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Tonight on The Curse of Oak Island...
Come on, baby! - Now it's time to see
-what's in that hole. -This is part of the Chappell Vault.
- Whoa! We know there are significant clues in H-8.
Charles, what's this? - What do you got?
- Looks like parchment to me. - Look at the red.
That color was used in really old books.
If you were in charge,
- where do you look? - I would look
for an entrance that's now underwater.
Because I think there is one.
Hey, Rick? - Yeah?
- We found something. - Oh, man.
What the hell could this be?
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,
mysterious fragments of human bone,
and a lead cross whose origin may stretch back
to the days of 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.
Wow, that's a heck of a wall, isn't it?
Yep.
It's very strange.
For brothers Rick and Marty Lagina,
the realization of a lifelong dream
to solve the 223-year-old Oak Island mystery
may now be closer than ever,
as they continue making incredible discoveries
at Smith's Cove.
What do you make of it?
Somebody wanted something permanent.
- So what's this mean?
- Yeah. - At the end of the slipway...
A hunk of concrete.
You tell me what it means.
You ever seen anything like this before, Laird?
- Not underwater.
Just moments ago,
while unearthing what appears to be
an ancient wooden shipping dock, or slipway,
archaeologist Laird Niven made another stunning find:
a concrete wall buried approximately three feet
below the ocean floor.
Think there's a way to date concrete?
- Yeah. This stuff? - The Romans had, uh,
concrete that would set underwater.
- Really? - This could easily be...
incredibly old.
Now, that's a good sign
when you're not getting any metal
in the actual concrete wall.
What the hell could this be?
Because the mysterious concrete wall
is set under the low-tide level and contains no metal,
it is the team's belief that it may have been built
using engineering techniques
first developed by the ancient Romans
as early as the third century B.C.
By mixing volcanic ash with other native minerals,
they created a unique mixture of concrete,
which, when poured underwater,
would harden and set.
There are many who have theorized
that this same sophisticated knowledge
would have been necessary to construct
the island's elaborate system of booby-trapped flood tunnels,
which are also believed to be similar in design
to Roman aqueducts.
You know, at this point, Smith's Cove has dealt us
so many questions,
and now here we have another previously unknown wall
in close proximity to the other structures.
So it's very possible that,
as this discovery process proceeds,
we may indeed finally, once and for all,
prove who, when, why.
That's why we're here in Smith's Cove.
- Hey, Rick? - Yeah?
Um, we found something for you to look at.
What is that?
Two plugged pipes.
- And they're not lead. - They don't look metal to me.
They're not lead, no.
This is almost a...
rubbery consistency, right, Laird?
- Yeah, it is, isn't it? - Yeah.
And rubber might have been around for quite a while.
Well, I've found rubber from the 1850s.
Rubber pipes?
Possibly from the mid-19th century?
Although natural rubber was known to
and used by the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica
as early as 1600 B.C.,
it was not until the mid-19th century
that chemist and engineer Charles Goodyear
discovered a means for refining the substance,
which led to the widespread manufacturing of rubber goods
such as tires, shoes and hoses.
Could the pipes found inside the concrete wall
be the work of 19th-century searchers on Oak Island?
Or does it represent yet another baffling layer
to a mystery the team must still struggle to solve?
Dan, we have a mystery for you.
- Imagine that. - Okay.
What is this?
And do you know anything about those pipes?
Hmm.
No.
Why would somebody build
something like that and then not mention it to anybody
- or have any record of it? - Exactly.
Was it containing something?
Was it holding something?
Was it supplying something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Smith's Cove.
Thought it was gonna be a straightforward dig,
find artifacts, figure out who and when.
You know, this just keeps...
Getting wonkier.
"Wonkier" is a good word, yeah.
Well, we've got some research to do.
Later that afternoon...
Hey, guys.
- Hey. - Hello.
Marty. Craig.
...Rick Lagina calls a meeting
in the war room to update his brother Marty
and members of the Oak Island team
on the puzzling developments at Smith's Cove.
Well, I think we would all agree
that today has been a...
a very weird day in Smith's Cove, right?
- Yep. - Yeah.
I would bet that, because we sent you those photographs,
you are as confused as we are.
That'd be a fair bet, Rick. That'd be a fair bet.
