.
- Hey! - Welcome!
GARY: Dan, the man. Today is the day.
MARTY: Today's always the day.
- Vanessa! - Hello!
Ready for shaft number two?
- Are you ready? - I'm ready.
You know, we're here.
We're gonna find some answers for you.
So, we just want you to know
that this is the elder statesman of Oak Island at this point.
So, we all thought it was appropriate
that not only should Dan press the button,
but Dan should name the can.
- All right, Dan. - DAN H.: That was the problem.
I'm not much at naming. However, uh,
I figured something optimistic might go.
It's Early Christmas One.
(cheering)
NARRATOR: Today,
the team will begin excavating
their second 10-foot-wide shaft
in an area where they have already made
incredible discoveries this year.
These include evidence of man-made wooden tunnels
some 90 feet deep that were carbon-dated
to between 1488 and 1650,
as well as traces of both silver and gold.
I think we are in the bedrock.
I think this is gonna be as close to getting down there
- as we're gonna get. - RICK: We're done.
NARRATOR: One week ago,
the team concluded their dig of a shaft, known as TF-1,
after reaching bedrock at a depth of 152 feet.
Despite the fact that they had also detected precious metals
in that location earlier this year
during their core-drilling program,
they did not recover any valuables.
All of this broken stuff,
- we know it's a shaft. - Yeah.
However, they did find evidence of a shaft
that was constructed in 1909 by the Old Gold Salvage Company,
which was financed by future U.S. president,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Look at that. Look at that.
They also found possible evidence
of the fabled Chappell Vault.
- I'm liking more of that concrete stuff. - Yeah.
That looks like concrete to me.
JACK: We could be close to the actual vault.
VANESSA: Okay, we're ready to slam some can.
- MARTY: Make hole. - VANESSA: Let's do it.
NARRATOR: Now, based on those discoveries,
they are about to excavate EC-1 just eight feet to the east.
-DAN: Okay. -VANESSA: All right. Go ahead and turn
- the oscillator on right there. - DAN: All right.
- Here we go. Yep. - Turn it to the right.
(whirring)
NARRATOR: With this effort,
they are hoping to reach two potential targets,
one being a tunnel some 118 feet deep
containing a reported debris field of timbers
and scattered treasure from a collapse
of the original Money Pit in 1861,
and the other the legendary Chappell Vault itself,
which is believed to lie buried
at even greater depth of approximately 150 feet.
So, you're gonna go ahead and move the cylinders.
Pull it straight back to you. Keep pulling.
- MARTY: There it goes. - DOUG: Yeah!
RICK: With TF-1, we thought we were close to the original Money Pit.
But we don't want to be close, we want to be on it.
It's tantalizing to think
that we were... missed it by that much.
Okay, fine. You missed it. Keep going.
So, this area suggests gold and silver
in close proximity to TF-1.
So, this is going to be a location
of significant interest.
There you go. I've got another oscillator operator.
- Let's have a round of applause. - ALEX: Yeah!
-All right. Early Christmas. It's happening. -(laughter)
MARTY: Dan hits the button, and the canister starts to move,
and we're off to the races.
This is it, this is the best spot,
and we're hopeful that it is the spot.
- Well done, Dan. - VANESSA: Nice job.
- Great job. - CHARLES: Yep.
MARTY: That was great, Dan.
DAN: I'm getting better at it, I guess.
- MARTY: Yeah, you are. - (Dan laughs)
NARRATOR: As the excavation of the EC-1 shaft proceeds
in the Money Pit area,
later that morning...
- MARTY: Hello, Dr. Brosseau! - ALEX: Hi, Dr. Brosseau!
CHRISTA: Hi, everyone. How's it going?
- Very fine, thank you. - Good, good.
Rick, Marty, Craig, and members of the team
gather in the war room for a meeting via video conference
with Dr. Christa Brosseau, a professor of chemistry
at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Gentlemen, we have a few artifacts here,
which we had sent to Dr. Brosseau.
What can you tell us?
These are some objects from, uh, what you call Lot 15.
- Yep. - So, the first object was a spike,
so, a wrought spike.
- You think here? - Yeah, that's good.
NARRATOR: Over the past two weeks,
the team has been investigating a possible buried stone pathway
running eastward from the swamp that was detected
approximately five feet deep using ground penetrating radar.
