Original subtitles

Tonight on The Curse of Oak Island.

Everything's going in that dumpster. There's something that comes from below.

We'll find it.

Uh-oh.

I think there's something in the airlift.

Look at that. That's a boom.

Dan believes that there is a body down there.

We're back on the hunt in 10 hours.

We know that FDR was interested in the treasure hunt here on Oak Island. I was

able to find the president's personal file. Guess what I found in that folder?

That's remarkable.

There is an island in the North Atlantic where people have been looking for an

incredible treasure for more than 200 years So far they have found bits of

gold chain a stone slab with strange symbols carved into it even a 17th

century Spanish coin to date six men have died trying to solve the mystery

and according to legend

One more will have to die before the treasure can be found.

How much water do you got?

You're at two foot nine inches.

Okay. Down just a bit more.

It is the beginning.

of another momentous day on oak island i think that's good as rick lagina along

with other members of the oak island team begin pumping thousands of cubic

feet of air into borehole 10x in an effort to flush what they hope will be

important artifacts up to the surface everything's going in that dumpster

there's something that comes from below we'll find it well that's for sure

The airlift works by inserting a pipe some 230 feet to the bottom of 10X.

Then, a large volume of compressed air is pumped down to force water, sediment,

and any objects back up through the pipe to the surface.

The sediment, otherwise known as spoils, is then deposited into a container and

searched for potentially important artifacts.

I think the massive size of this equipment and the air we're going to put

to it, we're going to bring up anything that's in that chamber that's worth

seeing. I really believe that.

Let's track some more air.

Try giving it just a little bit more.

That's good.

You're sucking dirt now.

I'd like to have some of this equipment when you and I was working.

I wouldn't know what to do with it all.

First drilled by Oak Island treasure hunter Dan Blankenship in the early

1970s, 10X was intended to be something of a backdoor into the so

-called money pit.

Although Dan hid a booby-trapped flood tunnel at a depth of 60 feet,

he kept drilling and digging, ultimately making 10X the

deepest borehole on the island at a staggering depth.

of 235 feet how's the water in the hall

the water line is good you know dan i've been mesmerized by 10x

since i first saw those photographs i i wonder if in a half an hour we'll

actually hold in our hands what you saw long ago that's our hope mine too

mine too

When Dan put a camera down 10x, he discovered what he maintains is evidence

of human activity, including wooden posts, a large chest,

antique tools, and possibly human remains.

I'm on record saying there's a corpse down there.

Right. Just watch out for bones.

Well, hopefully today we'll get some answers.

Unfortunately, in the 1980s, Dan ran out of money to explore 10X until

partnering with the Laginas 10 years ago.

And it has taken him until now to try and prove that what he first discovered

was not merely the product of his wishful imagination.

What's all this about?

This came out of 10X.

That came out of 10X, that came out of 10X, and that came out of 10X. What more

do you want, Molly?

Chain, wire, and that low-carbon steel. It all tested out as being made prior to

1750. All of that came from the bottom of the damn hole. All of those things.

All of it came from the bottom of the hole.

I have a long history with 10X. I've always said, in order to put what my

brother calls an X through 10X, we need to find something.

Last year, Rick, Marty and the team arranged for professional diver John

Chatterdon to successfully reach the bottom of borehole 10X.

Due to dense layers of clay and sediment, visibility in the underground

cavern was virtually zero.

Can you see that?

What is that, John?

Clay.

Even more disappointing was the report John Chatterton issued after making the

harrowing dive.

I had a rock that I would estimate was 10 inches to 12 inches.

I picked it up. I moved it. It was heavy.

To me, that was what gave you the sonar signal of the box.

Because the data retrieved from the dive conflicted with other data, Rick, Marty,

and the team are hoping that today's efforts to airlift 10X will give them a

reason to continue investing both time and money at this site.

Right now, everything seems to be working well.

This scares the hell out of me, if you know what I mean.

You're afraid that a cavity might collapse?