We went on the emotional roller coaster ride
of Oak Island, right?
We tagged into a concrete structure
as we're chasing the slipway.
And we're ecstatic.
We-We're thinking... Marty, you know Roman history.
- Sure. - Pantheon, the Colosseum,
the underwater wharfs.
They knew concrete mixes backwards and forwards.
Yeah. It kind of remains even weirder,
because I...
like to think I have a fertile imagination,
And I can't come up with a use for that thing.
Can you, Dave?
You know, you have more construction experience
than any of us.
Do you have any idea
why pipes through a concrete wall?
I have no idea why they would put
- two-inch pipes in it. - Right next to each other, too,
- right? - Yeah.
I got a complete blank.
- We all do. - Yeah.
Guys, this is kind of perhaps
out of right field, but what's the chance
that the concrete wall is a lot older
than the pipes that are sticking out of it?
In other words, somebody found it,
drilled holes through it, put those pipes in there.
I mean, is there any evidence of that,
- or could that be? - It's possible.
Yeah.
It was in 1850
that searchers from the Truro Company
first discovered the fabled stone box drains
at Smith's Cove
by building an earthen cofferdam
before draining the area.
Is it possible
that 19th-century Oak Island treasure hunters
modified a much more ancient structure
in order to help them excavate Smith's Cove?
It has been quite remarkable
how many structures are in Smith's Cove
that we didn't know were there.
So we're always scratching our head.
But it's important to come to an understanding,
because hopefully, the understanding, the research,
putting the puzzle pieces together
will lead us to where we want to go.
And where we want to go is to find the original Money Pit.
You know, the one interesting thing
in connection with this "concrete structure" is,
you know, we've paid greater attention to the slipway.
Yeah.
When you look at that...
slipway, you see all the logs are worn on it.
I think it's basically
a large ramp that goes all the way up to the Money Pit.
You think it's original.
I really do.
I believe that slipway is the glory road.
That's where we're gonna find some stuff.
Yes. I would sure like
to dig underneath it.
Yeah, I think it'll be worth it.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And there might even be an older...
- feature underneath it. - Exactly.
Here's what we can say for sure.
The more you dig at Smith's Cove,
the more surprises you find.
I mean, look what we got.
We got an unknown concrete wall.
We got an L-shaped structure
that's turning into a giant structure.
We got a slipway that we thought was
kind of incidental to everything,
and it actually might be key to everything.
So, you know, it's easy for us to say, but...
get back out there and figure it out.
Fair enough. There's a lot to do.
- No question about that. - Yeah.
We'll be out soon to join you.
- All right. - See you guys.
- See you. - See you later.
As the excavation of Smith's Cove continues,
Rick Lagina and Dave Blankenship
arrive at the home of Dave's father,
veteran Oak Island treasure hunter, Dan Blankenship.
- How you doing, Dad? - Hi, Dave.
They are hoping he can provide answers
to key questions they have
concerning the mysterious concrete wall
found earlier today.
So...
We're hoping you can enlighten us.
We're-we're bringing you another puzzle.
In the more than five decades
that Dan has spent living
and searching for treasure on Oak Island,
he has collected a wealth of first-hand information.
In the early 1970s,
he and his partner, David Tobias,
constructed a massive cofferdam at Smith's Cove
in the hopes of finding the remains
of the legendary stone box drains.
It was during this excavation
that Dan made a number of surprising discoveries,
including two massive wooden structures,
one laid out in the shape of an "L," and the other a "U,"
discoveries that the Laginas and their team
have recently unearthed.
Now, you know Smith's Cove as well as anyone.
Okay, so here's the sheet pile, right?
- Yeah. - Like that.
We uncovered the U-shaped structure.
And then the L-shaped structure is out here.
And we were following this,
trying to find where it ended, and all of a sudden,
right here, there's this thing.
It's your concrete wall.
- Yep. - Five inches thick,
and it's three feet high, the concrete itself.
But there are pipes right at the bottom.
If you're asking me if I had seen any of this,
the answer is obviously no.
Who could have done it?
It had to be before 1950.
Restall never did any kind of work like that.
I saw what Restall did in '65,
and all he did was what I call surface work.
But nothing like this.
No.
There was a lot of work done in Smith's Cove.