- Go ahead and stop. - ALEX: Okay.
MARTY: Yeah, see what it says.
NARRATOR: However,
because of a current government mandate
restricting any large-scale digging
outside the Money Pit area,
the team needs to locate evidence of human activity
predating 1795
before they can obtain a permit to expose and track
the feature to its final destination.
There she blows. Wow, look at that!
- Is that a spike? - Yeah, that's a big spike.
NARRATOR: One week ago, while searching for important clues
along the suspected path between the swamp
- and the Money Pit on Lot 15... - GARY: Look at that!
metal detection expert Gary Drayton,
and Rick and Marty's nephew Peter Fornetti
made two promising finds-- An iron spike
and the head of a potentially ancient claw hammer.
CHRISTA: The spike, it has a rose head at the top.
It has a square shank. Um, it's well made.
It does appear to be broken in half.
So, when I did the analysis on-on this spike,
the iron is coming back clean.
The only thing I was able to detect--
Other than iron, obviously-- Was some phosphorous,
so around 0.3 percent.
And, so, this looks like it is a pre-1840s wrought iron.
Any way to, you know, put brackets
around how much before 1840?
It's really hard to say. Um...
The rose-head nature of it
does mean that it's been handmade,
so, likely, that can push the date back
- to before 1790. - Perfect.
- Yeah. - ALEX: That's good, because...
to the best of our knowledge the treasure hunt started
- in 1795. - Yep.
NARRATOR: If Dr. Brosseau is correct
that the iron spike predates 1790
and the discovery of the Money Pit in 1795,
could it offer evidence
that the buried pathway does as well?
All right. What do you have next for us?
All right. Um, coming up next is the claw hammer head.
So, when I looked at the claw hammer head,
um, what I see is
that the iron is clean.
Again, I'm not detecting any manganese.
Small amount of phosphorous is present,
so very-- quite similar to the last object.
So this is, again, a pre-1840s iron.
- Okay. - Claw hammer heads have been known
for many hundreds of years.
So, this type of hammer head has been known
since the 1500s.
- Great. There you go. - Well, that's a good thing.
- CRAIG: Yeah. - MARTY: Mm hmm. Cool.
Why is it so tiny?
What was it used for?
I'm not sure. Some of them can be
- quite small. - MARTY: Very interesting.
Yeah, this time period is what we see all the time
for the stakes and all the wood that we're finding...
- Yeah. - associated with the stone road
- and the stone path. - Right.
NARRATOR: The claw hammer dating back
as early as the 16th century?
Along with the potentially ancient iron spike,
could Dr. Brosseau's analysis of these two artifacts
help the team obtain the permit they need
to unearth the stone path
and find out just where it is leading?
The fact that they're finding these, uh, artifacts
in the upland in close proximity
to the so-called stone path is an interesting connection.
What we have to do now is get a proper permit
to do a hands-on investigation of any anomalous feature.
So, the hope is that
these artifacts can tell us something about the stone path
and where, ultimately, does it lead us.
Hopefully to an "X" marks the spot.
All right. Well, thank you very much.
Informative as always and always right on the money
from a scientific standpoint.
So, thank you, Christa.
I'm sure we'll be in contact again.
Sure, you're welcome. Good luck.
- Thank you. - Thank you. - Until the next time.
RICK: There's more things yet to find so we better get at it.
MARTY: Yes.
- GARY: Fingers crossed. - NARRATOR: Following the meeting
- in the war room... - Full bucket.
as the excavation of the EC-1 shaft continues
in the Money Pit area...
- PETER: So, is this TF-1? - ALEX: Yep.
- ERIC: Still TF-1. - PETER: TF-1, okay.
nearby, at the wash table next to Borehole 10-X
Alex Lagina, his cousin Peter Fornetti,
and surveyor Eric Valois
are sifting through the remaining spoils
excavated one week ago from the now completed TF-1 shaft.
How deep do you think this is?
Because of this limestone, I'm thinking fairly deep.
- Yeah. - I mean, it's got a chance
of having something from our depth of interest
at like 70 to 90 feet.
- Mm-hmm. - So, you know, basically we're looking for
- anything that can be tested. - PETER: Yeah.
- Let's get to it. - ALEX: Yep.
