Original subtitles

Tonight on The Curse of Oak Island...

The gold concentrations get higher as we go down.

-SCOTT: Oh, wow. -COTE: "X" marks the spot.

RICK: We're going to dig the great quadrilateral.

This clay should not be here.

There's something at the bottom of that clay.

-That's a big something. -Oh, wow. -What is that?

-GARY: That is sweet. -ALEX: Whoa.

This is Portuguese.

It's 1474 to 1638.

-RICK: Wow. -(chuckles)

No way.

-It's incredible. -(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.

♪ ♪

CRAIG: Hey, guys.

-SCOTT: Hey, Craig. -COTE: How's it going?

-Good. -All right.

-Question is, how are you doing? -Ah, she's going.

NARRATOR: Another bright and hopeful day

has begun on Oak Island

for brothers Rick and Marty Lagina,

their partner Craig Tester,

and their entire team,

as they dig deeper

in the Money Pit area for the answers

to a 228-year-old treasure mystery.

CRAIG: How deep are you cribbed?

Uh, right now, we're at 67 feet.

Okay.

NARRATOR: Thanks to representatives of Dumas Contracting Limited,

the reconstruction of the so-called Garden Shaft

has now reached a depth of nearly 70 feet

and will continue until the original structure

is completely refurbished with waterproof levels,

or sets, down to its bottom,

approximately 80 feet underground.

SCOTT: The deeper this goes,

kind of the more exciting it gets for us.

CRAIG: Yeah. I'm sure hoping we find more gold

and the concentrations get higher as we go down.

Yeah.

NARRATOR: The team has numerous reasons

to believe that the Garden Shaft,

which has been carbon-dated to more than 60 years prior

to the discovery of the Money Pit in 1795,

may lead them to the ultimate discovery.

First, water that flooded the shaft,

as well as wood samples that were taken

at depths of 55 and 58 feet from the structure,

have yielded high trace evidence of gold.

And second, the Garden Shaft is located

less than 20 feet east from the so-called "Treasure Zone,"

where the team has discovered their highest traces of silver,

gold, and other metals between depths of 80 and 120 feet.

And within that zone,

a tunnel was recently discovered,

some 95 feet deep,

that appears to lead almost directly below the shaft.

How deep are your probes going at this point in time?

So, uh, we're probing 12 feet on the outside wall.

Okay.

COTE: And then we're gonna probably probe each corner

about 20 feet.

I've got a print right here.

There are three per wall, so there's 12.

CRAIG: Okay.

NARRATOR: Because of the recent discoveries of gold

found on samples of wood that were collected

at the 55 and 58-foot levels of the Garden Shaft,

the Laginas and Craig have directed the team from Dumas

to conduct a new probe drilling operation

at the current depth of 67 feet.

Using a powerful hydraulic earth drill,

three holes will be made at various angles

through each of the four walls,

reaching as far as 20 feet outside the shaft

in order to look for possible tunnels, chambers,

and valuables that may be buried nearby.

RICK: This area is significantly unknown and under-investigated.

So, because of that

and because of all the issues with the high gold values,

the associated soft areas,

we and the Dumas team

want to know what's outside of the shaft.

It's all about, at this point, the probe drilling

to further our understanding of the relevance

of the Garden Shaft in terms of treasure recovery.

COTE: That's right. Yeah.

So, when we're doing our testing,

we can see if there's... you know, if we are lucky enough

that we get another concentration

of gold on the wood, we can see if it is higher

on the outside versus the inside to know, you know,

was it something that's outside the shaft

-that's causing this? -Yeah.

CRAIG: It's all just another piece of the puzzle,

but it will help us figure it out.

-So... Appreciate it. -Okay. Thank you.

-CRAIG: Talk to you later. -SCOTT: Thanks, Craig.

NARRATOR: As the probe drilling operation

continues in the Garden Shaft...

RICK: Okay. Are we about ready?

Just in time. Yeah.