Who did it? I don't now.
I don't have their records.
The one thing about, you know, our troubles
with the archival record is that
most people were so entranced
with the idea of treasure
that recording data was not an imperative.
It was not the prime directive.
And so, might be original work,
might be a searcher work undocumented.
We don't know, and that's the problem.
Right in front of that concrete wall.
Right-right in front of it
is that slipway, the wharf,
- the old slipway. - That's important.
I mean, to try and just get a couple of pieces out of it
- and have it carbon-dated. - Mm-hmm.
See if you can put an age to that slipway.
Yeah, there's no fasteners in there.
None.
So that was... I mean, my God,
nails have been out for God knows how long, you know?
Gary Drayton came up
with an idea that
if you're unloading things off of a ship
and you build this slipway with logs, right?
- Right. - If you don't fasten them,
you put something heavy on there,
then you can roll it up the slipway.
These people were... they had to use ingenuity.
- There's no question about it. - Yep.
We thought we were gonna dig up Smith's Cove
and get some answers, but...
All we've come up with is questions.
They've been few and far between.
We've got some explaining to do, so we better
- go out there and get it done - Yep.
Back to the drawing board.
The next day, Marty Lagina
and his partner Craig Tester meet
with Marty's brother Rick, his son Alex,
and other members of their team at the Money Pit site.
Mike, have you calculated in the fall of the plug?
This morning, the plug was right at the bottom of the can.
- Okay. - And then we went
down within a foot of the bottom,
and we're up in the can two feet.
- Okay. - So we... technically,
there's three feet of material.
- Charles. - Marty. Craig.
The one thing is coming out right now.
Working with representatives
from Irving Equipment Limited, the Laginas and their partners
are continuing the excavation of the H-8 shaft.
A shaft that they believe
may have intersected the original Money Pit.
It was here, last year,
that the team discovered incredible clues
below a depth of 160 feet,
including bits of paper and leather bookbinding,
17th-century human bones,
and even evidence of the seven-foot-high wooden box
first reported by treasure hunters in 1897.
Unfortunately, when the team attempted
to penetrate the mysterious object
using a 50-inch-wide drilling caisson,
they believe it was actually pushed off to the side
and into a large, muddy void
located at a depth of some 170 feet.
Something was in front of the can,
and we were pushing it for a while,
and it was pushing all the clay out of the way.
- It's still in there, then. - Exactly.
- Hello. - Hello.
So, uh, you're doing five feet up and down a few times?
- Okay. - Yeah.
We're bringing it down five,
and then back up and down,
and kind of just working it down the can.
John's up there monitoring to see
if he feels something different on the take,
- if anything's coming in. - Okay.
But we'll probably come down about, uh,
working up and down, come down about 15 feet,
and then get a good measurement,
see if anything is coming in, and then continue the process.
Okay.
Yeah, I think once we get down,
even if we don't measure anything,
we'll go ahead and take a couple hammer grabs.
- Just in case something did fall in, but... -For sure. Yeah.
Because it pushed out somewhere, you know.
- Yeah. Yep. - So we need whatever
pushed it out to come back, so...
It is the Oak Island team's hope
that by lifting the steel caisson up several feet
that more valuable clues, or perhaps the vault itself,
might move back into its path,
which they can attempt to then retrieve
using a three-ton hammer grab tool.
We are at 194 casing depth,
and we have a two-foot plug.
-Two-foot plug? -Do you want us to go back up and try to get more?
Let's take a... let's take a grab.
I mean, I mean, it wouldn't take that much stuff
to have fallen under to be interesting.
- Yeah, we might as well. Yeah. - Okay.
- Let's go ahead and do that. - Let's take a grab,
then we might want to come up and work it.
- That's fine. - Okay.
Yeah, we can do that.
What-what's that? It's a little on the muddy side.
What's that right there?
The middle one?
That's amazing.
I got a bag here.
There's some more right here.
These are big chunks to be at this depth.
Well, what depth, though, Craig?
- This... - Well, it's got to be below
- 1... 1-7... 68. - 168.
I thought we were too deep for the Chappell Vault,
but I'm wondering if this is part of the Chappell Vault.
Wood? From the Chappell Vault?
Found more than 170 feet deep in H-8?