I'm afraid that area...

between 212 and 214 may collapse you remember i told you there's a fissure

around 212 right during one of his dives into 10x in the 1970s

dan blankenship noticed a large and potentially dangerous fissure in the

anhydride bedrock starting at a depth of approximately 212 feet

if the enormous pressure caused by the airlift process triggers a collapse

The result would be catastrophic, as far as any further ability to explore 10X is

concerned.

Uh-oh.

Watch the hoser.

See if you can help Michelle out with that other pump there.

Suddenly, something appears to have caused the airlift to stop working.

Shut it down.

Can you turn yours off?

I think there's something in the airlift.

It's thumping.

Let's lift it up, check if we got a clog.

Let's try that.

We only got to come up 10 or 15 feet.

I don't know why they pulled up.

Probably what I had feared, that that damn roof caved in.

If you feel the hose, it's pounding.

It's like there's something caught in it.

We got a plug in there. Yeah.

Is it possible that a large object has clogged the airlift?

If so, what could it be?

A large rock?

Or perhaps one of the objects Dan Blankenship claims he saw some 40 years

ago.

Where are we? What's your plan here?

So right now, our water flow wasn't there, so we think we had a plug up

inside.

We're going to try it again. I think the plug is cleared out of the airlift. So

we'll give it another kick and see what happens. All right.

Leave it open.

That's perfect.

All right. We're seeing some activity here.

You hear the dirt?

There it is.

Working well now.

With the adjustment having been made by the team from Irving Equipment Limited,

the airlift process resumes.

We just want to get our water flowing properly here.

And once we get that going, we want to lift for maybe another 20, 30 minutes.

And then we'll drain that out and see what's in there for sediment.

It's going to be interesting.

It's hard to say. I hope we find some.

I hope so, too.

As we move forward with the airlift in 10X, it's exciting.

We've worked out the kinks in the system, and now the airlift should be

able to proceed uninterrupted.

The whole idea, of course, is to get the material off the floor in 10X, and I

think at this point it will be successful.

Let's shut down and we'll drain that out.

Close it.

Whatever materials are on the bottom of 10X, they should now be in that

dumpster. After draining the water from the inside of the metal container, the

Oak Island team can now begin their inspection of the 10X coils.

I don't know what to say about it. I was expecting a lot more. Yeah.

Rick, Charles, and Jack will first empty the contents of the container.

into the 21 and a half ton front end loader.

From there, the spoils can be deposited at a neutral location to be meticulously

searched for artifacts or potentially valuable clues.

Jack, right here.

Jack, that looks interesting.

I'll bag it.

This, I think this is...

I don't know what that is.

It's not steel.

Jack, you got another bag?

Several pieces came up out of the hole, incredibly blackened. I don't think it's

wood. I have no idea what it is.

Rick, come here.

Look at that.

That's a bone.

A bone found in the mud and sediment that Rick and the team just pumped out

of borehole 10X?

Kind of still feel the marrow. Jack, come here.

You got a baggie, Jack? You got a bone here. You got to come see it. You got a

baggie? Could Charles Barkhouse have just found evidence of human remains?

Perhaps validating what Dan Blankenship claims he saw four decades

ago.

It's black.

Charles found a bone.

At that point, your mind races to, is it human or animal?

Human or animal? It's a human bone. Wow, what does this mean?

That needs to go to a forensic pathologist.

Exactly.

We're going to pretty much have to sift through here.

Oh, yeah, it's just got to go through with a fine-tooth comb, no question

about that. And get every bone we find tested, because if any of them turn up

to be human, that will be big.

It would be big. It will prove that there was a body down there. You're

right. We bag and tag everything.

But let's get this cleared out for now. Well, that's our plan. That's our plan.

Jack's going to be in charge.

He'll build a screen, put the sediment on a little bit at a time, wash the

material, and then visually inspect it.

It's going to be very tedious, but Jack's up to the task, and he's excited

about doing it.

