Sunday, 11 February 2018

The Curse of Oak Island S05E05

Synopsis

The discovery of a document offers new clues on the exact location of the Money Pit, and the fellowship of the dig makes a cryptic discovery at uncharted depths.

What I thought

Ricky, Marty and drilling team are back in the Money Pit. 16 of the 40 holes complete in GeoTech grid and there’s lots of wood coming up that they are sifting through like a scene out of a gold rush movie.  John Wannacott, Geophysics engineer and historian, turns up. He and his partner originally helped devise the grid of Geotech holes, which leads Marty to ask the obvious to him “Why haven’t we found it yet?” Of course, they are not half way through the holes yet and the area is littered with past excavation remains. There’s bit of debating about if all the holes are needed and the order they will be drilled but essentially, they all agree to continue as planned. That’s five minutes of basically nothing then.

Next, we’re off to Sydney! No, not Australia but another town miles NE of Oak Island where Alex, Jim and Peter are meeting Doug Crowell, researcher, who has spent a few days looking through documents donated to the Beaton Institute library from past treasurer hunter, William Chappell. I’m not sure what he was doing for last few days as all the good stuff seems to have been found today, although I expect that’s just the way it looks on TV. In 1897, it was William Chappell who believed he found a vault and the small parchment of paper before flooding destroyed location in Money Pit. There’s a lot of very decent informative documents in this institute (which leads me to ask, where have they been for the last 100 years then?) including a document written on oath from a William Blair that Chappell drilled through gold. There’s also a map that basically shows that where the gang thought the bottom of the Chappell shaft was is wrong as the bottom extended 12ft north. More holes needed it seems. Why didn’t they look at this data before they started?

A Day later, 8 new holes mapped in new area and a start on one of them, H8. Currently they are turning up wood that was painted in a black substance that they used around 1890s to protect wood from water. Apparently, it smells. This new H8 hole had seemed to have gone past an object in a void but at 200ft they don’t seem to have found anything. Then, they found small pieces of pottery at 190ft. As they call it a day on drilling further, they find a larger object in the spoils, about the size of a finger.

Marty, Dave and Gary Drayton are at boulderless beach on the north shore. They find a large iron spike. Probably early 1700s from a ship so they call up Laird who marches all the way there and basically confirms what they said. Poor chap, Why they dragged him there I don’t know. It could be a spike from a ship or a wharf. Maybe boats were offloaded etc there. Could explain the odd formation of that area.

At War Room, Laird looks at the pottery and he reckons it’s late 1700s English imitation pottery of sorts, which would just predate discovery of the Money Pit. Why’s it so deep though? The other item the size of the finger Laird says he’s fairly certain is bone! Exactly if it’s human or animal though remains to be seen. It looked like bone from day one to me, but I might have thought that thanks to the sneak peek from last week and not due to any intelligence in detective work.

Rating 7/10 – The team dig up yet another spike but in Money Pit, a new discovery on where to drill reveals pottery and bone.

Much to the annoyance of others trying to study, Alex calls his dad up to tell him about what they found.

Yet more evidence pops up to tell them they are drilling in wrong place.

Gary digs up an old spike. Let's ask Laird what he thinks ...

... "It's a spike", says Laird.

Some of the pottery from H8.

The fragment of bone from H8.


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