The Curse of Oak Island: Exciting Answers at Smith’s Cove (Season 6)

[music playing]
[heavy machinery backing]
TERRY: Try taking those boulders out.
I think it ends right here.
Seems to end.
Yeah.

NARRATOR: It is an exciting time on Oak Island—
That’s the end of it right there.

NARRATOR: –as Rick Lagina, Craig Tester, and geologist Terry Matheson continue to unearth new and possibly important wooden structures at Smith’s Cove—
structures that might help solve a 223-year-old treasure mystery once and for all.
They got to the bottom?

TERRY: No.
This one here—these ones go much deeper.
You see how it’s laid back?
Yeah, it’s all tilted this way.
Do you see that?
Right there.
See the opening?
Yeah.

NARRATOR: Two days ago, the team uncovered what could be a piece of a stone box drain, one of five that are believed to feed seawater into the Money Pit, thus protecting it from would-be treasure hunters.
But today, while continuing their careful excavation of the area, Rick and the team were stunned to find yet another mysterious wooden structure.

TERRY: Looks like we have something there, Rick.
RICK: No idea how deep that is, eh?
TERRY: Got no feel for it.
RICK: I mean, you wouldn’t think it’d just be one single one.
Either there’s another wall here, or there’s one over there.
Like—
It had a structure like that, didn’t it?
RICK: Yeah.
TERRY: Or was it—
More like an L?

TERRY: An L, so is that probably—
This wall, and then headed straight for the U-shaped structure.
Yeah.
This is the L-shaped structure here, right, like that.

NARRATOR: The L-shaped structure??
In the early 1970s, while conducting his own extensive investigation of Smith’s, veteran treasure hunter Dan Blankenship built a 400-foot-wide cofferdam made of earth and large boulders.
After pumping the cove dry and beginning to excavate, Dan uncovered not only a massive U-shaped wooden structure, but also a second formation running parallel to it of wood and small stone.
The unusual, 50-foot-long feature appeared to be laid out in the shape of an L.
However, before Dan could fully expose the so-called L-shaped structure, a massive storm washed the cofferdam away, forcing the operation to be halted indefinitely.
Could the wooden structure the team has just unearthed be connected to the L-shaped structure in some way?

Does anybody have a clue on the use of the L-shaped structure, or what it might have been?
No.

CRAIG: We’re not sure.
Not at all.
Just another structure we know nothing about.
Whoever did this went to a lot of work.
I’m wondering, as we excavate, was it an aborted attempt?
Was it just too much work for the result they were attaining?

RICK (V.O.): This is going to be a very interesting enterprise trying to figure out what the L-shaped structure represents.

TERRY: Oh, look at that.
Oh, looks like it might be packed, doesn’t it?
A lot of clay up against it, looks like.
It looks like they might have packed clay.
Look at that.
This is not the good stuff, though.
It’s quite granular.
Yeah.
Yeah, look.
There’s a lot of rock in it, too.
They might’ve just used what they had on hand.

CRAIG: I don’t know if they drove it into the dam and then took rocks up against it.

RICK: Sure seems that way because, I mean, it’s an inordinate amount of rock.
Looks like they tried to pack it.
Similar construction.
That is a lot of clay.

TERRY: It’s definitely a clay-rich till.
You know, if one of the searchers felt they were outside of the old cofferdam, and it was mainly sand, they drove it into sand a little bit and then started—

RICK: But to what end, Craig?
It’s an open-ended structure.
It’s not connected to any.
If this is some sort of prevention system or infiltration prevention, like, why couldn’t they just come around that end?
Or this one?

CRAIG: Yeah.
I don’t know.
I agree.

RICK: The more work we put into this, the more and more questions there are.
Yeah.
U-shaped structure, Billy’s Wall.
Now we have this.
We were hoping to get answers down here.
I was.
Welcome to Oak Island.
Let’s keep digging.