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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