NARRATOR: ...Rick Lagina,

fellow Oak Island landowner Tom Nolan,

and other members of the team

prepare to conduct another excavation

in search of vital clues on Lot 13,

just northeast of the swamp.

This is the site. We are looking at the quadrilateral.

Right here.

It just was interesting when you brought out,

you know, what your father had written about it.

I mean, three layers

of multi-ton stone is right there.

-GARY: Dang. -RICK: That's a unique feature.

TOM: Just maybe today we can get

a couple answers 'cause it left my dad, you know,

he knew he had found something, you know, of importance,

but he didn't know exactly what its meaning was, so...

This is the section of the book that was

dedicated to the quadrilateral.

NARRATOR: One week ago, Tom shared an unpublished book

written by his late father,

Fred Nolan, which documented his nearly six-decade search

for the answers to the Oak Island mystery.

What they found themselves in

was some sort of a boulder field,

and it definitely didn't look natural

once they started to uncover it.

NARRATOR: One item in the book

was a 32-foot-long,

quadrilateral-shaped boulder feature

that he discovered back in 1993.

RICK: That's intriguing, right?

-Don't you think so? -Very intriguing.

TOM: To construct this thing,

it would've taken a huge amount of time

to put this thing together.

NARRATOR: Although he removed

a number of boulders from the feature,

Fred was never able to confirm if it was simply

a marker or perhaps hiding something.

RICK: That was the end

of his dig, and this is the beginning of ours.

Let's see what we can find here.

-Okay. Time to get boulder. -Time... -(chuckles)

(chuckles)

GARY: Now we're rolling.

NARRATOR: As Billy Gerhardt carefully peels back the earth

covering the stone formation,

Gary Drayton will metal detect the spoils

in search of important clues and discoveries.

We know nothing about the great quadrilateral,

other than the little bit of information that was in

Fred's book.

-There's one. -There's a rock, yeah.

RICK: The aim is to learn

more about it and its import on the island.

And, hopefully, it will be quite revealing

in terms of understanding the mystery.

GARY: Oh, there's a metal pipe there.

Did your dad do any drilling here?

TOM: Yes, that's what he said in the book.

GARY: Nice little piece of Nolan history there, mate.

-TOM: Yep. -BILLY: Hey, guys, you should take a look here.

GARY: Do you want to see what's going on?

The little sticks there.

GARY: What is it, Tom?

TOM: I'd say it's been cut and burnt.

Cut and burnt. Wood?

Yeah.

GARY: Oh, yeah.

To me, that looks like it's been in a fire.

Mm-hmm.

I want to know what that is right there.

BILLY: Yeah, the consistency of that, to me,

reminds me more of when we dig in the bottom of the swamp.

-What do you got, Rick? -RICK: It's burnt, too.

(sighs)

Yep, I would say

that's been through a fire, wouldn't you?

Yeah.

-Oh, yeah. It's charcoal. -TOM: Yeah.

GARY: That kind of reminds me of those small

little pieces of wood that we found

in the base layer of the stone pathway

that goes around the swamp.

With all these thin little branches

like that, that were cut.

It's really firm right here. Feel how firm that is.

Yeah there's some sort of cribbing or support.

NARRATOR: Two years ago,

the team uncovered a stone road

in the southeast corner of the swamp.

A road that is believed to be at least

500 years old,

potentially of Portuguese design...

Wow. So, that's the coal we're finding.

Yeah, we found some pieces fairly large.

NARRATOR: ...and which was constructed atop a layer of charcoal

and wood fragments.

ALEX: Looks a lot like the stone path.

CORJAN: Yeah, it looks the spitting image.

NARRATOR: Incredibly, one year later in 2021,

while visiting a site in Alqueidão da Serra, Portugal,

known to have been a stronghold for the Knights Templar

between the 12th and 16th centuries,

Rick and Alex Lagina, along with Doug Crowell

and Peter Fornetti, were shown

a nearly identical feature.

