In this video, we’re going to take a look at the developments that took place in Season
7, Episode 19 of ‘The Curse of Oak Island’. But first, I’d like to remind you that my
book ‘The Oak Island Encyclopedia’ is still available in both paperback and ebook
formats on Amazon. If you’d like to get a copy of this book, please check out the
link in the description. Near the beginning of the episode, Rick Lagina
and Gary Drayton do some metal detecting along the southern lip of the Oak Island swamp.
After unearthing the lid of a tin can, they come across an old ring on which a flower
and other decorations have been engraved. Visibly pleased with this new discovery, Gary
designates the ring a “top pocket find” and puts it away for future analysis.
Rick and Gary proceed to the Oak Island Research Centre, where they show the ring to Marty
Lagina, Laird Niven, and Kelly Bourassa. Marty and Laird observe that the ring is quite small-
an indication that it was probably intended for a woman. Laird examines the artifact under
a Grobet digital microscope, revealing a silver inlay in the grooves that make up the ring’s
central flower motif. Bourassa points out that the artifact contains two different types
of corrosion, one of them green and the other reddish, which he suggests might be an indication
that the ring is composed of a copper alloy. While pondering the ring’s implications,
Rick refers to the artifact’s central ornament as a “starburst”, evoking the 18th Century
silver laminate dandy button which Gary Drayton and Charles Barkhouse discovered at Isaac’s
Point in Season 7, Episode 1. Marty concludes the preliminary inspection by suggesting that
they show the ring to gemologist and master goldsmith Charles Lewton-Brain, who analyzed
the Lot 8 and Lot 21 brooches back in Season 6, Episode 2.
Later in the episode, the Oak Island team congregates in the War Room and calls up Charles
Lewton-Brain, who has had a chance to examine photographs of the ring. The goldsmith tells
the crew that he observed evidence of crude repairs made to the object, their purposes
being to make the ring “much bigger” and “a little smaller”, respectively. These
repairs were made with silver, while Lewton-Brain suspects that the rest of the ring is composed
of either bronze or a copper-silver alloy. The goldsmith states that the ring’s floral
design appears to have been hand-chiseled, which he claims is potential evidence that
the artifact was crafted prior to the 1730s. “Saw blades,” he explains, “don’t
really become available to jewelers until the 1730s, 1750s, and so, prior to that, you
would be cutting the metal out with a chisel.” Lewton-Brain goes on to identify the style
as European, and possibly Spanish. In the days following this episode’s first
airing, at least two fans of The Curse of Oak Island posted photos of very similar rings
to various Oak Island-related Facebook groups, these baubles being identical in every respect
to the artifact found in the swamp save for their coloration and lack of tarnish or corrosion.
One of these fans, whose ring has a bright silver colour, claimed to have acquired his
own trinket in 2015. Another, whose ring is bronze-coloured, claimed to have been given
this ring by her mother forty years ago. In a Facebook thread attached to a photo of the
bronze-coloured ring, a specialist who has appeared on the show in the past declared
that, although he is not a jewelry expert, this object looks “like stamped costume
jewelry with a silvered copper alloy core”.
If the bronze-coloured ring is indeed a piece of modern costume jewelry, and if the ring
found in the swamp is a piece from the same batch, as it appears to be, then it seems
likely that the artifact discovered in this episode is a relatively modern item which
was deposited in the swamp sometime in the last century. This possibility evokes the
so-called “Swordgate” scandal in which archaeologist Andy White and writer Jason
Colavito demonstrated that the supposed Roman gladius showcased in Season 3, Episodes 10
and 11 of ‘The Curse of Oak Island’ is not a genuine Roman artifact but rather a
relatively modern souvenir item of a type once sold to tourists in Italy.
Throughout the first half of this episode, the Oak Island team sinks Shaft OC1, the ground
for which was broken at the end of the previous episode. At a depth of 50 feet, the caisson
intersects what appears to be the remains of the Hedden Shaft. The treasure hunters
stand by as the hammergrab brings up load after load of timber.
Once the shaft reaches a depth of 105 feet, the treasure hunters carefully examine each
load of fresh spoils, manually extricating every large timber or piece of wood found
therein and transferring the rest of the muck to the wash plant for sifting.
At a depth of around 115 feet, the hammergrab emerges from the caisson with a large metal
object in its jaws. Although the artifact brings to mind the metal artifacts brought
up from the GAL1 caisson in Season 4, Episodes 15 and 16, Craig Tester declares that the
object must be the “Hedden shield”- a notion with which his fellow treasure hunters
immediately concur. “That hasn’t seen the light of day since 1936,” Doug Crowell
says. The narrator then explains that this artifact is almost certainly the 6-foot-tall
metal brace of “shield” with which the Hedden Shaft was reinforced back in the 1930s.