NARRATOR: Despite the fact that the team did not recover
the legendary treasure vault in TF-1,
earlier this year,
their core-drilling operation conducted in that same location
did unearth metal fragments containing gold
at a depth of approximately 90 feet.
We know from experience how hard it is
to find things in-in what we dig.
So, all these spoils are gonna go to the wash table
where we can really sift through in much greater detail
and try to find much older artifacts,
or maybe anything else that we might have missed.
ERIC: Oh.
ALEX: Oh, hey.
That's just like that leather we found.
- Yeah. You found that last one like that. - ALEX: Yeah.
More of the same strap.
We have any idea what it is?
Theorizing maybe a strap off of a bag
- or something, with a buckle. - Mm-hmm.
NARRATOR: A leather strap?
Found in the TF-1 spoils?
Over the past four years,
the Oak Island team has unearthed
a number of compelling leather artifacts
during their large-scale excavations
across the Money Pit area.
These include bits of leather bookbinding,
discovered along with pieces of parchment paper
in Borehole H-8 back in 2017,
and a leather bootheel recovered
from Borehole 8-B in 2019
that was carbon-dated back to as early as 1492.
Could this leather strap represent
another important piece to the Oak Island puzzle,
meaning that the team is getting closer
to the ultimate discovery?
The leather, I think, can be carbon-dated.
- Yep. - ALEX: It's all about just getting the dates,
and everything we learned this time's
- gonna help us. So... - PETER: Yep.
And if that is that connecting piece,
that changes the game
- for this next shaft that we're going. - ALEX: Yeah, I agree.
-Anyway, great find. I'll bag it. -PETER: Yeah.
- ERIC: Yeah. - Perfect.
ALEX: Okay. Let's see
if we can find anything else.
NARRATOR: The following morning in the Money Pit area...
- DANNY: Showtime. - Yeah.
DANNY: Here comes the gold.
NARRATOR: Craig Tester, along with members
of the team, continue monitoring
the dig of the EC-1 shaft.
You know, we're somewhere between 76 and, uh, like, 85.
Yeah. They're going down pretty quickly.
CHARLES: They are going down quick, so...
We're closing in.
(thudding)
CHARLES: We're hitting something.
CRAIG: Could be just boulders or something.
I don't know.
It'll be interesting to see.
Yep.
That could be wood.
That's what's slowing it down, yeah?
- DANNY: Yeah. - ANDREW: Makes sense,
'cause, I mean, we're at probably 74,
75 with the can.
That would explain why it's cutting hard.
DANNY: Exactly.
PETER: We're close to that 75-foot mark.
Excellent, mate.
We could all do with an early Christmas present.
Gold. Silver.
Gonna happen one day.
I'm gonna go in with these guys
- and take a look at it. - All right.
PETER: It's muddy.
Got to dig through the trash to get to the treasure, mate.
I don't see any wood in there.
Where's the wood?
PETER: Oh, I didn't see any in that.
GARY: We're good to go.
Let's find some good stuff.
Come on, I know you're hiding in here somewhere.
Just dirt.
Look at that.
What the heck is this?
Just there.
- CRAIG: Oh, wow. - PETER: What is it?
CRAIG: A piece of slate.
Tough call, Laird.
In place?
Big piece of slate.
LAIRD: That's certainly intriguing.
- Gentlemen. - LAIRD: How are you?
- Good. How are you? - LAIRD: Good.
Got a chunk of slate.
IAN: Oh, wow.
- Wonder what that would be doing down there. - CRAIG: Yeah.
IAN: It's out of place.
- Wouldn't expect that. - CRAIG: Yeah.
NARRATOR: A curious geological fact about Oak Island
is that it is composed
of two very different types of bedrock.
The western drumlin is made up of hard slate,
a very hard, fine-grained metamorphic solid.
However, the eastern drumlin where the Money Pit is located
features much softer anhydrite limestone.
The question is
just what would explain a large piece of slate
being found more than 70 feet deep
in this area of Oak Island?
There shouldn't be slate at this level, though.
- CRAIG: 400 feet, maybe, on this side. - CHARLES: Yeah.
Not at this depth.
IAN: It's not real common in the till, either,
so it was brought here
by somebody and ended up down there.
That's weird.
Can't think of any reason to specifically get
- this rock and bring it over here. - I know.
If somebody was building something,
they'd have little flagstones around
and got knocked down, and...
