MISSING TREASURE Linked to Lot 24 | Tales From Oak Island
MISSING TREASURE Linked to Lot 24 | Tales From Oak Island
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NARRATOR:
On Oak Island, deep within these woods, sits a secluded four-acre property known as Lot 25. On it lie the remnants of a crumbling foundation. Upon this foundation, there once stood a home… a home built from the ground up by a man who may have possessed the key to what is now the world’s longest-running treasure mystery. His name was Samuel Ball.
– GARY: What is this area we are in now, Charles?
– CHARLES: This would be Lot 24. Is that a coin?
GARY: Yeah, it’s a coin. That’s a King George.
NARRATOR:
In 2016, metal detection expert Gary Drayton and Oak Island historian Charles Barkhouse were exploring Lot 24, a property once owned by Samuel Ball… hoping to find clues that might help solve the Oak Island treasure mystery.
GARY: Ooh-hoo!
NARRATOR:
As they searched the property, numerous discoveries were made suggesting that the British military created encampments on the island during the 18th century, although several years before Samuel Ball arrived.
– GARY: You know what that is?
– CHARLES: Is that lead? This is the type of thing that would be carried by a British soldier. This is a lead ingot for making musket balls.
– CHARLES: Wow.
– GARY: Now we’ve got to start putting things together. We’ve got a button, we’ve got coins, and this. Maybe this is some kind of camp. You know, the encampment part that you’re talking about kind of fits into Fred Nolan’s theory. He believed that this was a British military operation in 1762, after the sacking of Havana.
NARRATOR:
Is it possible that Samuel Ball, through all of his many associations with the British military, knew that a valuable treasure deposit existed somewhere on the island? And that there might be more than one?
Fred Nolan believed it was part of an enormous haul of gold and silver taken by the British from Spain during the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763.
NARRATOR:
In 1761, Spain’s King Charles III agreed to support France during the conflict. This led Britain to quickly declare war on Spain, resulting in one of the most infamous battles of the Seven Years’ War… the British capture of the Spanish colony of Havana in the summer of 1762.
RANDALL: There really was an enormous treasure taken. Huge amounts of gold and silver were stored in Havana. The calculations of what was there, based on the records, have ranged anything from two or three billion to ten billion. But all the gold and silver that was transported back to Britain is about $800 million in today’s money. So there’s a huge discrepancy. At least a couple of billion dollars’ worth of gold and silver are unaccounted for.
REBECCA: After the British successfully sacked Havana, they sailed up the coast of North America heading towards Halifax. And it’s there where they possibly off-loaded some of their goods—perhaps to Oak Island—before they continued to head back to Britain to bring the goods back to the British treasury.
RANDALL: There’s no record of where all that gold and silver went. But they had to put it somewhere, and… so why not Oak Island?
NARRATOR:
Many treasure hunters, including the most current team searching the island, led by brothers Rick and Marty Lagina…
GARY: Heads up!
NARRATOR: …have looked for evidence to corroborate Fred Nolan’s theory that multiple treasure caches were hidden all across the island.
NARRATOR: And in 2015, Terry Deveau, the vice president of the New England Antiquities Association, was invited to examine one of the properties once owned by Samuel Ball: Lot 6.
TERRY D.: We were running lines back and forth with the metal detector and clearing a lot of brush away.
TERRY D.: I saw this point sticking out…
TERRY D.: Okay.
TERRY D.: This, uh, type of graywacke, which is common in this part of Nova Scotia, does tend to naturally fracture. This one is pretty interesting ’cause there seems to be kind of, uh, an added piece to it. This is almost like a cast of some kind that’s been added on to make a point.
TERRY D.: What about this stone over here?
– CHARLES: This one?
– TERRY D.: Yeah.
TERRY D.: It also has a flat surface. If it was used either as a cover over here or as the back wall and then…
– GARY: Oh.
TERRY D.: …somebody later took it apart to see what was in there, someone may have come here and used this to bury treasure or something valuable.
NARRATOR:
Is it possible that buried treasure was recovered long ago on Lot 6? If so, could that be an additional clue explaining the source of Samuel Ball’s mysterious wealth? And could it also be related to an 18th-century operation by the British military to hide valuables all across Oak Island?
TODD: During the American Revolution, Samuel Ball may have run into some British soldiers who had served at the taking of Havana, who told him stories of treasure on Oak Island, and made his way there.
DOUG: If Fred Nolan is right in his belief that there were multiple depositions of treasure, then Samuel Ball very certainly could have stumbled upon one of those.
NARRATOR:
As members of the team continued to dig underneath the Samuel Ball homestead, they made a surprising discovery.
– CHARLES: What’s he got?
– LAIRD: Look, look.
– CHARLES: There’s an opening here, Gary.
– GARY: What is that?
– LAIRD: Like a little tunnel?
– CHARLES: Definitely a void…
– GARY: A void?
– LAIRD: It lines up exactly with the anomaly, so it is the anomaly.
RICK: I mean, if this is a tunnel, it’s an aha moment.
LAIRD: During our excavations at the Ball site, we found a stone box drain that ran from the southeast corner of the cellar. Uh, it was about four feet deep and ran into a low area. And the biggest mystery with it is why it was there and what it was leading to.
RICK: I mean, the foundation becomes even more interesting because of the find of the so-called drain at the base of the foundation. What else is being hidden?
MARTY: Yeah, just take it real slow.
RICK: Boy, that is really well-built, isn’t it?
– LAIRD: Yeah. That’s a nice flat ceiling we’re looking at there.
– DEREK: Beautiful.
NARRATOR:
After inserting a small camera, Rick, Marty, and the team could see that the mysterious drain, or tunnel, seemed to be empty, leaving them to wonder why it was constructed and just what it once may have contained. Subsequent investigations of the homestead would reveal that Samuel Ball had also constructed a number of outbuildings all around his property.
– ALEX: Hey, look at this.
– CHARLES: It’s got…
– ALEX: A little green.
– LAIRD: Yup.
– ALEX: Yeah, this looks old. It’s got kind of irregular edges.
NARRATOR:
In 2020, five years after the team began unearthing artifacts on Samuel Ball’s property, an investigation of spoils removed from his homestead unearthed a clue to help find a possible answer.
ALEX: There’s three anchors. There’s one on the right, there’s a large one in the middle, and then there’s one on the left.
– GARY: Without doubt, that is a British Navy jacket button.
ALEX: What time period is this, though?
– LAIRD: 1804 to 1825. Solidly within the Ball period.
NARRATOR:
Using a computer tomography scanner, Laird was able to determine that the button was a gold-gilded Master and Commander officer’s button from the British Royal Navy.
LAIRD: I think the most surprising artifact was the Royal Navy Master and Commander’s button. And that position would’ve been the person who loads the Royal Navy ships. It’s not something someone would just have. So, to me, it tied the Royal Navy and Samuel Ball together, after finding the Money Pit, which I thought was pretty significant.
MARTY: Okay, the obvious answer or probability is he was trading with the British Navy. He had kept his connections with the British and he was involved with them somehow. There’s an easy solution, but how about this? How about he was trading with the British Navy ’cause he had something to trade with the British Navy?
