The Curse of Oak Island: BIG TROUBLE in The Money Pit (Season 11)

-SCOTT: Morning, Paul.
-COTE: Morning.
-RICK: Morning.

So you’ve got the horizontal drills
-right by the shaft.
-Yeah, yeah.
I guess the next stop is the shaft bottom?
Shaft bottom.
That’s where we’re going.
We’re getting ready to lower the drill there.
And start probe drilling right at the bottom.
-That’s good.
-Yeah.

NARRATOR:
It is the beginning of another hopeful day on Oak Island
as Rick Lagina and Scott Barlow arrive in the Money Pit area
to oversee a new probe-drilling operation at the base of the Garden Shaft
that could help finally solve a 229-year-old treasure mystery.

The priority, in my opinion,
-is to drill the tunnel.
-Right.

SCOTT:
Look at that, right there.

RICK:
Wow.
Those are big beams.

NARRATOR:
Three weeks ago, after extending the 18th-century Garden Shaft
down to an approximate depth of 100 feet,
the team was elated to reach a potentially 17th-century wooden tunnel.
A tunnel that a previous core-drilling operation has tracked westward
into the so-called Baby Blob,
where high traces of gold and silver have been detected
by water testing between 80 and 120 feet belowground.

We cannot find any sign of walls or a ceiling.

NARRATOR:
However, the team was stunned to discover that the section of tunnel
that they uncovered beneath the Garden Shaft had been partially dismantled sometime in the past.

-Big day here.
-Yeah.

This horizontal drill program is gonna be, uh, very important to us.
Yeah.

NARRATOR:
Now, having just finished extending the Garden Shaft down to a total depth of 106 feet,
over the course of the next few days,
representatives from Dumas Contracting Limited will conduct a probe-drilling operation
to look for sections of the tunnel that may still be intact
and hopefully pinpoint the location of the possible treasure.

MARTY:
Mystery number one.
No tops and no sides of the tunnel.
Did somebody remove ’em? Why?
Did somebody do it intentionally, so the thing would collapse? Why?
We’re searching for a great treasure here.
I have said many times a collapse would be an excellent way to hide something.

The sooner we get to drilling,
-the more information we get.
-That’s right.

If you encounter something and you say,
“Hey, this is unusual,”
-Please let Scott or myself or someone know.
-Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.
And maybe we have to readjust the plan.
-Yeah.

-RICK:
It’s been a long and difficult road to try to chase this tunnel.
It’s just an intensive process.
The hope is that we’re nearing the end of it.
The Garden Shaft has been extended to the point where that work is over and done with.
And now we begin the process of drilling.
We all have great hope for that.
When you drill into the tunnel itself,
we would like to get samples every ten feet of the tunnel.
-Yeah.
-Accurate records, right?
-Yeah.
-We want to know distances, elevations.
Because that, those samples will go out to the lab for carbon dating.
-Yeah.
So I look forward to that.
I’ve got this tingling in my toes.
(laughing)
Or in my hands, whatever, uh…

-Make sure we check his pockets at the end of the day.
-(laughing)

SCOTT:
I’ll turn him upside-down and shake him.
-Anyway, we’ll let you get to it.
-COTE: Yeah, okay.
-Thank you.
-See ya, Paul.

ROGER:
We ready to rock?

SCOTT:
This is exciting.

ROGER:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

-(high-pitched squealing)
-(hissing)

-SCOTT: That’s a lot of water.
-ROGER: For sure.
Okay, bring ’em up.
Okay, Ronnie, come on up.

-RICK: Hi, Roger.
-ROGER: Hey, Rick.

RICK:
So is everyone out of the shaft?
-Yes. Nobody hurt.
-That’s great.

NARRATOR:
It is a critical moment in the Money Pit area for the Oak Island team.

ROGER:
Water started coming in faster and faster,
come right out of the holes, and it was coming out of the holes,
like, just pouring out of there.
It’s unbelievable.

-Is the water still coming up?
-ROGER: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Where he says the water was coming in was around the 97-foot mark.
That’s where we dug for that tunnel.

RICK:
Let me just give my brother a call.
(line ringing)
Hey.

RICK:
This is not the Bravo Tango call you expected.
Okay, so I’m up at the shaft right now, and I’ve got Roger here and Scott.
I’m gonna turn you over to Roger.
So, Roger, here you go.

Hey, Marty, how’s it going?
All right.

So, the guys drilled a couple of holes,
and they seen the water and silt starting to come out through the lining
around the 97-foot mark,
which was pretty well where our tunnel was if you remember, right?
Then the water started gushing out of the hole,
and it started coming in at a very quick pace.
The two sets had been completely covered,
the drill was completely covered.
That’s how quick the water came in.
It’s a lot easier for us to drill that way and get as much penetration with the drill.

(sniffs)

ROGER:
…no walls or no roof in there.
Oh. Sorry.
I just drank a little bit of the water, and it’s a little bit salty.
Yup.

NARRATOR:
Could Rick Lagina be correct that while drilling into a tunnel,
which leads to an area where the team has detected high traces of precious metals deep underground,
they may have breached one of the legendary flood tunnels
that have thwarted treasure hunters for more than two centuries?
Yeah.

ROGER:
Yeah.
Yeah.

RICK:
There’s no way to overstate the potential problems that this presents.
It could terminate the work in the Garden Shaft.
Everything seems to be coalescing here.
We’re probe drilling.
We’ve got metals in the water.
So it does seem like we’re coming together here, on one hand.
On the other hand, we can’t get to it.
And I mean, what we’re experiencing now is so like
what people experienced 220 years ago that it’s downright chilling.

Always something, yes.

All right. Thanks, Marty.
-All right. See ya. Bye.
-Yup. Bye.

It’s a bump in the road, but we’ll get some answers.
-We’ll pump her out.
-We’ll see how big the bump is.
-Yup.
-But we have the right people, the right attitude.
We’ll figure it out.
-We’ll get to the bottom of it.
-Yup.

RICK:
Okay, well, just got to keep moving.
-ROGER: For sure.
-RICK: Thank you, Roger.
-Thanks for the update.
-Absolutely, Rick.

NARRATOR:
Over the past two centuries, numerous searchers believed that they were on the verge of recovering a fabled treasure in the Money Pit,
when disaster suddenly struck and shattered their dreams of solving the Oak Island mystery.
Rick, Marty, Craig and their team must now confront that daunting prospect.
However, the historic clues that they have uncovered and the physical evidence that they have unearthed prove more than ever that their dream is still worth… the pursuit.