NARRATOR 1: For 226 years now, Oak Island has been home to a fascinating treasure mystery. And although many compelling reports have surfaced over the generations about evidence of treasure, booby-trapped flood tunnels, and even a large stone bearing a carved message saying, 40 feet below, $2 million pounds are buried, most of that is all anecdotal with no hard evidence to verify any of it.

So tonight, we’ll be counting down the top finds the fellowship has made so far that indicate Rick, Marty, and the team are closer than ever to the ultimate answers.

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NARRATOR 2: Number five, the slipway.

[machine running]

RICK LAGINA: We’re going to let him just, kind of, peel this away. And then we’ll, hopefully, expose it to some degree.

[machine running]

MAN: Hold up. Billy, it’s the timber right there.

RICK LAGINA: Wow. There’s another beam right there. Right here?

[machine running]

BILLY GERHARDT: That’s odd.

NARRATOR 1: In 2018, Rick, Marty, and Craig surrounded Smith’s Cove with a massive steel cofferdam in the hopes of finding important clues and also in an attempt to shut off the flood traps believed to feed seawater into the money pit.

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MAN: There’s another piece.

MAN 2: There is another piece there?

RICK LAGINA: Look at all of those logs.

MAN 2: This is just quite different from what we’ve encountered down there.

RICK LAGINA: So the logs are basically rollers, if you will. It’s like a slipway.

MAN: This, kind of, signifies there’s quite a load, quite a load expected. This could be the wharf.

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NARRATOR 1: What they had found was indeed a wharf, or slipway. The questions that arose were, who built it and when?

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MARTY LAGINA: Guys, this is the part of the war room meetings I really like. We’ve got some information, some results.

MAN 3: Sample number seven is a slipway. It’s a north arm on the east end.

MAN 4: So the slipway, it was, we believe, red spruce. It’s reminiscent to some of the samples we did in other areas of Halifax. We had a fairly strong date on. And that’s 1771.

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MARTY LAGINA: Wow. It is original features.

RICK LAGINA: Yep. It predates the money pit.

MARTY LAGINA: Yes. This is quite impressive. For me, this is the biggest thing that’s happened since we started this quest.

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NARRATOR 2: Number four, the lead cross.

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NARRATOR 1: During season five, the [inaudible] brothers were trying their luck at Smith’s Cove. They made one of the most important finds in Oak Island history.

[machine beeping]

GARY DRAYTON: Come on here, Rick. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

RICK LAGINA: What?

GARY DRAYTON: I don’t see anything. I see something. Oh. Holy. Holy schmoly all right.

RICK LAGINA: It’s a cross.

GARY DRAYTON: That’s a cross. When I first saw it, I thought that looks like medieval, a medieval cross. So I would say that is somewhere in between 1200 and 1600.

RICK LAGINA: So, Jack, if you can ring Tobias up.

NARRATOR 1: Rick was already confident that he and Gary made a key find. But he, along with his brother and Craig, also knew they needed to apply some objective science to be sure.

RICK LAGINA: Hello, Tobias.

TOBIAS: Hi, guys. How are you?

NARRATOR 1: For that, they turned to geochemist Tobias Skowronke, who analyzed the lead isotope composition of the cross to find out where and when it came from.

TOBIAS: I compared the lead isotope data of the cross that you gave me with my database of ore bodies and metals here. And I think I got some pretty interesting results for you. Comparing the data, I noticed that the lead isotopes of the cross are somehow related to European deposits. But I did not find any match with the quarries that were used in the 15th to 17th centuries.

I therefore went on and compared the lead isotopes of the cross with those of deposits where archaeologists know medieval mining took place. And I think I found the match there.

MARTY LAGINA: Really?

[laughter]

TOBIAS: Yeah.

RICK LAGINA: And time period-wise, do you think it’s pre-15th century then?

TOBIAS: I think it’s pre-15th century, yes.

RICK LAGINA: Wow. You nailed it, Gary.

GARY DRAYTON: Yep.

[laughter]

MARTY LAGINA: But where the heck did it come from?

TOBIAS: The data off the cross is very consistent with the area of Southern France.

MARTY LAGINA: Fantastic.

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NARRATOR 2: Number three, the paved area.

NARRATOR 1: One year after discovering the cross, the team once again drained the swamp and conducted a massive excavation to investigate the theory long held by the late Fred Nolan, that the swamp was man-made.

RICK LAGINA: Look at that. Huh, isn’t that remarkable?

MAN 5: Yeah.

