EXCITING DISCOVERY of Manmade Features (Season 12) | The Curse of Oak Island

NARRATOR:
A week of great excitement
has begun on Oak Island
for brothers
Rick and Marty Lagina,
their partner Craig Tester
and their team.
(laughs) Now that looks
like a stone road.
Why don’t you do one more right
along here, but a little deeper?
Okay.

NARRATOR:
And that is because
in the northern region
of the triangle-shaped swamp,
they have uncovered a new pair
of man-made features
that may be critical to solving
a 230-year-old treasure mystery.
One is a stone pathway.
The other is some kind
of small cellar or vault.
We’re seeing absolutely
the same rock size.
-Yeah.
-IAN: No gravel.
Um, if this was natural,
you wouldn’t have such a tight
-distribution of size.
-ALEX: Mm-hmm.
So, this is, like,
easily Anthony Graves, right?
-Right.
-ALEX: Mm-hmm.

NARRATOR:
In 1857, a farmer
named Anthony Graves
purchased a majority
of Oak Island
and built his home
just north of the swamp.
While he was never
an active participant
in the searches for treasure
that took place
in the Money Pit, curiously,
he was rumored to have found
a large cache
of Spanish silver coins
somewhere on his property.
That might be
Anthony Graves, too,
-the feature.
-ALEX: Yeah.
I think we should take
this opportunity
to try to figure that out.
-Yeah.
-LAIRD: I agree.
-Okay, let’s go for it, mate.
-All right.

(device beeping)
That is a great signal.
Now, it’s iron
and quite a decent size chunk.
It’s in that area
where your hand is.
That’s it.
Let me get down there.
-ALEX: You got it, Gary? Okay.
-GARY: Yeah.
Let’s see.
When we went to the north side
of the swamp,
I didn’t really expect
to see much.
And sure enough,
as-as the dig proceeds,
there’s a square
vault-ish looking thing
that was submerged in the swamp.
Purpose unknown.
So was it a hiding place?
Did Anthony Graves
set it up himself
to hide his own stuff in?
That’s what we hope to find out.

GARY:
Ooh. (grunts)
It’s coming out.
Is that it?
-And the big reveal.
-ALEX: What the heck?
-GARY: That’s it.
-ALEX: What the hell is that?
-GARY: Yeah…
-(Laird laughs)
ALEX:
That is certainly
not what I expected.
GARY:
Look at that. It’s got
something attached to it.
-That’s a piece of brick,
by the look of it.
-Yeah.
Any ideas, Laird?
-But it’s been down
there for a long time.
-GARY: Yeah, it has.
-LAIRD: I think we have to go
clean it off, but…
-GARY: Yeah.
LAIRD:
I mean,
it’s a pipe of some sort.
ALEX:
The question that
we want to know really is:
-how old is that thing?
-Yeah.
GARY:
We don’t know
what else is down there.
We’ve got to get
to the bottom of it.
-Yeah.
-That’s the only way
we’re gonna find out.
Yep.
All right. I’m gonna
take that back to the lab.
-Okay, mate.
-LAIRD: I’ll let you get on
-with your work over there.
-Works for me.
GARY:
Okay, mate. Good work.

NARRATOR:
The following morning…

RICK:
There it is, Tom.
-After you.
-Wow.

NARRATOR:
…Rick Lagina leads
fellow Oak Island landowner
Tom Nolan to the mysterious
vault-like structure
that was recently uncovered
in the northern region
of the triangle-shaped swamp.

ALEX:
What do you think?
I-I don’t know what to say.
I’ve never seen
-anything like this.
-Mm-hmm.
TOM:
I mean, look at that slate,
it’s perfectly cut.
Yeah.
What did you think of this?
It-it doesn’t look like
anything we’ve ever found here.
I mean, there was nothing here
after Graves left,
that we know of.
Over the years, we-we’ve located
two wells on the property,
which we assumed were Graves’.
This is different.
To me, it just makes no sense
other than it’s a structure
built to contain something,
and I believe to hide something.
There’s a lot
of brick down here.
It’s a very hard bottom.

RICK:
What is that?
May I see?
May I see?
Oh.

NARRATOR:
In the northern region
of the Oak Island swamp,
Rick Lagina
and other members of the team
have just found
a potentially important clue
inside of a mysterious
vault-like structure.

-I just can’t place what it is.
-RICK: A handle?
A handle off a chest.
KATYA:
What a cool find.