After spending the last several days collecting and sifting through the

spoils from the bottom of 10X. Ready?

Is the hose powered on still? Yep.

Jack Begley, along with his stepfather, Craig Tester, are nearly finished

searching them for valuable artifacts.

All right, this is the last load of 10X.

Hopefully there's a coin in here.

We have this diamond mesh trough.

that we pour the spoils out onto and then spray them down with the hose to

get the clay off quicker and hopefully reveal as much man-made stuff as we can

i'll get this out of the way i do about half and i just kind of

yeah beat it on the side a little bit that's probably good

there's a chopping wood did you find anything this big before

No. Here, let me clean it off.

Now, is this the dimension that was in Dan's films?

It's so hard to tell because there's no good, you know, focus on how far away it

was. You can definitely see it's cut here.

But it doesn't look like a circular zone. No, by no means. No, this is...

Older than, hopefully.

Yeah. This wood looks like some of the wood that I saw in Dan Blankenship's

film back when he originally went down in 10X.

It looks really old, and you can see the hand saw marks on it.

I think it's some great information.

Oh, look at this.

Black wood with that tar stuff on it. Tar stuff, yeah.

And does this look like pitch to you?

Could be.

I know they used to use pitchblende as a sealant on ships and other places.

The original people here, because they came in ships, they would have had

access to it.

The use of pitch, also known as resin, dates as far back as the 3rd millennium

BC to ancient Egypt, where it served as caulking between the wooden deck planks

of sailing vessels.

It was later used as a sealant for waterproofing wooden chests.

Well, that's the same material. Yeah.

Or maybe the same material.

I think it's the same.

Based upon what Craig and I found in the 10X spoils, it's encouraging. Not only

is it stuck onto rocks and other things, but onto that wood, which we can date.

Date that wood, yeah.

Yep. There's several items that seem that they could be from original people,

and we're going to have to show this stuff to Dan Blake and Chip and to the

rest of the group.

because there's a lot of stuff in here that could prove whether or not 10x is

worthwhile we got a bunch of bags full yep definitely i think this will do it

okay well let's take a few of the more interesting things and show them to the

guys sounds good

the

agenda is what we've done in 10x and everyone knows that we tried to airlift

After nearly a week of sifting through the hundreds of pounds of sediment that

the airlift brought up from the bottom of borehole 10X, the Oak Island team has

gathered in the war room to assess their most interesting finds.

I mean, as the process was going on, we could hear the material rattling through

that pipe, and we shoveled it out. Jack, I don't know, you've gone through it.

You and Craig have gone through it. What did you come up with?

Pieces of wood.

Would these have been anything that you dropped into the hole?

Hell no, because it's deteriorated so much. That's older than I am.

Because I wondered if this is possibly original.

That's old.

There's no question about that. But in the same token, that's the first man

-made wood that I've seen come out of 10X. And you can see the cuts, too.

There's no question. That was cut with a handsaw.

But you know that you didn't put or use any wood like that around 10X? I know I

didn't.

I wouldn't have a saw that would make that cut.

Well, that's not all we found, though.

We also found wood with some sort of black substance.

I found it on a couple different items that were brought up.

Could the original people have used this for some purpose in 10X? I don't know.

Did you use anything like that when you were working in 10X?

No. I know that's not for mine.

No. Jack, we drilled. Why are we throwing in?

Dan was sitting right there, and he said, we didn't put these in there.

He couldn't think of anything he would have put in. I took him to mean the

entire hole.

In other words, nothing like that could have fallen in there even.

Okay, let's get it dated.

Absolutely. But we have to do that.

Yeah, for sure.

Without a question, this is not something that was dropped into a hole

by us.

Well, then that's great news.

I am very satisfied with what we did in 10X. We've got a bunch of things to run

tests on. And if they come back, you know, as an aha moment, then yeah, then

10X is right back on the list.

Okay, so there's not quite an X in 10X. That's what we're saying here.

You agree to that?