If there is a Portuguese connection

to the construction of the road in the swamp,

maybe this is the blueprint.

-How deep are you, Bill? -Four feet.

Oh, there's quite a bit of digging to do here yet.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the team has just found evidence

that the quadrilateral feature on Lot 13

and the stone road in the swamp may be related?

And if so, could both help explain

just who was behind the Oak Island mystery?

BILLY: Hey, Rick?

That's a bit of clay there.

-TOM: This stuff? -BILLY: Yeah.

Pretty definitive that that

-shouldn't normally be there, right? -TOM: No. That could be

-blue clay, right there. -Yeah.

Where have you seen that color before?

Money Pit.

GARY: I was not expecting that.

NARRATOR: On Lot 13,

located northeast of the Oak Island swamp...

RICK: There's a big, thick seam of it right here.

NARRATOR: ...while excavating a mysterious boulder formation

known as "the quadrilateral,"

which was first discovered by Fred Nolan in the 1990s,

Rick Lagina and members of the team

have just found a potentially critical clue.

RICK: Exactly the kind of clay that we found around the Money Pit.

NARRATOR: In 1804,

when searchers began the first major excavation

of the original Money Pit

at a depth of 40 feet,

they found a layer of blue clay that acted

as a sealant to keep water out of the shaft.

Curiously, when the team investigated

a circular feature of boulders,

known as the Eye of the Swamp,

in 2018,

they discovered the same substance.

You've never seen it this shallow?

No, definitely not.

NARRATOR: Is it possible

that the team

has now found evidence

that the quadrilateral was created

by the same people

who manipulated the swamp and constructed the Money Pit?

-RICK: Hey, Terry. -Hi, Rick. How you doing?

-Hey, Terry. -Hey, Tom.

RICK: Well, I'm gonna be a lot better

once you tell us things we don't know. (laughs) Come on down.

-Only make educated guesses. -No, you'll know this.

-I got my fingers crossed. -Why is that there?

It seems a little bit similar to what we're seeing

in the Money Pit.

RICK: Blue clay is part of the historical narrative

of the find of the Money Pit.

Would you use that to your advantage

if you wanted to keep water out

of-of some sort of underground structure?

Absolutely. 100%.

NARRATOR: Could Rick Lagina's notion

that the presence of blue clay

indicates that a structure

is possibly buried below be correct?

If so, what kind of structure could it be?

And might it contain something of great value?

RICK: It's a mystery.

I can't wait dig the rest of it,

but I think we're done for the day.

Yep. Absolutely.

RICK: We'll pick it up tomorrow.

GARY: I think the best is yet to come.

NARRATOR: The following morning...

RONNIE: All right, stop around the same spot,

I'll throw another rod on.

NARRATOR: ...while representatives

from Dumas Contracting Limited

continue the probe drilling operation

within the Garden Shaft...

RICK: So, this is the quadrilateral.

I think, Ian, you know a little bit about this.

NARRATOR: ...Rick Lagina and members of the team return to Lot 13

to have geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner examine

the mysterious quadrilateral feature.

We found a layer of clay below the stones.

-Okay. -RICK: So,

if you can go down there and

give us a better understanding of what happened here.

Is it natural? Has it been manipulated?

That's-that's

-what we want to know. -IAN and GARY: Yeah.

Let's go down, take a look here.

RICK: We have to see if there's some other,

as yet undetermined reason

for this clay to be at this horizon.

It's all about being

keenly aware of what you observe

as the dig proceeds.

IAN: Right off the bat, what I'm seeing is a layer here of-of

very clay-rich sediment.

Like, you can feel how deep it is.

That's probably pretty thick, which is odd.

And if it were geologic?

-I.e., glacially deposited? -It's not.

-It's not? -I just don't think so. This is the wrong environment.

It's on a hill slope. It's a little bit improbable

that it would have collected here naturally.