NARRATOR:
Could Rick Lagina
be correct that the team
has recovered a handle
from a chest
inside of
the vault-like feature?
If so, might it be related
to the Spanish silver coins
that former landowner
Anthony Graves
reportedly discovered
on Oak Island
more than 150 years ago?
Question is,
what else is there to find?
This is such a weird structure.
It pulls up a lot of questions.

TOM:
We need to excavate this and see
what is at the bottom of it.
So, uh, we should
do that right away.

RICK:
Laird, why don’t you
come up with a process…
-Okay.
-…how we can proceed.
Define the areas.
How deep you want to dig.
-Yep.
-RICK: And let’s get her done.
-TOM: Sounds good.
-RICK: Okey doke.

NARRATOR:
Later that afternoon…

RICK:
Okay, here’s something.
What’s that?
RICK:
It was stuck way under there.
A hook?
-Looks like wrought iron, maybe.
-CRAIG: Yeah.
Was this was built
by Anthony Graves
to safeguard a subsurface
treasure that he found?
Or does it represent
something else?
Well, I mean,
if it is Graves’ work,
and he did use it
as a hiding place,
it was a pretty good one.
You know, hope springs eternal,
but for this evening,
I think we’re done.
Right.

RICK:
We’ll let Emma do her work,
and… (stammers)
it was a great day, a dirty day.
And we all need to go clean up
and get ready for tomorrow.
-ALEX: Yep. Okay.
-KATYA: Let’s do it.
-RICK: Yeah.

NARRATOR:
The following afternoon…

RICK: I want to thank you, Emma
and Laird, for inviting us down.
Everyone knows my fascination
with the swamp,
and we did extensive work there
and found the three items
here in front of us.

NARRATOR:
…Rick Lagina
and members of the team
join archaeologist Laird Niven
and archaeometallurgist
Emma Culligan
in the Oak Island laboratory.

RICK:
What are these things?
The who, what, when,
where, why, and how?
Right.

EMMA:
When you look at the handle,
you do see
the wood grain-like structures,
which is wrought iron.
Let me go to the CT.
And you do see that grain-like
structure on the handle.
Right here,
you can see it as well.

LAIRD:
The square hole to me implies
you’re-you’re moving
something else.
-EMMA: Mm.
-LAIRD: Yeah.
I think it’s a crank.
-CRAIG: Yeah, it is. I agree.
-EMMA: Yeah.
I mean, when you look at
this section over here,
you can see just where
the wood handle would’ve ended.
-CRAIG: Yeah.
-EMMA: Based on the metallurgy,
I can narrow down
a possible date range.
So, the hook
in the center there,
it does have
a slight manganese content.
So, that one
kind of fits more towards
the early to mid-1800s.

LAIRD:
Yeah, so, Anthony Graves was on
the property in the mid-1800s.
He died in 1888.
But the pipe
and the crank handle,
they’re definitely late 1700s.
That’s before we have a record
of Anthony Graves on that lot.
So, right now, we’re looking at
a feature and artifacts
that pre-date
the recorded Anthony Graves
occupation of that lot.
-Interesting.
-Yeah.

NARRATOR:
Is it possible
that the team has uncovered
a treasure vault in the swamp,
where former Oak Island
landowner Anthony Graves
reportedly discovered
Spanish silver coins
more than 150 years ago?
If so, then who created it?
And what else might be buried
deeper within it?

There’s a purpose
to this feature.
I think it has to do
with Anthony Graves.
I think it was
his safety deposit box.
We know there was a Spanish coin
that was found on Lot 5,
and then there’s the story
of Anthony Graves
using Spanish coin
as his currency
to buy his goods.
So, I think we need to do
more work in the swamp.
So, there’s all kinds
of reasons to try to
further our understanding here,
in my opinion.
And… what is it? Who built it?
When was it built?
Why was it built?
Right? I know you’re not
a big fan of the bog, but…
I’m trying
to find this treasure.
Sometimes, you got to get dirty.
-(laughter)
-I’m willing to do it.
-It’s in your blood now.
-RICK: Okay.
Mm-hmm.
All righty, well,
again, thank you.
-We’ll go find you
some more curiosities.
-LAIRD: Excellent.
RICK:
Hopefully, next time,
we’ll all have some answers.
-KATYA: Thank you.
-CRAIG: Thanks.
-LAIRD: See you later.