The Curse of Oak Island: Evidence of Pirate Ship Wharf (Season 5) | History

That’s a biggun, David.
NARRATOR: Marty Lagina,
Dave Blankenship,
and metal detection expert Gary Drayton
have just unearthed
a potentially significant artifact.
And that is commonly referred to as a ship spike.
So I would say that is early 1700s.

NARRATOR: A spike from a ship dating back to the early 18th century?
Ooh, now that’s a good signal.

NARRATOR: Could this spike be related to the others the team has found on the island?
Oh, look at that!
That’s nice.

NARRATOR: Both in the swamp and the GAL-1 spoils.
Whoa!

Yeah, but it’d have to be the size of the Titanic to use a nail that big.
Well, that’s just the point, David.
That’s kind of exciting actually, isn’t it?
It wasn’t any itty bitty boat here.
But that’s definitely old. I mean, that’s an oldie.

Well, that’d be good.
Yep.
You know, it occurs to me, we do have an archaeologist running around here, don’t we?
[laughter]
Let’s let him have a look.

GARY DRAYTON: Yep.
This is not going to be easy.
We have to follow the clues.
And these spikes are clues.
You know, when were they made?
What were they used for?
How do they interrelate with each other?
And we’re keeping all this data, and we’re getting over it.

Gary thinks that the story is going to be told with things like that,
that that’s how we’re going to uncover the whole mystery here.

[inaudible] So what say you?
It’s a spike.
A spike.
Yep.
We’ve come to that conclusion.
[laughter]
Yeah.

NARRATOR: Laird Nevin’s participation in the Oak Island treasure hunt has helped assure Canadian authorities that all island artifacts as well as culturally protected sites will be properly handled.
That’s nice.
That’s–
It really is.

NARRATOR: He is also an invaluable resource to Rick,
Marty, and the team in their efforts to identify and date objects that may be not only historically important,
but instrumental in helping them solve the Oak Island mystery.

And it’s a nice one.
Hand-wrought, obviously.
Nice rosehead.
You do consider that a rosehead on that?
Oh yeah.

And then the million dollar question,
how old would you say that is?
We keep asking you this every time.
I know.
Well, it’s definitely within the 18th century.
Yep, that’s what I figured, 1700s.
Yeah.

So I was telling the guys this is like a clue, you know, of a dock or a wharf here or even a shipwreck.
A wharf would make sense to me, yeah.

NARRATOR: A wharf?
If so, who built it?
And what was their purpose?
Could it have been a place for a pirate to offload his treasure?
Perhaps 18th century privateer turned Oak Island landowner Captain James Anderson.

Check this thing out.

NARRATOR: Whose seat chest was examined by members of the Oak Island team just a few weeks ago.
I think this is it.
Ah.
Oh yeah.

MARTY LAGINA: 1700-ish?
Yep.
Significant?
Yeah, definitely from the 1700s.
Well, that’s good.

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