CRAIG: Well, the story on the original Money Pit
was the boys dug down, and they came upon
- flagstone that covered the entire Money Pit itself. - Yeah.
NARRATOR: In 1795,
Daniel McGinnis and his two friends
Anthony Vaughan and John Smith
noticed a 13-foot-wide depression
in the ground that proved to be the original Money Pit shaft.
As they began to dig, their first discovery,
at a depth of just two feet,
was a uniform layer of slate flagstones.
The three men dug through them,
ultimately reaching a depth of some 90 feet
before a believed man-made flood tunnel
thwarted their efforts.
Is it possible that Craig and the others
have just found a piece of slate rock connected
to the first excavation ever conducted
in the Money Pit?
If so, could it also mean that they are on course
to find what McGinnis and his associates
were unable to reach?
That should be much deeper.
Much deeper. That should be 400 feet down, not at...
not at 80 feet or so.
So, I don't know what it means. I mean,
maybe it-it fell from, uh, part of the original Money Pit.
- Right. - CRAIG: To really know
- if we're in the right spot, we need to hit wood. - Yeah.
- We shall see. - CHARLES: Yeah.
CRAIG: So, I think we're gonna start
getting a lot of wood.
CHARLES: And maybe something else.
CRAIG: Yes. Hopefully a treasure.
CHARLES: That's right.
GARY: All right, mate. We're all ready to rock and roll.
- Still no wood. - PETER: No.
NARRATOR: While the excavation of the EC-1 shaft continues...
- ALEX: Hey, guys. - RICK: Gentlemen.
- JON: Hello! - How are you? - Welcome to Oak Island.
NARRATOR: at the Interpretive Centre,
Rick Lagina and his nephew Alex
are meeting with Jon Giencke,
David Sampson
and Sid Pharasi of Bruker Corporation...
- Let's head on in. - a science and research technology company
located in Billerica, Massachusetts.
- RICK: Gentlemen. - NARRATOR: They are here
to install a SkyScan 1273 CT
or computer tomography scanner.
RICK: The CT scanner will be important
because we wouldn't have to make inferences.
Because some of these items we're finding
have a lot of conglomerate or concretions on them,
and you just can't tell what these things might be.
So, we have reached out to Bruker Instruments
to show us how to use the equipment.
There's the machine.
I'm ecstatic that you're here,
and I can't wait to put the first object in that machine.
- JON: Great. - ALEX: Well, I'm really excited
to see what this device can do.
- Right. - ALEX: So, we can put an artifact in there,
and we can image it in what way?
Well, Alex, what we call this
is actually a 3D X-ray microscope.
So, just like a normal microscope,
what we're doing is we're actually inspecting
the sample itself.
But unlike that conventional optical imaging
where you're limited to just seeing the surface,
we're using X-rays
so we can actually see inside of the sample.
So, if you had something like a coin
that's heavily corroded, we're able
to kind of digitally remove that corrosion,
remove all the dirt and such
and then leave that pristine artifact.
SID: And the salient point is you can do this for your artifacts
and objects in a nondestructive way.
Oh, wow.
NARRATOR: The SkyScan 1273 device
emits nondestructive X-ray radiation
that can penetrate heavily encrusted artifacts
to produce a high-definition three-dimensional image
of their original form.
This process can not only help the team
identify the true shapes of artifacts
but also help determine the materials
that make up their composition.
MARTY: The CT scanner is an amazing device.
It could allow us to be able to see
what these things look like under the corrosion.
And the ability to do it right here
in our own lab, so to speak,
uh, in a matter of hours and not have to wait
for, you know, turnaround in some other lab is-is great.
RICK: We have some work out back,
so if you want to get started, and once you get the machine
up and running, give us a call.
I would love to put a item or items
- in the machine before the end of the day. - Yeah. Yeah.
Let's see it work. Let's see what it can do.
- Sounds great. - We look forward to that. - All right.
- RICK: Thank you. - ALEX: See you guys soon.
NARRATOR: While Jon, Sid and David set up the CT scanner,
later that afternoon...
All right.
Hey, Jack. What do we got?
It's all just a jumble,
but you never know what you're gonna find.
NARRATOR: Alex Lagina arrives at the wash table
to help Jack Begley continue
searching through the remaining spoils
recently excavated from the TF-1 shaft.