I agree to that. Not quite.

Okay. All right.

One day after the team's decision to maintain their search operation at

Borehole 10X, Rick, Marty, and the team are about to begin another major

operation at Smith's Cove.

They are hoping to discover one or more of the box drains, which are believed to

fill the booby-trapped flood tunnels in the money pit with ocean water.

If successful, they might be able to turn off the water.

before they begin digging their third major exploration shaft in the area.

Okay, guys, here's the guy who's going to be in charge of the layout of the

bladder. Jeremy, morning.

He's our boss this morning. All right, what's going to happen here is we're

going to go out and survey the water, just make sure that there's no sharp

objects or stuff, anything that's going to... I thought you were going to say

sharks. I did too.

But then we're going to roll out our first dam and we'll fill it up. So we're

going to get fairly wet.

So not only is this a practical application of your product, but history

in the making.

Sounds great.

Okay, let's do this.

It was at Smith's Cove in 1850 that treasure hunters from the Truro Company

reportedly uncovered five intricately constructed stone box drains, which

seemed to converge into a single tunnel.

The drains were covered by layers of coconut fiber and eelgrass, which acted

as a filter to keep out sand and debris.

It was this system that was believed to be feeding ocean water into the booby

-trapped flood tunnels that had thwarted efforts to dig in the Oak Island money

pit. The temporary cofferdam will be composed of four 100-foot inflatable

bladder sections.

which will be connected to form an arc around Smith's Cove.

Once the cofferdam is installed, Rick, Marty, Craig, and the team will be able

to pump water out of the enclosed area in order to do a safe and thorough

search for any portions of the original box drains that may still be intact.

So the middle of that would correspond pretty much to where we want the main

excavation. Around this here.

Okay.

Dan Henske located the area of interest.

And Dan believes, and I believe in Dan, that there is a small undisturbed

section of the box drains or the booby trap system or the drain system, however

you want to define it.

I think it still exists.

So we'll start with the 50-footer right here, work our way down to the bank.

We'll get Marty and the excavator situated just over here so that he can

swing them out as we need them. So I'll pick up this first one and go plunk it

in the water.

Yes. Okay.

I think Smith's code work is every bit as exciting as the Money Pit work.

And the Smith's code work deals with the original story.

Where do you want it?

Right there. We'll float it around.

You just got to turn it around.

Whoa. That could have hurt.

Are there really box drains in Smith Cove? No, there's coconut fiber.

Dated very early.

But there are no photographs of the box drains.

So if we find a box drain, it's surely historically significant.

And for that to happen for us at this time frame, it's very important.

Watch yourselves.

I'm halfway done. Or almost.

Yeah, that's good for now, guys.

If you get one person on the other side of this tube here, you're just going to

fold it back.

Oh, look, it's unrolling itself.

I'm very anxious and very hopeful about the work we're about to conduct in

Smith's Cove.

Answers, I think, are waiting for us behind that cofferdam.

If that drain system is still there, it proves or goes a long way to prove that

Oak Island is real to the most hardened skeptic.

The pumps are working and water's coming in.

We've already got a little bit of growth in the dam down here. This one won't

take that long to fill because it's all on the slope, right?

Using a pump, each section of the bladder will be inflated with 120,000

gallons of seawater, ultimately forming an eight foot high barrier.

It's probably almost full by now. Yeah.

And I guess we'll know once and for all if the flood tunnels or box drains are

really here. Yeah, that could be before the end of this week. Yeah, it could be.

We're due for a success.

Oh, no, it burst.

We got a big leak. Whoa, you're losing water.

It's pouring out of it.

Well, we got a rupture.

That is not good.

Why would that happen?

At Smith's Cove, the water-filled cofferdam that Rick, Marty, and the team

are installing has inexplicably split wide open.

What happened, you know?

She ruptured.

It's a gaping hole like that.

