Curse of Oak Island - They Hit an Obstacle

I don’t know how many of you caught it, but on the Curse of Oak Island, there was a big reveal. Remember, they brought in all this expensive, modern equipment so that they could dig down in what they thought was the money pit. They were lining the excavation with huge hollow, steel tubes, in an effort to defeat the alleged booby traps that had confounded treasure hunters for two centuries plus.

That worked just fine and they drilled down to bedrock and said they couldn’t drill any deeper. They found no treasure. They found no real sign of treasure. Rather than concluding that there was no treasure, they decided, since there was money left over, and they needed to fill out the season on cable’s number one show (at least they tell us that it’s the number one show), they had missed the real money pit. They needed to move some twenty or so feet away and do it again.

Remember that when the original searchers, back at the turn of the 19^thcentury had dug down some 90 feet, the shaft filled with water. No amount of pumping could reduce the water level and they noticed it rose and fell with the tides. The money pit was connected somehow to the ocean (which, when you think about it, suggested that the pit hadn’t been booby trapped, but they had connected to the ocean at the bedrock level…) but, never mind.

So, now they are digging their new shaft and lining it with more steel to defeat the booby traps, but this time, as they dug lower they hit a metal shelf of some sort. They were talking about being unable to easily penetrate it, and had stopped drilling to figure out what to do.

But, before they designed their attack plan, the shaft filled with water. The steel of the tubes had not failed, but the water flooded in. Modern technology was able to pump the water out so that they might examine what they had hit. Again, before they could get a look, the water came back and they decided that the safest way to examine the point of the stoppage was to send down a diver. I’m thinking safest? Really?

That overlooked the real clue. There is no way that a booby trap connected to the ocean would have filled that shaft. They had blocked all the possible outlets with their steel tubes. There was no sign of a failure of that metal. It meant that the water was coming up from below. It meant that they had hit the water table of the island at that point. No booby trap to keep anyone from getting at that nonexistent treasure. No clever design to protect the treasure… no, just the natural geology of the island getting in their way.

That also suggested what had defeated all those other diggers from the past. They had reached a point where the natural water table was tapped and the rising and falling that marked the tides showed that the water was coming up from the bottom rather than from those mythical booby traps on the sides.

So, they had their answer, but it didn’t dawn on them what they had. No, instead they’re going to send down a diver to check out the obstruction and see if there is a way to penetrate it. Sure, I’ll bet modern technology can defeat that obstacle as well, but once they are beyond that, they’ll have another shaft that reaches the bedrock without giving up any treasure.

But then they tease us by saying they have found a gem quality ruby on the island. I might have missed exactly where they found it, but it seemed to be on the surface. I’m getting tired of these little hints of something great that just never pan out. They have pushed this just about as far as they can… I think the viewers are beginning to give up on anyone finding a real treasure there.