Yeah, like... there's also

the different kinds of clays we're seeing here,

the different colors.

That may speak to burning or heat.

Mm.

IAN: You see this?

That's burnt wood. This burnt wood is in clay,

and that just-- the-the two things don't go together.

And so, I can tell you definitively,

it is a disturbed clay and out of place.

Something with a fair bit of purpose took place here.

RICK: It's a complex story,

and thus, there has to be a why to it.

You stack boulders

because it's much harder to get boulders out of a hole

-than it is to get them in the hole. -That's right.

So, basically, this becomes,

-possibly, a safe. -Yeah.

You seal the top, you prevent water from

getting down below, and boulders are actually

-the key to the safe. -Right.

RICK: I think the quadrilateral is a human construct.

There is no way that you would,

for fun and games, put huge boulders in a huge hole.

And so, yes, there's every bit of possibility

that this may have something to do with

furthering our understanding of what happened here long ago.

Is there going to be treasure at the bottom of this location?

This is worth investigating.

If we could kind of get through the clay,

what's at the bottom of that clay

is really important.

RICK: If there's something at the bottom

of that clay, that-that's a big something.

IAN: Yeah.

RICK: We need to investigate further,

but I think we have to wait for Tom and then dig.

We're definitely not done here.

NARRATOR: Later that afternoon...

RICK: So, guys, as everybody knows,

research has played an important role to date.

Uh, we have a researcher in the Azores, Francisco Nogueira.

And Judi has been working with him.

NARRATOR: Rick Lagina has gathered with members of the team

in the war room for a meeting via videoconference

with Portuguese researcher Francisco Nogueira.

-Good morning, sir. -Hey.

NARRATOR: While Rick has currently commissioned

a number of researchers across Europe

to scour their national archives

for possible connections to the Oak Island mystery,

in light of the recent discoveries on the island

that may be connected to the Portuguese sect

of the Knights Templar, known as the Order of Christ,

Rick's friend Judi Rudebusch has alerted him that Francisco

has information to share that may help prove members

of that organization buried treasure on Oak Island.

So, without any more, uh, statements from our end,

I think we'll turn it over to you.

NARRATOR: Although the Christian order of the Knights Templar

established strongholds in Portugal as early

as the 12th century,

after the King of France and the Catholic Church

persecuted the order in 1307

and attempted to confiscate the sacred religious treasures

that they were rumored to possess,

a number of Templars fled to Portugal,

rebranded themselves as the Order of Christ,

and maintained fortresses on the mainland

as well as hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean

on the Portuguese islands known as the Azores.

From there, some researchers believe

they moved their treasures to the New World

sometime between the 14th and 16th centuries

and hid them on Oak Island.

No way.

ALEX: That's a very interesting lead to follow up on.

FRANCISCO: This is a Portuguese rock wall,

and I have no doubts about that.

NARRATOR: In the war room,

Portuguese researcher

Francisco Nogueira

has just made a surprising assertion

to Rick Lagina and members of the Oak Island team.

It is his belief that the rock wall on Lot 26,

located on the western side of Oak Island,

which the team has been investigating

for the past several weeks,

is more than 500 years old

and of Portuguese origin.

JACK: Those dates from 1400 to 1600s

are legitimate,

and th-- and that people were here,

specifically the Portuguese.

RICK: They may be significantly relevant, yes.

NARRATOR: Following the death of King Henry of Portugal

in 1580,

the fact that he had no children

led to a bitter conflict

over who should be the rightful heir to the throne.

Many citizens believed that António,

Prior of Crato,

who was the nephew of the late King Henry

and who had ties to the Order of Christ,

was the rightful successor.

However, King Philip II of Spain

waged a bloody war

and eventually seized power over both nations.

In the wake of the carnage, a large fortune of gold,

which some believe was connected

to the Order of Christ, went missing

and has never been accounted for.

NARRATOR: Is it possible

that a vast golden treasure was moved

in the 16th century from Portugal to Oak Island

by members of the Order of Christ?