Could the team have successfully located
the legendary box believed to contain
the Oak Island treasure?
These are all puzzle pieces, clues.
Look, every clue is important, so to find it,
especially in H-8, which again is confirmation
that there's something going on here,
um, is-is positive news.
The possibility that the team
has located evidence of the Chappell Vault
offers more than an exciting prospect.
Yeah, there we go.
It now requires that every piece of spoils
brought up from the H-8 shaft
be more carefully examined than usual
in an effort to see if they contain more important clues
or evidence of treasure.
Hey, Charles!
Okay.
Whew.
That's a sizeable piece.
Yeah, that is.
What about this wood, Charles?
It's not, like, light like the other pieces.
And it's not completely black, either.
Let's save that, uh... put that aside.
Hey, Charles, what's this?
What do you think?
I'm thinking it's definitely a fibrous material.
Yep. It looks like the parchment to me.
Hey, Charles, what's this?
While searching through the H-8 spoils,
Jack Begley and Charles Barkhouse
have just found a potentially important clue,
one that could prove that the team
is closer than ever to finding the mysterious Chappell Vault.
It looks like the parchment to me.
It's-it's definitely... uh, we definitely
- have to bag that. Yeah. - It's just black. Yeah.
That... that just means that it was
in the water for a long time.
- Yeah. - You got it?
I think this is more parchment,
but this-this definitely stands out as not natural.
In 1897,
after penetrating what they believed to be
a seven-foot-tall wooden vault during a drilling operation,
treasure hunters William Chappell and Frederick Blair
were astonished to see not only traces of gold
on their drill bit
but also a small piece of parchment
with the letters V-I clearly visible.
That discovery led to a number of fascinating theories
that suggested the Oak Island treasure could be composed
of more than objects of great monetary value.
Some believe the vault might contain everything
from the lost manuscripts of William Shakespeare
to important historical documents,
documents that could directly connect
the Oak Island mystery to the history
of the Knights Templar.
Let's put it in a bag.
Keep that certainly separate.
- Let's go show the guys. - Okay. Sure.
'Cause I think they're gonna be happy to hear
that we found something that's out of place.
I think this is more parchment,
but it's a good indication that once we got the plug removed,
we're gonna start finding all the things
we thought we were gonna find last year in H-8.
I hope you're right, Jack.
I think I am, Charles.
Hey, Rick.
Look what Charles and I just found.
What is that?
- It could be the leather. - Could be the leather.
But it's-it's definitely organic material,
because you can see the fibers.
That was in both the leather and the parchment last year.
This is what I was finding
- in H-8. - Yeah.
Yeah, that needs to be bagged.
- Absolutely. - Yeah.
Coming up. Look out, guys.
The good-news scenario
is this might be leather
and/or parchment, and it's at great depth in the Money Pit.
And-and maybe at some point there might be better news,
i.e., if we can recover something more substantial
than just a little bit.
I mean, the whole... this whole thing
is about finding one irrefutable piece of evidence.
Evidence is evidence.
- Yeah. - So more power to you.
- That's a great find. - Thanks.
All right, we'll go back to work, Rick.
Okay.
Looks good.
I think that pretty much does it.
Ah, boy.
- You have to look at everything. - Yep.
Wait.
This is some sort of paper. I don't know if it's old.
It's genuine paper.
It could be parchment, but it's really fragile.
No writing, anyway.
Not that I can discern.
Different colors?
One side different color from the other?
Yeah.
All right, well, let's bag it.
I can't really tell if it's parchment or paper
or if it's old or new, but...
it's worth saving.
You never know. Good eye, Jack.
Later that day,
Craig Tester and his stepson Jack Begley
join island historians Paul Troutman and Doug Crowell
at the Oak Island Research Center
to get a closer look at their recent discoveries
from the H-8 shaft.
We brought over a couple of the things
that we'd found in H-8, uh, that we talked about.
Let's go ahead and-and get it
- underneath the, uh, microscope. - Yeah.
These samples are all coming
- from that 160-foot level? - Yeah.
The first item up is leather.
Okay.
Or, at least, we think.
I think that will be, uh,
one to find out if it has any patterns or anything.
Using a Grobet digital microscope,
the team will be able to magnify the samples
up to 2,000 times their actual size.