At a depth of about 120 feet, the caisson brings up a load of material in which Paul
Troutman later discovers fragments of glass and pottery and a large piece of what appears
to be bone- perhaps human bone. The narrator reminds us that, back in Season 5, Episodes
5 and 6, 17th Century human bones were discovered in Borehole H8. These bones, however, were
discovered deeper within the Money Pit area, between the depths of 160 and 165 feet.
Somewhere below the 120-foot depth, the hammergrab picks up half of a circular wooden sheet which
Terry Matheson identifies as “the top or bottom of a barrel”. In the same load, the
treasure hunters find a short wooden slat which Matheson identifies as a stave of the
same barrel. These artifacts reminds Doug Crowell of the yellow-painted wooden disk
discovered by the Oak Island Association at a depth of 118 feet.
Back in the summer of 1861, the Oak Island Association sank the 118-foot-deep Shaft 6
eighteen feet west of the Money Pit. That accomplished, they tunneled laterally towards
the Money Pit, hoping to circumvent the Smith’s Cove flood tunnel. Much to their pleasure,
the Association men reached the Money Pit without being flooded out; the circumvention
was a success. With the elusive treasure nowhere to be seen at that 118-foot-depth, the treasure
hunters proceeded to dig through the Money Pit’s eastern wall. As soon as they did,
water began to seep in from the east, and in no time, both Shaft 6 and the Money Pit
were both completely flooded with seawater. The Association men proceeded to bail water
from Shaft 6. That accomplished, they began to clear the
tunnel of the mud and debris which had filled it. The first pieces of debris they removed,
which presumably slid into the tunnel from the Money Pit during the flooding, included
fragments of age-blackened wood, a spruce slab perforated by a previous searcher’s
auger hole, a hand-cut branch of juniper, and a round yellow-painted object resembling
a dish or the bottom of a barrel. The barrel bottom recovered from OC1 reminds Doug Crowell
of the latter artifact. No sooner had the labourers begun the job
of clearing the tunnel than, according to foreman Jotham McCully, “they heard a tremendous
crash in the Money Pit and barely escaped being caught by the rush of mud which followed
them into the West pit and filled it up 7 feet in less than three minutes.” Doug Crowell
remarks that this newly-discovered barrel lid recovered from OC1 strongly evokes the
barrel bottom discovered by the Oak Island Association in 1861.
All throughout Season 6 of ‘The Curse of Oak Island’, Oak Island Tours Inc. searched
for the Shaft 6 tunnel via exploration drilling, believing that it must comprise a debris field
resultant of the Money Pit’s 1861 collapse. Their efforts culminated in the sinking of
caisson S6, which was supposed to be located at the junction of the Money Pit and the Shaft
6 tunnel. Unfortunately, S6, which was sunk in Season 6, Episodes 17 and 18, yielded little
of interest aside from a few pieces of leather, a link of iron chain, a shard of 18th Century
pottery, and several very large chunks of axe-hewn oak which constituted the first pieces
of oak that the crew had discovered at depth on Oak Island.
In this episode, the Oak Island crew discovers an axe-cut beam at a depth of about 147 feet
in OC1. As the treasure hunters are unaware of any wood-cribbed searcher shafts or tunnels
having been constructed at that depth, they deduce that the wood must be part of the original
Money Pit. Disappointingly, the next few hammergrab loads contain nothing of interest. The treasure
hunters decide to abandon the shaft at a depth of 158 feet in order to avoid destroying the
caisson’s teeth on the bedrock below. The next day, Rick Lagina, Dave Blankenship,
and Doug Crowell drive to the home of the late Dan Blankenship. There, they are greeted
by Dave’s sister, Linda Flowers, who now owns the house. Linda takes the boys to Dan’s
old office, where the veteran treasure hunter kept his records, and leaves them to search
through the papers for any clue which might help them select the location of their next
Money Pit shaft. While poring over the papers in Dan Blankenship’s
archive, Doug Crowell discovers a document produced by Erwin Hamilton- a New York engineering
professor who searched for treasure on Oak Island from 1938-1941. The document contains
a birds-eye diagram depicting old searcher tunnels which Hamilton re-excavated during
his Oak Island tenure. Surveyor Steve Guptill compares the diagram with the many coordinates
he has already plotted and prescribes the location of a new shaft in the Money Pit area
located about 20 feet southwest of OC1. Like S6, this new shaft, dubbed 8A, is supposed
to lie at the confluence of the Shaft 6 tunnel and the original Money Pit.
The episode ends at the Money Pit area, where the sinking of 8A is about to commence. The
treasure hunters express their optimism in the project as the 8A caisson begins its descent
into the earth. Thanks for watching! If you enjoyed this video
and would like to help support this channel, please check out my book ‘The Oak Island
Encyclopedia’, which you can find by clicking the link in the description.