If so, could that explain the stone road

in the swamp, the rock wall

on Lot 26,

the quadrilateral feature on Lot 13,

and the high-trace evidence of gold in the Money Pit area?

RICK: What's interesting, though, is Francisco mentions

the Order of Christ helping the Azoreans

with their struggle.

When we were in Portugal, we

surmised that the Order of Christ

knew there was impending doom, if you will, right?

-Mm-hmm. -King John inviting the Inquisition.

Well, the Order of Christ would have familiarity

with the Azores.

They would know of voyages to the New World.

Where are you going to seek refuge?

You would want to seek refuge to an area,

at least, that you know of, right?

They are here in the New World.

It's a possible place of refuge. It's a possibility, certainly.

DOUG: The timeline I see developing here is that

the Knights Templar, suppressed in 1307, right,

they found sanctuary in Portugal.

And then, when the Inquisition finally reached Portugal,

they had to look for a safe haven elsewhere.

A great amount of wealth disappeared from the Azores,

a-and-and, like you have said,

who knows what else under the protection

of the Order of Christ

disappeared around that time.

It-It's-it's an interesting concept.

Oh, Francisco,

I speak for everyone here on the war room, uh,

we respect and appreciate the research you've done.

We-We've always said there's a treasure hunt here,

but there's also an information hunt, and you're-you're

integral to that process,

so we really appreciate all the hard work,

and we-we hope, sincerely,

-that you will continue in this. -Okay. That's a promise.

(laughter)

-Thank you. -Thanks. -Take care.

JUDI: Bye-bye.

FRANCISCO: You're welcome.

NARRATOR: Later that afternoon...

CRAIG: This is my first look-see.

ALEX: Yeah, me, too.

Watch your step here. It's pretty steep.

NARRATOR: ...Rick Lagina, along with

his nephew Alex, Craig Tester,

Tom Nolan,

and other members of the team

arrive on Lot 13 to continue their excavation

of the so-called quadrilateral.

Yeah, I've looked at it. I mean,

I-I don't think I've gone through it with Tom

or-or Alex or-or Craig for that matter.

Um, I think we should all go through the stratigraphy

just to get a feel, uh, for how things

were deposited here, so

I've got the flag at the contact between

Nolan's dig and an older dig,

and then that goes all the way down,

down to the clay layer, which is right beside us.

There's a big chunk of it.

-Craig, can you just grab that big... -Clay?

Yeah, that big chunk.

If you take a look at that chunk,

what does

the chunk have in it? Wood.

-It's disturbed. -Mm-hmm.

My contention is, this clay,

which is really nice clay, should not be here.

When you say it shouldn't be here,

do you mean it was transported here?

That's my guess.

Because, fact of the matter is,

if there were the boulders on top of it, somebody

had to transport them here, too.

But what I can't get my head around is,

why would you put down clay, then put down rocks,

-what were you doing? -ALEX: Yeah.

Why would it be a uniform layer of clay that was brought here?

I don't know. There's something going on here.

RICK: I think that this is a representation

of original work.

The only explanation outside of original work

on Oak Island is something to do with

habitation or farming.

And I can't for the life of me explain

why farmers would dig a pit,

put blue clay at the bottom of it,

and then put huge boulders,

one on top of each other,

and then bury it.

IAN: It's got organic matter in it,

so we've got a chance to date it.

-Yeah. -Just to go through it.

If I get the whole class's attention here again.

-(laughter) -Thank you.

-Right along in here... -(metallic clanging)

-RICK: What's that? -CRAIG: Is that a rock?

IAN: Oh, no.

Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho.

ALEX: What is that?

NARRATOR: While investigating a site northeast

of the Oak Island swamp known as the quadrilateral,

geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner

has just made a potentially important discovery.

I think it's a really large iron staple.

And an oldie by the look of it.

Look at that one little spot that's deteriorated. You can see

-the striations in the metal. -GARY: Yeah.