We're seeing some color in there.
Is that a mineral, or is that an ink of some sort?
That's what I've been flipping back and forth
in my head, Craig, because it's hard to tell.
When I collected this stuff last year from H-8,
I was surprised to learn
that it was actually leather or bookbinding.
This, to me,
really looks like leather.
Another one for the experts.
Yeah, definitely.
Okay, now we're going with
the potential pieces of parchment.
Oh, look where it's folded.
That looks very much like the parchment.
Oh, now, that's interesting. Look at the red.
Yeah, what's that stuff on there?
The colored stuff? - Yeah. Pigment?
Yeah, something has been applied to it.
You have the yellow, and you have this pink line.
I mean, maybe there was something
written on this piece of paper.
See, I find that really intriguing because...
I can picture that color being used
- in really old books. - Okay.
You know how when they started
the paragraph, usually it was...
it was a big letter,
- and it would be in color? - Mm-hmm.
That's what that reminds me of.
As early as the fifth century A.D.,
a large, stylized initial known as a drop cap
was sometimes used to adorn the first letter
in each paragraph or chapter of manuscripts
written throughout Europe and the Middle East.
But what makes the team's new finds
even more potentially significant
is the fact that such decorative characters
were most commonly found in religious texts
and important documents
often illustrated with elaborate artwork.
Look how linear it is.
It doesn't run all the way through.
Yeah, it stops abruptly.
Let me turn it over
just in case we get a different look from this side.
Oh, look.
You have the really fibrous material,
like, in here,
but then this looks a lot flatter.
Like, the fibers are only on the opposite side,
not on this side.
- That's really intriguing. - Yeah, it is.
Yeah, definitely need to have an expert look at it.
Whether it's paper... What type of paper?
And I really think they can do stuff with these pigments.
In determining what pigments they are,
they can determine time periods,
- so... - Yeah, find out
how similar or dissimilar it is
- to the first sample. - Yeah.
Thanks, guys.
We will be back with more things.
It is the beginning of a new day on Oak Island.
Come on, baby!
As brothers Rick and Marty Lagina,
their partner Craig Tester, and other members of their team
continue their excavation of the H-8 shaft
in the Money Pit area...
Nothing.
Nothing in that grab.
Yeah.
...today also marks the return
of a special guest to the island.
Looks like the guys are over here.
There he is. Hey, Randall.
Hey, you guys.
For the past two decades,
investigative journalist and author Randall Sullivan
has been researching
and writing about the Oak Island mystery.
It is this research that has resulted
in the completion of a brand-new book
about the 223-year treasure hunt.
I'm looking forward to reading your book.
That would be great.
So, your book has now come to fruition.
-You guys are getting the first copy. -All right!
And have you changed your thought
about the who and the when and the what and where?
Well, things that I had an interest in
really became more convincing to me.
- Really? - I just found
so much history, so much fact.
But that points here?
It points here.
Well, we're keenly interested to find out about that.
-Let's have a little powwow down in the war room. -Okay, great.
-I get a chance to give you those books. -Yes, welcome back.
- Welcome back. - Welcome back.
We know Randall Sullivan
is a good researcher and a great writer.
Not only has he written another book
about Oak Island, but he's done a very proper job
of research into the Oak Island mystery
and prior to the discovery story.
The hope is that some of the material
will-will help us or assist us
as we move forward with our search.
So, I see a couple books here,
- Mr. Sullivan. - Uh, you do. First two...
- first two copies. - Oh, thank you very much.
It's fantastic. Signed, I-I take it?
- Of course. - Of course.
This is probably how it looks, you know.
That's what we're gonna find out right there.
Yeah, there's... there's a lot more below ground.
- Mm-hmm. - Yes.
- There's no question about that. - Yeah.
You happy with it?
Of course I'm happy with it. I mean, when I...
You know, I-I certainly think it's the most authoritative
and entertaining history of Oak Island.
What I found, to my amazement, really,
confirmed so much of the origin story.
I believe that the fundamental origin story,
that the Money Pit was found by three teenagers...
John Smith, Anthony Vaughan
- and Daniel McGinnis... - Right.
I think it's verifiable, actually.
Is there plausibility
in totally misinterpreted nothing happened here?
