The Curse of Oak Island: Unearthing a Tunnel in the Garden Shaft (Season 11)

The boys are calling you
the Silver Fox.

[narrator] Rick and Marty Lagina
are about to join the operation
to help Dumas reach
the potential treasure tunnel
located just below
the garden shaft.

What are we gonna do?
Explain to us what
we’re gonna do.
So, uh, we gotta excavate
a bit more.

-Gotta chip some of that clay.
-Right.
-And then put another set in.
-Okay.

We’re now at 90… 93 feet.
Gotta be within two feet.
Something like that.
Somewhere around there.
Yeah.

Let’s get suited up and have
a go at this, big brother.
[laughter]

[narrator] Before Dumas
can finish construction
on the final wooden set
that will extend the
garden shaft into the tunnel,
several feet of hard clay
must be removed.
It is a task
that Rick and Marty
are more than eager
to help complete.

It’s gonna be exciting.
To go down in that shaft
and actually do some digging
and maybe be part of unearthing
an original tunnel
would be incredibly gratifying.

All kinds of thoughts are
streaming through my head.
I mean, you can’t help it.
This is an exciting moment.

Ready.
We’re gonna go down deep
into the garden shaft,
big brother and I.

-[Paul] All set.
-[Rick] Let’s go.

My brother and I
are gonna be miners,
and our heritage is mining.
Our grandfather came here
in order to work in the mines
up in Michigan.
It’s really an amazing thing
that’s happening here.
A confluence of heritage.

[Paul] Very good.
[Marty] That’s right.
Now we can begin.

Marty, that’s gonna be
your corner.
-That beam there.
-Okay.

[Paul] Yours is called
the Destroyer.
-Mine is?
-Yeah, yours is Destroyer.
-[Rick] All right.
-[Paul] You got Big Betsy.
[Rick] Cool.

Here’s the deal, Rick.
You could be standing
a couple feet above the tunnel
we’ve been looking for
for at least two years.

-Right there.
-“Could”? We are.

Well, let’s get busy.
How do you work this thing?
[Paul]
Little bit at a time?
Yeah, okay.

-[Paul] Pump going on.
-[man on radio]
[Paul] Silver Fox and
his brother are ready to go.
[chuckles]
[air hissing]
[whirring]

[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] In order to break up
the hard clay
below the shaft,
Rick and Marty are using
a pneumatic jackhammer.
Then representatives from
Dumas Contracting Limited
will use the three-ton
hammer grab tool
to remove the materials.

[jackhammer whirring]
Yeah, baby!
This is no job for old men!
[chuckles]

Jackhammers themselves
weigh 60 or 70 pounds.
They tend to get stuck
in the clay.
It is some of the hardest work
I’ve done in many years.

All right, break time.
[all] Whoa, whoa!

[Rick] In the moment,
I’m an eyes and boots guy.
I’m down there.
I wanna get that clay
out of the hole,
I wanna find the tunnel, I…
I didn’t think of much else,
to be honest.

[jackhammer whirring]
[jackhammer straining]

[Marty] What do you
think you hit?
The last spade bit, I thought
I hit something different.
See that?
Try digging right up there.

[Rick] Look at that,
it’s nothing.
Really soft.
Hand me a bar?
Do you have a bar down here?

-[Paul] Yeah, right there.
-Right there.

[tense music playing]
[Rick]
[Paul]
[Rick] I thought at the bottom
of the spade bit
that I was on top of something,
and I thought, “Wow,
maybe I’m on a tunnel.”

[narrator] Could Rick Lagina’s
speculation
that he may have reached
the mysterious
and potentially ancient tunnel
be correct?

[dramatic music playing]
If so, the team may be
closer than ever
to the answers and reward…
that they’ve worked for more
than a decade to uncover.

[Rick]
“Right there” is
a relative term, isn’t it?
“Right there”
is a relative term.
Well, we got it all
loosened up for you.
[chuckles]
Now the hammer grab’s
gonna come down?
Yeah, we’ll hammer grab,
we’ll clean that hole.

Wood delineates
man-made things, obviously,
when it’s way underground.
So we need to keep going.
We could be closer
than we’ve ever been
to this actual treasure,
or to where it was deposited.

When we start doing the tunnel,
you guys gonna come down
for a day?
-Yes.
-Try and keep us out.
That’s gonna be an experience.
That would be cool.
We gotta be really close.
We gotta be.

[Paul] We are.

[narrator] Later that afternoon…
[Paul] So it seems like
we hit your target. Finally.
-You found her?
-Yeah. [chuckles]

[narrator] Rick Lagina,
Scott Barlow,
and Craig Tester
have just received
long-awaited news.
After extending
the garden shaft
to an approximate depth
of 95 feet
in the money pit area,
representatives from
Dumas Contracting Limited
have finally reached a believed
seven-foot-high tunnel
that leads toward
the baby blob,
and perhaps a vast cache
of buried treasure.

-You can actually see wood.
-Okay.
But it’s either collapsed
or whatever, who knows…
-Yeah.
-[Paul] Until we uncover more.
Okay. Get us dressed.
Let’s get going.
[Paul] Okay.

[dramatic music playing]
[Rick] Maybe, finally,
we can actually
put eyes and boots
on the tunnel
that was found by
the sonic drill program.

You get a little bit of chills.
Let’s go take a peek.
It’s been frustratingly slow
at times,
but it’s exciting.

[Gary] Good luck, guys.
-I’ll take you a picture.
-Thanks.

[Rick] If it was original,
it’s our belief
that we’re
talking hundreds of years ago.
[chuckles] Now, that…
that raises the bar.

There’s hope, there’s promise,
there’s the “you might find
the one thing,”
so I think there are
some answers here.

There you go.
So what are we
looking at here, Paul?

[dramatic music playing]
[Paul] That’s where we got
the sample outta the wood.
You feel anything?

[Rick] Uh…
Yeah.
There’s definitely wood
right here.

[music intensifies]
-See the bar here.
-[Paul] Yeah.
We drove that bar down
just for a guiding…
[Rick] Yeah?
So here’s the round log here.
[Rick] Oh, okay.
Right here, that’s wood?
-[Paul] That’s wood right there.
-[Rick] Oh.
-See that?
-[Paul laughs]
There’s some wood right there.
[Rick] But that’s right here.
See that right there?
That looks like wood there, too.
You know, there’s something
going on there.

[Paul]
[thudding on wood]
[Rick] Hear that?
That sound hollow?
Yeah.
[Rick] Listen to that.
That’s… That’s
one of the beams.
This beam is hollow wood.

[thudding]
[Rick] There’s only so much
you can see
between the clay, the water…
but it’s real, and that’s
the important part.

There’s a wood structure
down there.
And at that point
it becomes, “Okay,
you can’t stop now.”

If you wanna expose more of it,
we can add one more section
and then go deeper.
That’ll give us
another 32 inches.
You have to go deeper.
-Absolutely.

-The board this way,
if you pound on it,
it sounds hollow to me.
Like there’s empty space
below that.

-[Paul] Right.
-And that would be
indicative of the top
of the tunnel.

We did probe the logs
that were in line
with the projection.
It seemed hollow underneath it.
Hit that– Hit that one timber.
It sounds hollow to me.

-[thudding]
-[Paul] Yep.

[Rick] And the hope is
to extend the shaft
to explore this further.
[over monitor] We’ll excavate,
square it up,
and then keep digging.