The sudden failure of the cofferdam, which is made of highly durable layered

polypropylene plastic, deals a devastating blow to contractor Jeremy

Frazil. In fact, after witnessing more than 100 successful prior installations,

he has never seen anything like it before.

You think it was damaged? It's stretched.

Oh, yeah, you can feel it. It's stretched.

Yeah, you can feel it.

It's unusual.

There must have been, I don't know what it was hard to say.

She blew out with considerable force.

Yes, she did. I've never, ever seen that before.

There have been multiple, multiple equipment failures on this island.

Things that just should not go wrong, go wrong.

Over the past two centuries, treasure hunters on Oak Island have been plagued

by countless equipment failures and hundreds of bizarre, sometimes fatal,

freak accidents.

Such was the case on March 26, 1897, when a pulley system at the money pit

suddenly broke loose, causing a worker named Maynard Kaiser to fall more than

100 feet to his death.

Shortly afterwards, rumors of a deadly curse began to circulate, including one

which states that seven men must die in active pursuit of the treasure before

the Oak Island mystery can be solved.

It's going to be weeks before I get a replacement.

We'll get her done.

You may be not used to this, but we're used to this.

Yeah, I'm definitely not used to it, so we'll keep moving forward.

Okay.

Although this latest setback will cost Rick, Marty, and the team both in time

and money, they are committed to making this year the most successful one yet,

as far as their efforts to solve the mystery are concerned.

There's lots of what-ifs and who-knows going on at this point, but we are a

community of people committed to one single endeavor.

And that is to solve the Oak Island mystery. We will lock arms and get that

done.

So I think everyone knows Doug and Paul, of course.

The next day, as the team awaits news concerning their prospects of replacing

the ruptured cofferdam.

Rick Lagina has invited researchers Doug Crowell and Paul Troutman to the war

room.

Paul is the son of James Troutman, who worked on the island for Robert Dunfield

in 1965.

That's strange. Look at these rocks right here. Look at the heat coming off

these rocks. That is incredible.

Like his father, he is also committed to helping solve the Oak Island mystery.

Paul, you've done some interesting work, so I'll let you dive right in and let's

see what you've got. Well, thank you, Rick. I found some very interesting

material. Through some certain circumstances, I actually found a letter

that actually was for FDR from Duncan Harris, was his name.

He's a personal friend of the Roosevelt's. Yep.

And he apparently was the point man for FDR on Oak Island and a secretary for

him.

Of the hundreds of people over the past two centuries who have searched for

treasure on Oak Island, one of the most intriguing is none other than U.S.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

As a young man, FDR was a member of the Old Gold Salvage and Wrecking Company

that launched a major search operation on the island in 1909 under the

leadership of Captain Henry L.

Bowden. Although Roosevelt later went on to become president of the United

States, he never lost his interest in the search for treasure on Oak Island.

I went through the archives and actually pulled his folder from the president's

personal file.

And guess what I found in that folder?

Lots of Oak Island information and letters.

There's a letter from Gilbert Hedden in there.

That's a picture of Bowdoin in a salvage operation.

Now, this one will be of personal interest to you, Charles. This actually

confirms that FDR was a Masonic member, actually.

Yes, so was Erwin Hamilton, so was Gilbert Haddon.

The list goes on and on.

This is a folder called Knights Templar, and the Masonic people were actually

writing to him as His Excellency.

There are many who believe that the mysterious order of warrior monks known

as the Knights Templar took possession of priceless religious objects during

the crusades and hid them away perhaps on oak island some time around the

fourteenth century it is also believed that in recent years the society known

as freemasons continued to maintain many of the templar traditions and sacred

responsibilities could paul troutman be on the verge of a major discovery

linking the oak island treasure to the 32nd president of the United States.

So this whole archive is filled with letters, photographs.

You ran across a treasure trove of documents. I did. There is a lot of

material to look through, which I'd love to show you. Would you be interested in

joining me and going to the archives?

Of course we would. Okay, okay.

I figured you might be.

