In the Money Pit area, the team drills borehole DN-13 in the Peacock, a few feet northwest of borehole BN-13.5, where a possible man-made cavity was discovered at 150 feet one week earlier. Terry Matheson, Charles Barkhouse, and Steve Guptill watch as driller Adam reports the drill rods suddenly dropping 16 feet between 128 and 144, indicating a zone of extremely soft material. Despite this promising sign, the team does not re-encounter the void at 148 feet, and the borehole pushes through to the solution channel with bedrock at 204 feet and the bottom at 208. Charles runs a pinpointer over the cores and finds no metal. The team collects soil samples from the loose material for lab analysis, reasoning that precious metals detected in water tests from nearby boreholes could still be present in the sediment. Steve emphasizes that proving metals exist in the soils through testing by Dr. Ian Spooner and Emma Culligan could confirm this as a treasure location.
In the Oak Island lab, Rick Lagina and members of the team join Laird Niven, Emma Culligan, and Doug Crowell to examine two artifacts recently recovered from Lot 8. Emma reports that a hand-forged iron object, initially identified as a possible knife handle, has a clean composition placing it post-medieval and pre-mid-1800s, consistent with the 1700s. The more significant find is a lead bag seal that Emma and Laird identify as bearing the city seal of Leeds, England, a center of wool manufacturing dating back to the 1300s. The seal would have fastened a bale of finished fabric roughly the size of a hay bale, far more cloth than any single household on the island would have required. It is the third bag seal recovered on Oak Island, following one found on Lot 5 and another on Lot 32 near the stone road in the swamp. Laird notes that the Lot 32 seal was scientifically matched to the 14th-century lead cross believed to be connected to the Knights Templar.
After completing work in the southwest corner of the swamp, where the team has uncovered a stone road feature lined by eight-sided stakes and recovered ox shoes suggesting heavy cargo was transported through the area, Rick meets with Tom Nolan to plan their next dig in the northern region of the bog. Steve Guptill has projected the road heading north, and stakes found at consistent elevations of a foot and a half above sea level suggest they were placed in the same time period. In the northern swamp, Gary Drayton, Peter Fornetti, Tom, Rick, and operator Al resume digging and quickly uncover another eight-sided stake driven deep into the peat. Gary recovers a hand-forged iron gate sneck, a type of thumb latch used on doors and gates since at least the 13th century, from the very bottom of the dig. Tom finds a piece of green and blue glazed pottery matching ceramics found in 2022 at the Lot 26 rock wall, where charcoal was carbon-dated to over 500 years old and Portuguese researcher Francisco Nogueira observed possible Portuguese influences in the construction.
On Lot 8, after finding the bag seal nearby, Laird Niven spots a massive boulder surrounded by a ring of smaller stones that appear deliberately placed at even intervals. He suspects the area was excavated and then filled back in, noting soil stains on the buried rocks indicating they have been in position for a very long time, possibly before the Money Pit was discovered. The archaeological team, including Fiona Steele, Isabelle, and Ethan, begins careful excavation around the boulder, uncovering cut wood deep beneath the root layer that Fiona believes predates modern activity by many years. Isabelle then discovers a substantial void beneath the boulder extending at least three feet down, a formation that should not exist naturally given the weight of the stone above it. Rick arrives and observes that the smaller stones ringing the boulder are equally spaced with gaps between them, a pattern he insists Mother Nature would not produce. The feature appears to be entirely unknown to previous searchers, making it, in Rick's words, one of the most singularly unique finds on the island.
In the War Room, Rick, Marty Lagina, Craig Tester, Alex Lagina, Peter Fornetti, and the team meet with video enhancement expert Bob Brown of Prohawk Technology Group, who has analyzed underwater camera footage from the void in borehole BN-13.5. Brown presents enhanced images showing a cluster of stake-like pointed objects whose tapering and alignment he considers deliberate, suggesting planked stakes of human origin. He also identifies square geometry patterns throughout the footage and a bright, highly reflective rectangle with sharp edges that appears metallic or polished. Asked to estimate the probability that at least one of the objects is man-made, Brown puts it at over 90 percent. Terry Matheson offers his working premise that the Peacock represents the wash-out around a buried structure, and that the borehole may be providing a window into that structure from above. Marty declares the data dramatic, noting they are seeing strong indications of man-made objects in an area where no previous searchers have ever worked, and urges the team to explore the Peacock further.