- Not to me. - No.
I'm satisfied that the origin story
- is fundamentally accurate. - Okay, keep going.
- Mm-hmm. - And-and I'm-I'm also...
You know, that led to exploration
of the early stories of the search,
which, of course, leads to the, you know, 90 Foot Stone
and the-the initial flood.
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
Where do you depart from the lore,
or don't you? So, basically,
you're saying the flood tunnels, the box drains...
I-I think it's clear that-that, uh,
the Truro Company did find those things
when they went to explore the beach
- and were overwhelmed by them. - Mm-hmm.
What is the most compelling piece of evidence for you?
I mean, can-can you single out
a single most compelling piece of evidence?
I mean, it's the totality of the works
is the single most compelling piece of evidence.
I mean, something...
Whatever was done was done on a scale that required
a labor and a commitment that I always had a hard time
believing people would do that just for a treasure of gold.
Mm-hmm.
No matter how large it was.
And when I began to look at the theories
that come from that side
and the historical facts that support them,
that's why I was so drawn to Francis Bacon.
Mm-hmm.
Of the many theories
concerning Oak Island,
one of most compelling suggests
that the man behind the mystery
was none other than Sir Francis Bacon,
the renowned 17th-century philosopher,
scientist and nobleman.
Some researchers even believe
that Bacon came to Oak Island
with William Shakespeare's original manuscripts
and buried them in a lead box filled with mercury.
Bacon was inheriting a...
a wisdom, a tradition that went back,
you know, even deeper than Templar times.
- Mm-hmm. - There's so much
historical evidence that supports it.
I mean, not-not that it proves it
or establishes it for certain,
but it increases its plausibility,
because Bacon wrote that
one of the best ways to instruct people
is to create a treasure hunt.
Oh, really?
...That... that S.O.B.
That's quite compelling.
Well, if he is the architect of this,
then, man, did he hit the bull's-eye
- with that one. - Yeah.
You may know this, Rick, that-that...
one of Bacon's works, uh, uh,
is about creating a perpetual spring.
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah, and the very first line
of his instructions is:
"Dig a pit upon the seashore."
Shortly after the death
of Sir Francis Bacon in 1626,
his personal secretary, William Rawley,
published a collection of Bacon's philosophical writings
titled Sylva Sylvarum.
Among the nearly 1,000 passages included in the text,
one of them instructs the reader
to "dig a pit upon the seashore,"
starting above the high-water mark,
and then sink the shaft to a point below sea level.
Could it be that Randall Sullivan has uncovered evidence
in Bacon's own hand
referring to the construction of the Money Pit?
There were lines like that that I thought
that's just too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.
Right.
If you woke up tomorrow morning
and you were in charge, but you had but one swing,
where do you look and what do you... how do you do it?
- Oh. - One swing at the bat.
Well, I would look for an entrance
that is now underwater.
Wow.
Underwater?
Could Randall Sullivan have made a direct connection
between the solution to the Oak Island mystery
and the team's recent discoveries at Smith's Cove?
Randall Sullivan
is a proponent of the Baconian connection to Oak Island,
which I rather fancy myself.
That fits with what we're digging up out here
in Smith's Cove, so it's really quite interesting.
I'm-I'm certain that the real origins
of the flood tunnel is, you know, way offshore.
- Not the primary flood system. - Mm-hmm.
You know, on the south side. It's not at Smith's Cove.
Another flood tunnel system
on the south shore?
In the winter of 1980, while conducting
a pumping operation in the Money Pit,
veteran treasure hunter Dan Blankenship
noticed four large holes in the frozen bay
off the island's southern shore.
It was his belief that these so-called "ice holes,"
which appeared again in 1987,
might be evidence of a second flood tunnel
feeding ocean water into the Money Pit.
Could it be that,
in order to retrieve the Oak Island treasure,
the team must shut off not one,
but multiple booby-trapped flood systems?
There's a possibility
that there's a tunnel associated
with the south shore, right adjacent to the stone triangle.
So it's interesting, because it's in an area
that we know very little about.
It's worth investigating.
I know you guys got real work to do.
Yeah, we got stuff to do.
You've got to start, you know,
working on, you know, the updated version
- that will inevitably come. - That's right.
That's right. We got to get you some material.