FDR's involvement is well documented on Oak Island, his belief in it, even in

his latter years.

There's probably documents in the library.

Is it a place that I would like to go?

I'm sure we all would like to go. This is an information hunt every bit as much

as a treasure hunt. You've always said that, Rick. I've always said that. Let's

go and let's get this done.

You'll not get a no from any of us.

Let's go. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Today really is, like I've always said, an information hunt.

While awaiting the arrival of the new cofferdam system at Smith's Cove, Rick

Lagina and his nephew Alex have traveled nearly 700 miles on their way to join

researcher Paul Troutman at the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New

York.

I don't think people, possibly no one has ever gone there before us looking

for Oak Island research in the museum.

It would be interesting to see, you know, who FDR was communicating with

about Oak Island and maybe other subjects as well.

That would be cool.

Any more evidence is great that you know you can count on.

As you know, there's thousands of theories.

No shortage of theories. No shortage of theories.

So you can start plugging it into stuff, the info that you trust.

and eliminating some of those theories, and I guess you can make progress that

way. The hope is, you know, we'll find some sort of documents and or pictures

that will help us in the search.

As the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was

elected to an unprecedented four terms in office, serving from 1933 until his

death in 1945.

An avid collector and historian in his own right, Roosevelt strongly believed

that the records he had amassed over his life, both as a private citizen and as a

public official, belonged to the American people.

It was in this spirit that he donated nearly 16 acres of his family's property

on the Hudson River so that the first presidential library could be built

there.

The FDR Library houses approximately 17 million documents pertaining to

everything from Roosevelt's personal correspondence with the public to

private letters and records from his work as a New York attorney.

Paul Trautman has done very credible preliminary research and has indicated

that there may be some answers at the FDR Museum and thus the need to go there

and help with that undertaking.

I love the information, Hunt. It's every bit as important as digging and

drilling, in my opinion.

Hello. Welcome to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

Appreciate that. Hi, Alex. Hi, Alex.

My name's Cliff Lauby. I'm the public affairs officer here at the FDR

Presidential Library.

Perhaps you can clue us in. We're looking for an associate of ours, a

researcher by the name of Paul Troutman. Oh, yeah, right. He's in our research

room. I can take you there now.

Perfect.

It's a beautiful, beautiful building.

I was thoroughly impressed by the FDR complex, if you will. It housed not only

the FDR museum, not only the research facility, but the original home, the

original residence.

And what it spoke to me was, what other knowledge, what other information will

be garnered from this trip? Will we glean some nugget of information about

his involvement with Oak Island?

Thank you, Cliff.

Paul. Oh, hey Rick. Good to see you. Thanks for coming.

Researcher Paul Troutman has spent the last several days scouring the library

for any new information that might explain what drove FDR, an acknowledged

member of the Freemasons, to devote so much of his life to the search for

treasure on Oak Island.

persons and personalities that were involved in Oak Island, surely FDR is

probably the premier persona, if you will, that became engaged in that

process. Oh, he's a central figure, no doubt.

For me, it's the why of FDR's involvement, what made him commit to

this endeavor, what kept him fascinated by the Oak Island story.

We need to get to the bottom of it.

So the reason why I pulled these boxes specifically is because these are his

personal files.

If there's any reference or lead, I would think they would be in his

personal letter collection.

There's a lot of information here. There's 17 million pages, and out of all

those 17 million, they've only scanned 10%. Really?

There's quite a few things to find.

So, Alex, what do you think?

Obviously, there's a lot of stuff to go through here yet.

I mean, it looks like we've got our work cut out for us.

Let's see. Get to it.

On those computers over there, you can access the database.

Oh, so that may be worth a look, too. Yeah. Do you want to take over here?

Yeah. While visiting the Presidential Library of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in

Hyde Park, New York, Rick Lagina, his nephew Alex, and researcher Paul

Troutman are searching for information that could explain... just why America's

32nd president remained interested in the search for treasure on Oak Island

throughout his adult life. There were 17 million sheets of documents

there, most of which have not yet been digitized. So it's a difficult

research agenda.

