Season 6, Episode 13 of 'The Curse of Oak Island' begins at Smith's Cove, where
a mysterious concrete wall was discovered at the end of the previous
episode next to the suspected slipway. Using his trowel, archaeologist Laird
Niven uncovers two rubbery pipes protruding from the wall's base, which
seem to indicate that the structure was made by 19th or 20th Century
searchers and not by the original builders as was initially hoped. Later, at
the Money Pit area, the team lifts and lowers the H8 caisson using the
oscillator, causing 24 feet of muck to collect at the bottom of the shaft. That
accomplished, they removed the mud and debris with the hammergrab and transfer
the spoils to a wash table, where the debris is manually inspected Jack Begley.
Charles Barkhouse and Dan Henskee discover a number of interesting
artifacts in the spoils pile, including fragments of wood, leather, and parchment.
Upon close inspection, one of the parchment fragments appears to bear
markings rendered in red and yellow paint or ink. Doug Crowell suggest that
the markings might be the remains of a stylized initial or drop cap of the type
used in illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Another interesting item
discovered in the H8 spoils is a fragment of what appears to be human
bone, evocative of the late 17th or early 18th Century human bones extracted from
H8 in Season 5, Episode 5. About halfway through the episode, the crew is
visited by Randall Sullivan, the journalist who has been tasked with
writing a History Channel-sponsored book on the Oak Island treasure hunt.
Sullivan remarks that he is partial to the theory that Elizabethan and Jacobean
English polymath Sir Francis Bacon is a man behind the Oak Island mystery.
As evidence to support his theory, he cites a passage from Bacon's natural
history book 'Sylva Sylvarum', which instructs the reader to dig a pit on the
seashore starting above the high-water mark to a point below sea level. The
implication is that Bacon was describing the construction of the Money Pit. A
closer look at this passage reveals it as a description of a supposed method
for straining salt water in order to produce fresh water. The first sentence of the
passage reads:
Bacon goes on to explain that
this method of water purification saved Julius Caesar in his Roman army from
thirst during the Siege of Alexandria in 47 BC. Later,
Randall Sullivan expresses his belief in the South Shore Cove flood tunnel- a
supposed original working, the existence of which Oak Island treasure
hunters have debated for over a century. In 1897, the Oak Island Treasure Company
poured red dye into the Money Pit in order to locate the head of the Smith's
Cove flood tunnel. The dye soon appeared on the shores of Smith's Cove. However, in
an unexpected turn of events, the dye also showed up at several locations on
Oak Island South Shore Cove. This discovery led the Oak Island Treasure
Company to believe that another flood tunnel connected the waters of the South
Shore Cove with the Money Pit. Eight three years later, in February 1980, Dan Blankenship
observed four circular holes in the ice about 700 feet off the South Shore Cove,
each of them spaced about 150 feet apart. Blankenship and his business partner
David Tobias both considered these holes to be another piece of evidence
supporting the existence of the South Shore flood tunnel, suspecting that they
indicated the termini of the supposed South Shore Cove box drains. Thanks for
watching! If you enjoyed this video and would like to learn more about Season 6,
Episode 13 of 'The Curse of Oak Island', please check out the link in the
description.