ALEX: Have you found much pottery?
JACK: No. We're finding less stuff
on the table because the wash plant's
operating very effectively.
There's actually a lot of possibilities
for finding something really good in TF-1.
So maybe if there is some sort of a treasure nearby,
we can at least catch a piece of that
and figure out what-what's causing
the gold anomalies down in C-1 once and for all.
Ooh.
Wow.
- Wow. Wow. - ALEX: What you got there?
JACK: It looks like parchment, but it...
it's got something shiny on it.
- ALEX: Oh, yeah. - JACK: Do you see
those silvery flecks?
The parchment that I found with Henskee several years ago,
it had that... the same fibers kind of around the side.
ALEX: Yeah. That's interesting.
There's that scrap of parchment or paper,
uh, with the "V-I" on it.
I mean, this could be related to that. It's possible.
NARRATOR: A possible piece of parchment?
Found in the spoils of the TF-1 caisson?
In 1897,
when treasure hunters Frederick Blair
and William Chappell
drilled into what they reported to be
a seven-foot-tall wooden vault encased in concrete,
they were astonished to recover gold shavings
on their drill bit
as well as a piece of parchment bearing the letters "V-I."
Oh, look at that.
- ALEX: Is that concrete? - JACK: Yeah.
NARRATOR: One week ago, the team
found bits of concrete in the TF-1 spoils, as well.
Is it possible that they have discovered
two pieces of evidence
connected to the fabled Chappell Vault?
If so, could that mean
that they are now on course to recover the rest
of the vault's contents within the EC-1 shaft?
Just the color of it and the inconsistency
-makes... -I-I'm really... I agree with you.
The inconsistency of it is very interesting.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm encouraged either way. If it's paper
or if it's parchment, they're both datable.
And it might be an indication that we're...
- we're close to the real Money Pit. - Mm-hmm.
Or somewhere within the-the collapsed debris zone.
The odd thing about this possible piece of parchment
is that on one side, it's shiny.
It's got bits of what look to me like silver.
In, like, medieval times,
they'd take gold and silver leaf
and apply it to parchment as a sort of accent,
especially if the documents were...
(chuckles) worthwhile.
- MARTY: Alex, Jack. - ALEX: Hey, guys. - Hey, guys.
We're checking on the wash table.
ALEX: Well, you came at a good time.
Guess what we think this is.
Here. Take a look at it.
This is from TF-1.
MARTY: Is it parchment?
ALEX: I'm not sure.
Jack and I have both looked at it.
We can't tell if it's parchment
or paper or what it is.
JACK: And I think, if it's not parchment,
it looks like an early type of paper.
MARTY: This is definitely worth testing.
ALEX: Yes.
If it dates to the early 1600s,
then we got something.
It can't have been easy to pull that out of there.
- (laughs) - I don't know how he saw it.
- It's amazing. - MARTY: Good find.
- Excellent. - JACK: Thanks.
- JACK: We'll keep looking. - ALEX: We'll let you know.
NARRATOR: While the ten-foot-wide
EC-1 shaft continues its decent in the Money Pit area...
That is one hell of an hammer grab.
CRAIG: We just found something
at the Money Pit on the-the wash table.
- Looks like a piece of parchment. - Okay.
NARRATOR: in the Interpretive Centre,
Rick Lagina, along with Craig Tester
and Laird Niven,
are meeting with imaging experts Jon Giencke and David Sampson
to have the possible parchment just found in the TF-1 spoils
analyzed in the SkyScan 1273 device.
DAVID S.: Now we're scanning.
JON: Okay. So, the next step,
once we have all of those different slices collected,
is that we're gonna reconstruct the original sample.
- LAIRD: Mm-hmm. - JON: Now, on the image i-itself,
what you're seeing is these very straight lines
on the top and the bottom.
So that's the actual pieces of paper that we've inserted
in order to hold the parchment in place.
And the parchment's going down the center line.
DAVID S.: I would expect
to see some sort of fiber.
CRAIG: Isn't that fibers you're seeing
sticking out the sides, though, or not?
JON: Yeah. I'm starting to see that same thing, Craig.
-Especially up top there. Yeah, right there. -Yep. Yep.
DAVID S.: Yeah.
JON: Good news is iron,
in particular, when it's hit with X-rays, it tends to glow.