That's right.
- I got a book to read. - You-you do indeed.
Let's get back to it.
Following their informative meeting
in the war room, Rick, Marty and Craig
return to the Money Pit site,
where Jack Begley, Charles Barkhouse
and Dan Henskee continue to sift through the spoils
for potential clues excavated from the H-8 shaft.
What's the word?
Well, gravity did her thing.
How much?
- 24 feet. - Really?
- Wow. - Yeah, so what naturally
- kind of came in was eight feet. - Right.
And then, as we brought the can down,
we gained another 16, so we're at 24 feet of plug in the can.
- All right. Let's keep digging. - Yep.
If that material that disappeared
reveals something inspiring that says,
you need to get down here and look,
then the game is really afoot because then we go down,
and we retrieve whatever is down there.
Oh, look at what we have here.
I think it's... it looks a lot
like the parchment, except it's black.
It's really, really dark.
It could be.
Another piece of parchment?
Could this be more evidence
that ancient books and documents are part
of the Oak Island treasure?
- I'm gonna bag it, Jack. - Yeah, we need to save that.
- Yep. - Just in case.
Oh, here's a nice little... Yeah!
What do you think of that?
It's got all kinds of grains.
It does possibly look like, uh,
something in a human body or...
Oh, you think this could be a bone?
Bone?
Could the team have found more evidence
of human remains buried deep in the Money Pit?
And if so, could it be related
to one of the two 17th-century individuals
whose bones were discovered in this same location last year?
Or could it be the remains
of someone else, yet to be identified?
It is porous.
Yeah, have somebody that, you know, knows more than we do
have a look at it.
This is a really good find, Dan.
Some of the important things
that came out of the H-8 spoils so far
were the parchment, and then a bone
that seemed kind of foreign.
Fire it up, Dan!
We should be able to get some information back from that
and some understanding
why these bones are so deep within the earth.
- Hi, guys. - Hi. How's it going?
- Whew! - Found some few
- interesting things. - Oh, really?
Jack thinks he may have found a piece of bone.
Given the striations in the back here,
I don't know, or was that up against
a piece of wood? I'm not sure.
It almost looks twisted, though.
Yeah.
Not sure what that is.
What do you guys think?
Well, we can take a picture of it
- and send it off to Laird. - Yeah.
Not too sure what to think of this one, whether it's...
bone or wood or twisted. It's weird-looking.
- Yeah. - The more I look at it,
the more I think it is bone, because,
I mean, if you look at the hollow center,
it looks like that's where the bone marrow should be.
If it is bone, that's really good news,
'cause then we have a third piece of bone to test.
Maybe it's a different individual,
and we can better pinpoint
a time frame and where they came from.
That'll help potentially determine who was here, so...
- Yeah. Exciting. - Okay, well, this sounds good.
Exciting.
At least we know that the oddities we found last year
in H-8 weren't just from that drill hole.
There's more material down there,
and I expect to find more.
You know, the more we go through the spoils,
the more stuff that will come up.
- Absolutely. - There's something
down there in the Money Pit, Rick.
I-I know that. Look, it's not about
- right or wrong. It's not... - No, no.
It's about the search for the truth.
- You know? - Yeah.
But we are finding interesting clues.
We are trying to apply real science
to a real mystery with real professional acumen.
Yeah. - So, the hope is,
as this year progresses, we'll find the one thing.
That's my hope.
Yep.
For the Laginas and their partners,
the idea that something of historical significance
happened on Oak Island is no longer a question.
But as they continue to dig at Smith's Cove,
in the Money Pit,
and in other areas throughout the island,
what will they find?
Priceless historical manuscripts?
Gold and silver left here by the Knights Templar?
Or will it be something much more valuable?
Something so precious,
it needed to be guarded with human lives?
Next time on The Curse of Oak Island...
We'll find it.
- It should be in this area. - Start recording.
We're recording. That thing might be man-made.
That almost looks like an anchor.
Tell me what you think this is.
What was considered valuable enough
to bury manuscripts that far underground?
This is from a medieval book.
See how the ground's gone?
It's caving. It's fixing to tip over.
This is a very dangerous place.
The whole Money Pit could collapse.
All this work,
all the research.
This is no good.
We can't continue.
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