RICK LAGINA: Tell me that’s natural.

MAN 5: Oh, there’s no way that’s natural, Rick. Look at it. It’s just layered right on top.

RICK LAGINA: And it’s so uniform.

MAN 5: It’s just perfect. I’ve seen some strange things in this swamp. But this is– I don’t know. I don’t know how you explain this.

IAN SPOONER: This stick will tell me when that stone was placed. You date the stick, you know when that happened.

NARRATOR 1: The results were nothing short of astonishing.

IAN SPOONER: So you remember that squish stick? There’s the dates we’re getting.

RICK LAGINA: Wow.

IAN SPOONER: Yeah.

RICK LAGINA: What are they?

IAN SPOONER: Around 1200 AD.

RICK LAGINA: Medieval.

IAN SPOONER: Medieval, baby.

[laughter]

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NARRATOR 2: Number two, the stone wharf.

NARRATOR 1: It began when Dr. Spooner launched an investigation of the southeastern corner of the brackish bog.

RICK LAGINA: That’s great news. I’ve– I’ve always felt there’s something weird about this swamp.

MAN 6: Right.

NARRATOR 1: But what he first thought might be a wall of some kind was soon revealed to be something much more telling.

IAN SPOONER: I didn’t expect to see this. Do you hear that? Yep. It is my belief, at least my initial belief, that it is a road, or a pathway, or a platform.

NARRATOR 1: The swamp was drained. And the fact that this wharf, which Dr. Spooner determined to be at least 300 years old, was completely contained within the swamp could only mean one thing. That the swamp is a man-made feature.

MAN 7: That– that looks exactly like an old Roman road.

MARTY LAGINA: It’s possible. You know, it indicates probably a loading or unloading from a ship.

NARRATOR 1: It means, to me, that something rather massive was occurring well before the discovery of the money pit on Oak Island. Could it be an indirect indicator of treasure?

Yes. Because why go to all this expense and construct this road that seems to have been constructed to be hidden?

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NARRATOR 2: Number one, silver in the money pit.

NARRATOR 1: Over the past decade, this team has drilled more than 100 bore holes–

RICK LAGINA: Time to dig.

NARRATOR 1: –and dug nine massive steelcase shafts, attempting to verify those incredible historic tales of treasure in the money pit.

We saw them find more pieces of parchment, a gold-plated button, and even video footage of numerous gold-colored objects more than 170 feet underground. But up until the fall of 2021, any verifiable evidence of treasure had eluded them as well.

MAN 8: Not really any wood that we were hoping to run into.

MAN 9: Clock is ticking.

MAN 8: We’re running out of time.

MAN 9: Yeah, exactly.

MARTY LAGINA: Hey, guys. Hello.

NARRATOR 1: That’s when geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner came up with a revolutionary plan.

IAN SPOONER: So the idea is to look at water down drill holes that exist. The water in those wells should reflect the chemistry of the ground that they interact with.

RICK LAGINA: Well, how would we identify whether or not there was treasure?

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NARRATOR 1: I absolutely love this idea of Dr. Spooner’s. If there’s a massive amount of metal down there somewhere, it should be leaching into the waters. Let’s test it for the very things which we seek.

Working with team members, as well as chemist Dr. Matt Luqman, Dr. Spooner took samples from numerous boreholes and shafts that the team had previously dug. It would lead to the greatest scientific discovery in Oak Island history.

MAN 10: So I’ve got one question to ask, do you think there’s treasure in the money pit?

IAN SPOONER: Ooh, I like that lead-in.

[laughter]

No, you know, I’m serious.

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Do I?

MAN 10: Yeah.

IAN SPOONER: Small chance. I– I do. I absolutely do. I believe that what they drilled into in 1897 is real.

MAN 10: Right.

IAN SPOONER: And I think it’s still there.

MAN 10: Right. So, Doug, can you bring– bring up the presentation?

DOUG: I can.

MAN 10: Great.

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DOUG: There is every reason to believe down in those holes that there is something close by that contains a very large amount of silver.

MAN 11: I guess I’m still trying to get a mental picture of how much silver it would take to give these levels. Like, is it a handful of silver? Or is it a Gerhard dump truck load of silver?

IAN SPOONER: It’s a Gerhard dump truck.

MARTY LAGINA: Oh, baby.

[laughter]

MAN 12: Are we closer to finding that actual physical treasure? We’ve got a shaft here. And maybe it’s the money pit.

RICK LAGINA: I think the clues are adding up that, ultimately, we’ll get either ourselves there or someone there.