It's a process called fluorescence.
So, if we see a lot of those rays coming out from it...
- RICK: Mm hmm. - JON: it could be indicative of iron.
JON: So, as we're looking at that center line
where we'd expect the parchment,
you can see those very, very bright spots?
That could actually be some of the writing.
DAVID S.: Some of the older inks were made of gall.
And so that is a metal. It's an iron-based ink.
NARRATOR: Iron gall ink,
also known as oak gall ink,
is composed of iron salts and tannic acids
from vegetable sources,
and was developed in Europe during the fifth century AD.
Ever since the discovery of parchment
deep in the Money Pit back in 1897,
many researchers have speculated that the treasure lying deep
in the booby-trapped Money Pit is composed of not just gold,
silver and jewels but also priceless documents.
DAVID S: Even if the ink itself is no longer readable,
that iron should be left behind and should be visible.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the team
has found more evidence that this theory could be true?
If so, what sort of documents would someone want to hide
by such ingenious means?
If we had actual proof that there were
a-a book, a parchment,
a-an old tome that depth in the Money Pit,
it's all exciting.
CRAIG: So, at this point in time, can you make a determination
whether it's parchment or something completely else?
What we can say at this point is that
we tend to see some lines which would be indicative
of, say, a type of, uh, parchment.
Generally when we've looked, though, at more modern fibers,
that structure becomes very apparent very quickly.
Here we're seeing more of a rudimentary style to it.
- This? - The fibers seem to be a little bit larger.
- This? - Yes.
It likely wasn't placed there recently.
That it has some historical context to it.
So we are likely looking at something, you know,
a little bit older.
So, you know, my suggestion would be
that we set up a little bit longer scan,
get a little bit higher-resolution on this,
and then we get back together maybe in the war room.
I think that's the proper plan, right.
Let's do the hi-res scan and see what happens.
- Sounds good. - Yep.
- JON: All right, we'll get that started. - RICK: Okey doke.
RICK: Thank you. Thank you both.
- CRAIG: Thank you. - JON: Yep.
NARRATOR: The following morning...
All right. Here we go.
NARRATOR: Rick Lagina joins Craig Tester
and other members of the team at the Money Pit to observe
the continued progress on the excavation of the EC-1 shaft.
- Morning, gentlemen. - CRAIG: Andrew. - RICK: Hey, Andrew.
How are we doing this morning?
- Good, how are you? - Good.
So, right now this morning, uh,
we're currently at 82 feet
- with the excavation. - Okay.
ANDREW: We definitely did cut through something
that was acting like wood.
We're not seeing high pressures at all, so...
But we haven't seen any wood or anything,
so whether we were just on the edge of it, I'm not sure.
The truth is, we're, you know, we're not quite there yet.
No, the 85-to-90-foot range is the...
the 95 or so is the big stuff for me.
- Right. - DANNY: Here it comes again.
NARRATOR: Although the team is eager
to reach a depth of 118 feet,
where an abandoned searcher tunnel constructed in 1861
is believed to contain
a vast debris field of scattered treasure...
All right, mate. Let's see what hammer-mammer's brought us.
NARRATOR: earlier this year, Rick, Marty,
Craig and the team also recovered
trace evidence of gold between the depths of 85 to 95 feet
during their initial core-drilling operation.
Well, no metals.
Got a piece of timber right there.
Thank you.
- You definitely see an axe cut right there. - Oh, yeah.
- Definitely... - And we were at 82,
- so this is probably about 84 feet. - Yeah.
NARRATOR: Axe-cut timber,
found more than 84 feet deep in the EC-1 caisson?
Because it is not machine-worked wood,
meaning it could be from human activity
prior to the discovery of the Money Pit in 1795,
could it offer more evidence that the team is on target
to soon make a breakthrough discovery?
RICK: It's always difficult, up in the Money Pit,
to say definitively,
"Are we perhaps in or near original work?"
- Uh, 84 feet. - 84.
We know there was a collapse long ago.
That's a certainty.
The good news is,
is that we're not to total depth.
We've got a ways to go. You have to stay hopeful.
The big zone is still coming up yet in the 85 to 90 foot range,
so... who knows?
NARRATOR: As the excavation of the EC-1 shaft proceeds
in the Money Pit area...
GARY: They're going really fast now.
