The Curse of Oak Island: Ancient Structure UNVEILED Under the Swamp

GARY: Hey, Billy.
RICK: Hey, Billy.

BILLY:
Hey, guys.
I’m ready to kick some swamp butt again, mate.
Find some good finds.

NARRATOR:
Rick Lagina, metal detection expert Gary Drayton, and Billy Gerhardt are searching for clues at the southern border of the mysterious triangle-shaped swamp.

BILLY:
I figure it’s like old home week, right? We came back home ’cause we never finished this.

RICK:
Not quite. We were close. In a way, we know what we’re looking for. We’re definitely looking for more pieces of what we found earlier.

GARY:
Yep.

BILLY:
We found wood from ships.

GARY:
Yep. For that reason alone, it’s worth looking at.

DOUG:
Is that a piece of cut wood there?

BILLY:
Is that cut wood or not? I’ll go get it.

NARRATOR:
In recent years…

GARY:
Oh, look at that.

NARRATOR:
…the team has found a number of ship-related artifacts in the swamp…

SCOTT:
That’s beautiful, actually.

NARRATOR:
…that have been dated to between the 15th and 18th centuries.

BILLY:
Here’s another piece of it. Look at that.

NARRATOR:
However, in 2020, they unearthed a piece of ship’s railing right near the southern border that was carbon-dated to as early as the 8th century.

BILLY:
We’re off the end of the road, right? Man, would it be something nice if we found something that really told us who was here and when they were here.

RICK:
I hope so.

GARY:
All right, mate.

NARRATOR:
Now, in light of Dr. Doug Symons’ incredible theory about the medieval Viking culture potentially being connected to the Oak Island mystery, they are eager to see what other possible clues they may uncover in this area.

GARY:
Whew. Smells like treasure. Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

GARY:
What did you see, Rick?

RICK:
Wood. Is that anything?

GARY:
Good eye, Rick. Is it cut?

RICK:
Yeah.

GARY:
Looks like it’s got a hole in it, Rick. There’s no metals in there. But it’s definitely shaped.

RICK:
Think so?

GARY:
Yep. And it looks like it could come off a boat. We found something, Bill. Check this out. It’s an interesting piece of wood. Any ideas?

RICK:
Uh… Well, I’ll tell you what it looks like to me. See how it curves up?

GARY:
Yeah.

RICK:
When you have a wooden boat, you put little runners on that were used along the shore. Like the keel of a boat.

GARY:
Yeah, so, say you had a big boat here and you were bringing your little one to shore, they’d put these little ribs on because they would wear rather than wear the bottom of your boat out. We would call them runners.

GARY:
Maybe it hit the rocks…

RICK:
Yeah, exactly.

GARY:
Right there… and got broke off.

RICK:
Good insight, Billy. I’ll be putting that in the bag.

NARRATOR:
Is it possible that the Oak Island team has found more evidence of a sailing vessel in the swamp? If so, just how old could it be? And who were the visitors that left it here?

RICK:
I need to go back. I got to check on a few things for the Money Pit drilling. So, keep digging, keep after it, and I’ll try to get back as soon as I can.

GARY:
Okay, mate.

RICK:
See you later.

GARY:
All right, thank you.

NARRATOR:
I believe that this is a very old mystery. We have dates from 700 AD with the ship’s railing. We have the 1200 dates in the swamp. So, there are strong suggestions that there was activity very early on. But to what end? That’s what makes this so interesting.

GARY:
Hey, Gary.

STEVE:
Hey, Steve.

GARY:
How’re you doing?

STEVE:
Good. Perfect timing, mate. Billy’s just repositioned. We’re digging. You never know what’s gonna come out.

STEVE:
That’s true. What’s happening, Billy?

BILLY:
Just got a little wood here, and I–

STEVE:
What kind of wood?

BILLY:
Somebody’s dug down in the swamp, and there– We got a bunch of horizontal and vertical boards. There’s a wall of a… shaft, retaining wall, something.

STEVE:
Maybe it’s what Fred probed.

GARY:
So you think it could be potentially what Fred was probing when he thought…

BILLY:
Well…

STEVE:
…he hit the wall?

BILLY:
There’s-there’s potential of that.

NARRATOR:
A possible wall buried at the southern border of the swamp? While investigating this area more than 30 years ago, the late treasure hunter and Oak Island landowner Fred Nolan reportedly discovered a wooden wall or dam. A dam that Fred believed represented evidence that the swamp was an artificial feature that had been created centuries ago in order to hide something of great value. Is it possible that the team has found a section of that same construct? And if so, could it be related to the potentially 1,250-year-old piece of ship’s railing that the team found nearby back in 2020?

BILLY:
I think we’re onto something, mate.

STEVE:
You make a good point, Billy. I mean, it’s really close, I would say feet off of the stone road.

BILLY:
Yeah.

STEVE:
So I think it could be really important and maybe related to the stone road.

GARY:
For sure. Let’s get back to base, tell the guys. Good eyes, Billy.

NARRATOR:
…Rick Lagina has invited geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner to inspect the feature.

IAN:
What interests me is it’s down into the sediment. I really want to see the context of that and the sediment around it.

RICK:
Yep.

IAN:
We can see this red stuff here.

RICK:
Mm-hmm.

IAN:
That red stuff is what’s underneath the stone road.

RICK:
Right.

NARRATOR:
Just to the west lies the potentially 500-year-old stone road or ship’s wharf, a feature that may date to roughly the same time period as the wooden tunnel below the Garden Shaft.

IAN:
If we start seeing that red stuff within and around that wood structure, that will possibly place it further back in time.

RICK:
Yeah.

NARRATOR:
Is it possible that this feature may be related to the nearby stone road, as Dr. Spooner is speculating? And perhaps also to the possible treasure tunnel in the Money Pit area?

IAN:
This was always the area that I… was really interested in. In terms of trying to find something that connects the stone road to something else.

STEVE:
Right.

IAN:
We know it had to be used for something else, and they were going somewhere and doing something.

STEVE:
Mm-hmm.

IAN:
If this is as old as the stone road, could this have been some sort of a loading and unloading platform?

STEVE:
That’s kind of interesting.

IAN:
You tie something to it, the cargo, swing it off, unload, load, unload, load.

STEVE:
Sure. They’d pull the big boat up.

IAN:
Yeah. They’d unload their goods.

IAN:
And they could have built other structures as well.

RICK:
Yeah.

IAN:
There’s precious little known about the southeast corner of the swamp. I wish I understood why we’re making these discoveries in the swamp that has endured over two centuries. I think there were activities conducted here, maybe not by the same persons but maybe by a same group or entity over generations, perhaps even centuries.

IAN:
This wood here is interesting, too, because it’s round on the edges, flat on the top. That’s pretty old.

RICK:
Mm.

IAN:
I think the desire on all parts is to dig and expose the structure in its entirety so we can come to a real good understanding of its purpose.

IAN:
And hopefully there’s an artifact or two that might tell us what its purpose was. Somebody put a huge effort into