I guess just to give you a sense of what this collection is, it's called the

President's Secretary's File. These are the documents that were so secret,

personal, or confidential that they were kept in FDR's Secretary's office rather

than sent down to the White House filing room.

Interesting, very interesting.

I was hoping to find something from around the time when we know he made a

trip to Oak Island.

You know, between looking through the archives here, trying to track down the

90-foot stone, and even just sifting through the spoils piles.

Okay, why don't we set you up at one of the tables over here?

We're not going to find what we're looking for quickly.

It's going to take a lot of work. Take a look. Great, thanks.

Going through the documents, it's a very tedious process, and my hat's off to

every researcher anywhere researching anything.

You have to comb through volumes of information to get one little treasure.

All right, let me see what I've got here.

I was able to find this reference in the database.

It was called Vertical Folder Oak Island, Nova Scotia.

But I was able to find some photographs and some other documentation, which

we'll see here.

Okay.

This letter right here, it actually does mention Oak Island in it. There's a man

named Richard Perkins from Inglewood, California, who writes to the president

to confirm

that there was an actual expedition.

And right here, the secretary, M.A. LeHand, is confirming that this was 1909

and that there might have been more than one expedition, at least two.

It is true that the president visited in search for this often sought treasure

about 1909.

There have been two other expeditions also, but the president understands the

treasure has never been found.

Wow. That's my first understanding of that. I've never heard that.

That is.

kind of amazing. The only one that I had heard about was 1909.

And so these, you know, this is kind of the first anybody's really seeing these.

Although Franklin Delano Roosevelt did help finance and also took part in the

search for treasure on Oak Island in 1909, his family's involvement with the

mystery goes back much further.

In 1849, Warren Delano, FDR's grandfather, had been an adventurous

entrepreneur whose investments in goods such as tea and the opium trade with

china made his family among the wealthiest in the world that year his

interest turned to treasure hunting and delano became one of several investors

in the truro company the same organization that not only discovered

the box drains at smith's cove in eighteen fifty but also small bits of

gold chain while drilling in the money pit.

I've always been curious of the why, the why of the whole Oak Island story.

But in particular, why did FDR choose to engage in it? Why was he so enthralled

of the Oak Island story?

I might have the answer to that in the next folder. Right here? Yeah. Great.

Scoot in here, Alex.

This right here.

This is a biographer named Joseph P. Lash. He wrote a book, two books, on FDR

and Eleanor Roosevelt.

One of the interviews is with Duncan Harris, the one that we found the Oak

Island material on. He went to Harvard as well as FDR.

It says Franklin and I went after the Oak Island treasure together.

He went to Oak Island together with FDR.

there is a distinct possibility that he's actually in the famous photograph.

Now, of course, here is FDR.

I'm not sure who Duncan Harris is, but apparently he's in this photograph,

either on top or on bottom, but I think he'd be in the front here, considering

how close of a friend he was.

And in this statement, he actually says, it all started off for us on the

treasure hunting business.

Franklin, which is F,

always interested in that he thought they were the lost jewels of louis xvi

and marie antoinette so these are the lost crown jewels from france

so he thought it was louis xvi that's remarkable well there's my why of it

marie antoinette the crown jewels of france

of all the various theories perhaps none is as audacious or compelling

as the one suggesting that precious jewels could be buried on oak island or

the claim that there isn't only one treasure hidden there but several and

that one of the guardians of that information might well have been one of

america's most popular and powerful presidents

Next time on The Curse of Oak Island.

They're saying that Marie Antoinette's jewels were buried in Canada.

It was more than just an interesting treasure.

FDR found answers.

I think we're into something, Rick. If there's box grain, it leads to the

flood. It's proof that the original story is true.

Whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Rick, look at this. That doesn't look natural to me. This is the shaft they

found the gold. I think we should dig right here. X marks the spot.