The Season 6 premiere of 'The Curse of Oak Island' begins with the brothers Rick
and Marty Lagina driving to Oak Island for another season of treasure hunting.
Marty, who has shown some skepticism towards the Oak Island legend in the
past, tells Rek that he is now "70% convinced that something out of the
ordinary" took place on the island. Marty's newfound faith is due to the
discoveries made in Borehole H8 the previous season, which includes pieces of
parchment, a leather book cover, and human bones brought up from a depth of 162
feet. On the island, the crew meets in the War Room to discuss the agenda for the
upcoming season. It is agreed that this year's focus will be on what Rick calls
"The Big Three: The Money Pit, Smith's Cove, and the Swamp.
Marty also expresses his desire for Gary Drayton to metal detect the entire
island. In the Money Pit area, the crew plans to hire Eagle Canada- a seismic
exploration company- to conduct a seismic survey so that they can get a better
idea of the anomalies present underground. The narrator explains that
this survey will involve laying out lines of geophones
and perpendicular lines of blast charges. When the charges are detonated, they will
send seismic waves into the earth. Some of the waves will reflect off bedrock
and travel back to the surface, where the geophones will convert them into data. A
geophysicist will later analyze this data, from which he will be able to
identify and locate underground anomalies in the surveyed area. Before
allowing the Eagle Canada guys to conduct their survey, the Oak Island team
has a seismic crew prove the efficacy of their service by performing a smaller
survey in the general vicinity of the so-called "Halifax Tunnel".
The narrator reveals that this underground structure is 110 feet deep
and extends northward from a shaft that was sunk 200 feet south of the Money Pit.
The men of Eagle Canada, however, are apparently ignorant of its precise
location. The name "Halifax Tunnel" is a bit of a misnomer, as it could apply to a
number of tunnels constructed by the Halifax Company in 1866 and '67. Although
the Halifax Company didn't record the location of any of their tunnels, one of
these structures was discovered in 1937 by treasure hunter Gilbert Hedden.
Robert Dunfield discovered another one of the Halifax Tunnels in 1965 near the
Cave-in Pit, and in Season 2, Episode 3, the Oak Island crew searched for another
Halifax tunnel in the Money Pit area. Although the Season 2 search was
unsuccessful, the Oak Island crew must have made a second, more fruitful search
for the tunnel which they neglected to disclose in the show. The seismic test in
the Hedden Shaft area is a success, and the Oak Island team allows Eagle Canada
to conduct a larger seismic survey of the entire Money Pit area. Although the
operation is completed in this episode, the results of the survey have yet to be
revealed. At Smith's Cove the crew plans to have Irving Equipment Ltd. build a
massive cofferdam which will enable them to excavate the area without having
to contend with the tide. This potential cofferdam is not the first to be built
on Oak Island. Back in 1850, the Truro Company built a
cofferdam around Smith's Cove, hoping to dismantle and plug the box drains which
fed the Money Pit's flood tunnel. This cofferdam was swept away by a storm
shortly after its construction. The same thing happened to the Halifax Company,
which built its own cofferdam in 1866, and to Dan Blankenship, who built a
cofferdam in 1970. The Lagina brothers and their crew had contractor Jeremy
Frizzell set up an inflatable cofferdam back in Season 4, Episode 11, but it
ruptured before it could be fully assembled. The following episode, Jack
Nichols of Dam-it-Dams build another more substantial cofferdam. This
structure survived for some time, and enabled the crew to discover the French
drain, Drayton's Cross, and a piece of the U-shaped structure first discovered by
Dan Blankenship in the 1970s. Some believe that the mysterious U-shaped
structure actually constitutes the remains of another more ancient
cofferdam erected by the people who built the box drains and the flood
tunnel. This season, the crew plans to replace Nicholl's cofferdam with a much
larger structure which will be the largest of its kind ever built on Oak
Island. With this in place, the crew plans to fully uncover the U-shaped structure
and perhaps find more interesting artifacts in the process.
No mention is made of the operation the crew intends to carry out in the Swamp
this season. If history is any judge, however, we can expect Rick Lagina to
enthusiastically pursue this operation and for Marty Lagina to oppose it. As
previously mentioned, it is revealed in this episode that Gary Drayton has been
tasked with metal detecting all of Oak Island. The team plans to clear Lots 1
through 8, as well as Lots 21 and 22, of trees and brush
so that Drayton may search these areas more thoroughly and efficiently. Drayton
starts by doing some metal detecting at Smith's Cove, where he found the lead
cross the previous year. This time, he digs up a scrap of lead sheet. Laird
Niven explains that lead was once commonly used to patch up damaged ships
and suggests that this artifact is likely such a patch. Later on, Gary does
some metal detecting on Lot 2, where he discovers a 1797 British twopence
bearing the image of King George III. Sometime thereafter, he discovers a
granite boulder with six drilled holes and an iron spike driven into it. He and
Laird Niven both speculate that this stone once housed the ring bolt which
functioned as a primitive pulley. In other words, Drayton and Niven suspect
that someone once used this boulder to haul a heavy object overland. This is
not the first drilled stone to be discovered on Oak Island. In 1938, Gilbert
Hedden discovered two drilled rocks- one on Smith's Cove, and the other north of
the Money Pit- while following directions on the Wilkins Map- a strange document
with a bizarre backstory, which we will have to cover in another video. These
landmarks feature in a number of interesting Oak Island theories,
including Laverne Johnson's theory and Robert Restall's theory of the vertical shaft.
Interestingly, Borehole 10-X lies directly on the path between these
two stones. In the 1970s, Dan Blankenship and Fred
Nolan discovered more drilled rocks on their property, and in Season 3, Episode 1,
another one was discovered in the woods north of the Money Pit. After discovering
the latest drilled rock, Gary Drayton does some metal detecting on Lot 21. Near
the foundation of Daniel McGinnis' cabin, he discovers a bejeweled brooch. This
find is reminiscent of the rhodolite garnet discovered on Lot 8 in Season 5,
Episode 16. In the Season 5 finale, we learned that an unnamed gemologist had
established the rhodolite garnet to be a product of the 16th or 17th Century.
Perhaps his new artifact will prove to be of a similar age. In addition to Gary
Drayton, another crew member to play a prominent role in this episode is Peter
Fornetti. Near the beginning of the episode, Peter brings the lead cross to
the University of New Brunswick, where geochemistry professor Dr. Chris
McFarlane uses a mass spectrometer to determine that the lead of which it is
composed was not mined in North America. Later on,
Peter oversees a deep metal detecting operation on Smith's Cove, conducted by
Mike West and Andrew Gillis. This operation reveals the presence of a
large metal object at depth which has yet to be extracted. Thanks for watching! If
you enjoyed this video and would like to read a more in-depth analysis of the
Season 6 premiere of 'The Curse of Oak Island', please check out the link in the
description.