RICK: So, guys, today,
we have the gentlemen from Bruker, Jon and David.
BOTH: Hi, Marty.
NARRATOR ...brothers Rick and Marty Lagina
and members of their team are meeting in the war room
with imaging experts David Sampson and Jon Giencke
regarding the possible parchment discovered one day ago
in the spoils from the TF-1 shaft.
RICK: So, yesterday we gave them
this-- the parchment that Jack found,
and we got incomplete information yesterday.
So these gentlemen were kind enough to-to rerun the sample
at a higher res, and I believe
this is the information they're going to present
- to us today. - JON: Yeah, so, we looked at this piece
of, uh, what we're calling parchment.
And what we see is that there's some-some striations in it.
So, if you look, you know, carefully,
you can see that there's directionality.
Now, when we think about indelible types of material
that people would write on in the past,
one thing you would generally find in that
is not so much of the specific striation.
- ALEX: Mm-hmm. - JON: Now, that being said,
one nice thing about this technology, though,
is that we can actually look deeper.
So, uh, Dave, maybe if you could bring up a cross section.
Sure.
JON: As you see those little streaks coming off,
that tends to come from materials like iron.
So, iron glows when you hit it with X-rays.
- Mm. - And that's what we're seeing here,
just a little artifact from that glow.
MARTY: I saw those shiny bits up at the table.
Are you saying those are iron?
What we can infer to it is it's high density,
likely iron.
Yeah.
You also mentioned that older ink...
- has a high iron content. - DAVID S.: Yeah.
- JON: Yep. - DAVID S.: Wouldn't expect to see that
as a big chunk of iron, though.
- LAIRD: Right. - Rather, I'd more likely see that
as some sort of streaking across the material.
Yeah. Yeah.
DAVID S.: This one is a little bit different-colored.
JON: From this, what we can see now is relative densities.
And as we look at the inner part,
it tends to indicate that we're looking more at a paper.
Probably a cellulose-type product,
not necessarily an animal skin.
- Oh. - ALEX: Right.
What about the green and the blue blobs?
-Very good question. So, blue now... -Yeah.
that's your little chunks of the iron.
The green, now what are we looking at there?
Well, that's when we started thinking.
We brought in a little bit of context
from what could be present at the site,
and one thought was this could be a coated paper product.
Something very traditionally found
maybe somewhere around here.
Might be something coated with wax.
ALEX: It held up.
So, it'll hold up. It's resistant to moisture.
In fact, it's so resistant to moisture
it's typically used for, uh,
for, say, wrapping, um...
explosives.
Is that what you think it is?
- Yeah. - ALEX: Well, that definitely matches
- the historical record. - Yeah.
- Yes. - Mm-hmm.
NARRATOR: In the fall of 1909,
upon reaching a depth of nearly 100 feet in the Money Pit,
workers of Franklin Roosevelt's Old Gold Salvage Company
exploded dynamite in the shaft,
hoping to not only clear the debris from the 1861 collapse,
but also as an attempt to seal off the flow of seawater
from the flood tunnel.
The effort failed on both counts,
and the company would close down operations
at the end of the year.
Could the team have now determined
why they discovered only small fragments of gold
earlier this year during their core-drilling program?
And if so, since they have also detected
high concentrations of both silver and gold
where they are currently digging EC-1...
could that mean they are on course to locate
the vast cache of treasure
that people have been trying to find since 1795?
If dynamite was dropped somewhere right near a treasure,
you might tend to find small bits of metal with gold on them.
And we did, so that's good.
That's good stuff. Makes us keep looking.
What's important is that we were able to discern what it was.
It's about what the technology can tell us.
How we can use that information to, perhaps, provide us
with greater understanding of what happened out
on this quite mysterious place.
MARTY: All right.
Very, very, very great presentation,
and we're impressed, so let's go look
- at some more stuff as soon as you're able. - DAVID S.: Yeah. All right.
- MARTY: Thank you. - Thank you.
- Let's go.
- NARRATOR: Later that afternoon... - MARTY: Hey, guys.
- LAIRD: Hey, Marty. - Hey, Rick.
NARRATOR: Rick and Marty Lagina
along with members of their team
arrive in the Money Pit area to monitor
the progress of the EC-1 shaft excavation.
- Where are we at? - We're at 86.