It's got that wood grain effect.

What would they use that for?

CRAIG: Definitely looks like, with the thin ends, that it was

-to be driven into wood. -GARY: Yeah.

And you think this is hand-forged?

That's what it looks like to me.

NARRATOR: A hand-forged iron staple or fastener?

Dating as far back as the sixth century BC,

large metal staples are commonly used to this day

in the assembly of both stone and wooden structures.

Could this hand-forged

metal fastener be more evidence that kind of structure

is waiting to be revealed at the so-called quadrilateral?

If so, given the fact

that the team has already found blue clay,

what kind of structure could it be?

RICK: Anything that predates the original discovery

of the Money Pit provides an opportunity

that might be original work.

But you put this so-called staple

in line with the laborious effort it took

to create the great quadrilateral,

it certainly is quite puzzling.

What, if any, is the relevance to the overall mystery?

That is yet to be determined.

We made an interesting find.

I can't wait to get it back to the lab,

but, for right now, let's just keep digging.

BILLY: Yep. Keep going.

NARRATOR: The following morning,

while Billy Gerhardt and members

of the team continue excavating

the mysterious quadrilateral feature on Lot 13...

COTE: The outside corner,

if it goes good, I'm gonna try to push it a little bit deeper.

Okay.

NARRATOR: ...and as the probe drilling

operation continues in the Garden Shaft...

RICK: Carmen, as usual, we are very grateful

that you were able to make some time

in your busy schedule to come down.

In front of us, we have a really unique artifact.

NARRATOR: ...at the Oak Island Interpretive Centre,

Rick and Marty Lagina, along with Craig Tester

and archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan,

meet with blacksmithing expert Carmen Legge

to have him examine the large metal staple

unearthed one day ago.

Where it comes from is the great quadrilateral.

It's a unique geometric figure, and we have no understanding

of what that feature represented.

It's the first one we've found on the island.

First time we've seen anything like that.

So, I don't know what that means.

MARTY: Four feet down.

We know it was perhaps buried there,

somehow.

That makes sense.

MARTY: This would've been used in a tree

or a big post or something, right?

MARTY: Straight out.

But perpendicular to it, it would take

a hell of a lot of force.

Yeah, it made--

when you said it, it made complete sense to me.

-Yeah. -Could that have been used with

helping pull the boulders into place or not?

Half the size of this table.

MARTY: How old is this?

NARRATOR: Medieval times?

Could Carmen Legge be correct

that this heavy staple was used as part

of a rope and pulley system centuries ago

in order to create

the massive quadrilateral feature?

Emma, do you have the metallurgy?

I do.

NARRATOR: Prior to their meeting,

Emma scanned the artifact

under an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.

The device bombards metal objects with gamma rays

in order to determine their elemental composition

and also their possible age.

It is 98% iron.

It's got a bit of

silicon, aluminum,

manganese, calcium, sulfur, phosphorous,

which is all indicative of the

furnace type of the technology that was used.

I do agree with Carmen saying that it is older.

RICK: It's another little mystery.

- I do agree with Carmen saying that it is older. -Cool.

NARRATOR: In the Oak Island Interpretive Centre,

blacksmithing expert Carmen Legge

and archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan

have just given their analysis that the iron staple found

one day ago at the site of the so-called quadrilateral

on Lot 13 could date back to medieval times.

I think it does speak to what Fred discovered.

Evidence of the blue clay,

evidence of stacked boulders,

evidence of a way to manipulate those boulders.

Yeah.

MARTY: Whatever happened in the great quadrilateral

could have been depositor.

In fact, maybe more likely 'cause

I don't know why searchers would have done that.

If that's the case, then I want to see what's under it.

We just don't know the "why" of the structure itself.

And we need to figure out what that means.

Yeah.

-Thank you, Carmen. -Good seeing you again.

-RICK: Take care. Thank you. -CRAIG: Take care.

