The Curse of Oak Island drilling team has hit a major cavity in the Money Pit area, which the team believes is either a tunnel or a secret chamber.
This week on Oak Island, all the main action was happening at the Money Pit, as the team increasingly focuses their efforts on finding the buried treasure in that area. Success rates have been a bit up and down, as always, but this episode showed that real progress is being made.
The episode began with an expert briefing the guys in the War Room. The team had asked Geophysicist Jeremy Church if he could take another look at the data from a seismic survey done a couple of years ago to see if any more useful information could be gleaned from it. And apparently, yes.
Church presented a very fancy, if a little confusing, computer graphic that showed what appeared to be a square-like structure buried under the surface of the Money Pit area.
The structure is about 160 feet down and has an area of 12 x 12 feet. This info instantly had Marty Lagina wondering if it was the elusive offset chamber that he increasingly believes is hidden underground.
But the geophysicist had more; he had also discovered what appeared to be a tunnel, at a depth of 100 feet, stretching from shaft 12 to this mysterious new structure. Shaft 12 was constructed in 1894 by treasure hunter Fred Blair; his team tunneled down for 30 feet until they were forced to abandon the shaft because of flooding.
The guys decided to start drilling straightaway
The guys are expecting to receive delivery of four 10 foot wide steel caissons in the next few weeks, and as Rick Lagina pointed out, they are hungry for some reliable data that will guarantee them success when deciding where to put these caissons. With that in mind, they decided to chase Church’s info with the borehole drill.
Perhaps a little surprisingly, the guys ignored the structure for now and chose to set up the drill near shaft 12 to look for the tunnel. And the result was rather intriguing.
The drill team didn’t expect to hit anything of note until around the 95 to 100 feet mark, but just after 65 feet, the drill suddenly dropped rapidly, and water began gushing up. They quickly realized that they’d hit air which was rushing and pushing water to the surface.
Oak Island team believes they’ve hit something very old
After confirming that they hadn’t hit a deposit of natural gas, which could have caused a massive explosion, they concluded they’d hit a cavity. Surveyor Steve Guptill announced, “We pierced something that hasn’t been pierced in a long time.”
Because of the way the drill and the air in the hole were behaving, the team decided that they had either hit a dead-end tunnel or some kind of a chamber. Marty was delighted! He was thinking this could be a secret offset chamber that’s hiding the real treasure.
The location is interesting because the historical documents make no reference to any searcher work in this specific area. It’s all virgin territory, meaning this is very likely the work of folk depositing treasure.
The Curse of Oak Island airs at 9/8c on History.
A great show. At first I was like a kid looking for treasure and being a life long land surveyor, I always loved finding X marks the spot. But the revelations of the bones of a European and middle easterner, the cross, the lead made some 1200 years ago, wood from the 600’s, the reality of Oak island is just beginning to come out. The discoveries in Smith’s cove prove that many ships had used the cove for as yet undiscovered intentions. The rock road in the swamp proves that the swamp was indeed man made and the cove and swamp were connected at one time for moving material. it trashes the idea that Columbus :discovered” the new World, and that trade on the island precedes Columbus by hundreds of years. I hope they find the missing treasure, whether it be France’s, Spain’s or Middle Eastern, whether the knights templar were ever there after the Friday 13th massacre, It’s just interesting and I hope it pans out for them . After dealing in construction along with land surveying, I know their costs have to be in the 3 million dollar range by now. Good luck guys!
Their drilling just flooded a previously dry chamber! What have they ruined?
The photo of Marty is mislabeled as Rick.