NARRATOR: They are hoping to soon find a massive amount of timbers
and potential valuables related to a reported collapse
of the original Money Pit in 1861.
MARTY: Are we getting any wood or anything?
Well, we did get a little bit up in around 84 feet.
We did get a few little pieces there.
The next-- what, Laird?-- Seven feet, give or take...
- Yeah. - we should-- definitely should hit some wood.
If I look back to 93,
it's right at the level that there should be wood.
Well, they're going fast. We should find out today.
We're hoping to find something
maybe around the 90 to 100-foot area,
because that was where the drilling results found wood,
heretofore undiscovered potential tunnels,
all kinds of data that indicate there are things there
we didn't know existed,
including metal with gold on it.
So, we're at about the right depth for something to occur.
GARY: Ooh, look at that.
That's an old timber hanging out of there, mate.
MARTY: Here comes the goodies right now.
LAIRD: There's your wood.
So it begins.
- LAIRD: There's your wood. - MARTY: Here comes the goodies right now.
So it begins.
NARRATOR: It is a potentially critical moment
for brothers Rick and Marty Lagina and their team.
Oh, that's a big timber. Look at that.
NARRATOR: At a depth of nearly 90 feet,
massive amounts of timber, that is believed to be related
to a collapse of the original Money Pit,
is being unearthed from the EC-1 shaft.
What do you see on it?
RICK: It looks pretty square.
See here?
That is so perfect here.
MARTY: I don't really see any saw cuts, Craig.
- CRAIG: Yeah. - Is this the only one brought up?
There's some more wood.
That's interesting.
MARTY: That looks very crudely done.
This doesn't look modern.
No.
MARTY: That's incredible that that's down there.
NARRATOR: Could the massive amounts of potentially ancient wood
that is being unearthed offer evidence
of the catastrophic collapse of the Money Pit in 1861?
If so, could that also mean that the team is close
to recovering something of great value?
MARTY: This makes sense because we found the same thing in TF-1.
We came down, we think,
into a cribbed portion of the Money Pit.
And most significantly, in the same vicinity
as where we found the-the metal that maybe has gold on it.
There's only one thing to do: follow it,
see where it leads, keep digging.
Another load up.
- GARY: Man, there's a lot of wood in here now. - Ah, that's a lot of wood.
RICK: To me, this looks older.
It's not dimensional lumber like TF-1.
PETER: Mm-hmm.
GARY: Another load.
RICK: Every time you put a shovel in the dirt,
every time you drill a borehole,
every time you drill a caisson, you're hopeful.
You think that, you know, "We're gonna find it today."
What are we kind of anticipating to see?
A treasure vault.
- GARY: I've got the other end. - PETER: Yeah.
RICK: Based on the finding of this old wood,
it could suggest that we're close to the original Money Pit.
That is interesting.
My takeaway in this moment is that,
yes, I believe we're close.
MARTY: Well, hey. Here's the deal.
- It's something different. - CHARLES: Yeah.
I mean, I'd about almost thrown in the towel,
but it's something different.
So that's the most exciting thing
that's happened out here today.
- That's true. - We're in a disturbed zone
at this point in time, still.
But they just want to get a few more feet here
and then they're gonna be putting the new can on.
- That's cool. - RICK: You still want
to go to 150?
That's for sure. Need to keep on digging.
I like it.
There's still hope!
NARRATOR: For 227 years,
generations of determined and faithful searchers
have tried in vain to solve the Oak Island mystery.
However, as Rick, Marty, Craig, and their team
diligently move forward in their own quest
to solve the world's longest running treasure hunt,
the efforts that those previous searchers made
continue to offer helpful clues
that may soon lead to the ultimate discovery.
So now, as they utilize the latest technology,
and keep digging with the most cutting-edge machinery,
the dream that they all have shared
may soon be fulfilled.
Next time on The Curse of Oak Island...
GARY: Ready to find some good stuff out of these spoils?
- RICK: Whoa. - What have you got there, Rick?
- Look at this. - Ooh, that's nice.
Wow. This is old.
JOE: This came out of the medieval period,
- from about 1235. - CHARLES: It's amazing.
(soft laughter)
GARY: I'm hoping we smash
straight through the Chappell Vault
and come up with some treasure.
- This should be it. - GARY: Wow. Big timbers.
Chappell Vault, here we come.
(laughter)
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