NARRATOR: Later that afternoon,

as heavy equipment operator Billy Gerhardt

and members of the team

continue their excavation of the quadrilateral...

-CRAIG: Hey, Paul. -COTE: How's it going?

How we doing?

-How's it going, Rick? -Good, thank you.

They're going back to the shallow holes

-that they couldn't complete. -Okay.

NARRATOR: ...Rick Lagina and Craig Tester

arrive at the Money Pit area

for an update from Paul Cote of Dumas Contracting Limited

on the probe drilling operation inside the Garden Shaft.

So, this one here, they got past three feet now,

they drilled through the rocks.

Then they'll do number two, and they'll all be around 12 feet.

Okay.

NARRATOR: After completing six holes

on the eastern side of the shaft,

the team has yet to find definitive signs

of man-made workings or valuables.

However, they have just begun drilling

a new hole on the western wall,

which faces the direction of the so-called treasure zone.

From the wells we drilled just nearby,

that's where we got gold in the water

and now gold in the wood, in the shaft, so...

COTE: Well, right now it's

a little bit more work for us.

Since they're separating,

the tightlining's a little wonky.

It's not, you know, as-as you'd like it.

You know, you can see a little bit of bow in it and...

What does that tell you, as a miner?

Well, I would, I would think that it seems like

they were in a little bit of a rush to get to the bottom.

MARTY: We're very near to a whole bunch

of things, and the bottom of the shaft is going to let us do

probe drilling down, probe drilling out.

So, what this probe might find is anything from the treasure

itself to anything associated with the treasure itself.

So, this is where it begins, not where it ends.

I will be very interested when you drill this corner.

-COTE: Yeah. -The north corner, I guess it is.

-COTE: Straight down. Yeah. -Pretty much the north corner.

Yeah. Straight down. See what you hit there.

Yeah. "X" marks the spot, yeah.

-CRAIG: Absolutely. -COTE: Yeah.

-CRAIG: Okay. -RICK: Thanks.

-COTE: Thanks. -CRAIG: Catch you later.

NARRATOR: The following day...

-STEVE: Hey, guys. -RICK: Hey, guys.

Let's have Laird and Marty and Craig come up because

I'm sure they'll have some input as well.

NARRATOR: ...Rick Lagina has gathered his brother Marty

and members of the team in the war room and on videoconference

for an important update on the mysterious stone wall

that the team has been investigating on Lot 26,

a wall which researcher Francisco Nogueira believes

to be of Portuguese origin

and possibly more than 500 years old.

So, guys, I think that today's meeting is really

quite different than any other meeting because

Lot 26 is a very unique lot on

the island, and I think following the science

is highly applicable here.

So, Laird, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Let us know your thoughts about the wall.

Well, um, this wall is unique.

I mean, it was a typical--

we call them double-skinned walls.

So, you have two larger walls,

and the center is just filled

with-with rubble and cobbles, basically.

And when we got those top rocks off at the end of the wall,

we did get a really good sample

of carbon 14.

-That's charcoal. -That's a cool find.

That's pretty interesting.

NARRATOR: One week ago,

after excavating the curiously constructed wall

down to the ground level with

fellow archaeologist Miriam Amirault and Alex Lagina,

they were all intrigued when Laird discovered

a piece of charcoal.

If you can get a date off of that, you can sort of

try and date this wall.

At least say, like, it was not here

-before this time. -Right.

Lot 26 has become quite interesting

with the intricacy of the well,

with the construction methodology

we're discovering with the wall.

It has a good chance of being ancient.

That makes you raise an eyebrow and think

that it might be associated with treasure deposition, yes.

I mean, I've got the results on that.

The date came in one time period.

1474...

...to 1638.

Wow.

(Rick chuckles)

DOUG: Wow.

CRAIG: The date came in one time period:

1474...

...to 1638.

-Wow. -Wow.

Great.

NARRATOR: In the war room, Craig Tester

has just revealed carbon dating results of charcoal found

in the mysterious stone wall on Lot 26 which suggests

that the feature was constructed more than 500 years ago.

I'm a bit taken aback because,

according to Francisco, the wall on Lot 26

exhibits Portuguese construction.

And now you have a date of the wall

from 1474 to 1638.

You know, there are connections.

We know the Portuguese were in the area.

I think there is a rather unique story being constructed

as we speak about Oak Island,

and I hope that progress continues.

MARTY: So what can you come up with, Laird?

What is the purpose of a wall like that?

Say it was built in 1500s.

What's its purpose?

LAIRD: Those wide, low walls

separate agricultural land,

cultivated land.

Okay.

-Under normal circumstances, that's what it would be. -Right.

This isn't very normal, though.

Well, no, not now. (chuckles)

JACK: Yeah, they weren't just doing it for no reason.

They didn't even have farm animals necessarily then.

What would be the point of building these massive walls

away from the Money Pit

if they weren't somehow related to the overall treasure hunt?

LAIRD: I have no idea.

That's a lot of expended effort

to be done, uh, to what purpose, I actually have no idea.

To me, whatever happened here was incremental,

in that the Lot 26 work, it's a planned endeavor.

Right? You have your well, you have needs of a wall.

For what reason I don't know.

That's infrastructure, and there was a purpose to it.

Right.

Yes.

ALEX: Do you remember when we were in Portugal,

what were the significant dates

of expeditions and voyages?

The Portuguese Age of Exploration?

-Yeah. -I think that was

as early as 13 but it was more around 1500s.

Yeah, in 1536, the Templars, or the Order of Christ,

would have had a reason to move anything they were safeguarding

because the Inquisition started in Portugal,

-in that time frame. -Mm-hmm.

And that wall date falls right in the middle of that.

That's what I was thinking with the wall,

-not to mention the construction of it. -Yeah.

It indicates someone that had some kind of knowledge

in building with rock,

to-to build that way, I would think.

And we saw over there in Portugal

-the Templars certainly had that. -Oh, they did.

NARRATOR: Could obtaining an approximate date

that the stone wall on Lot 26 was created

support the belief of researcher Francisco Nogueira

that members of the Portuguese sect

of the Knights Templar visited Oak Island

in the 16th century to hide something

of great value?

RICK: The date of the wall aligns with

the Portuguese Age of Exploration.

I think they certainly were here.

So if there was some sort of Templar association

with some esoteric knowledge or some treasure,

is it all tied together?

It's hard to think that it isn't.

With what we know about the Portuguese being

in this area as well, it kind of lines up with,

-with what is known and recorded. -Yeah.

-Yes. -There's all kinds of possibilities,

and that's why you have to keep an open mind,

-until the facts say otherwise. -Yeah, that's right.

So there's still an incredible amount of work to do.

Okay. Get after it.

Yes, it is time to get after it, so here we go.

-CRAIG: Bye, guys. -MARTY: See you, guys. -OTHERS: See you.

NARRATOR: The pursuit of Rick, Marty and their team

to solve the Oak Island mystery can be summed up

with six simple questions.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? And how?

And although they continue unearthing clues

across the island, as well as in numerous destinations

throughout Europe,

the truth of what happened long ago

remains elusive.

However, as they dig and drill

deeper into the Garden Shaft,

perhaps a golden opportunity

to answer all of those questions

will soon be within their reach.

Next time on The Curse of Oak Island...

JEREMY: We have a large metallic anomaly in the swamp.

MARTY: Wow, that's great.

RICK: I believe there are answers in that swamp.

(engine starts)

JACK: Yes, we're starting to dig.

The more we dig, the more we find.

-Oh, my gosh. -(device beeping rapidly)

What the heck is that?

COTE: Something's going on in that corner.

It hit something solid. They couldn't drill through it.

That's where the gold signal's coming from.

SCOTT: There could be something there.

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