At the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Rick and Alex Lagina continue reviewing the archives with Paul Troutman and Doug Crowell. A document from Duncan Harris, Roosevelt's Harvard classmate and personal Oak Island liaison, reveals the specific theory that drove FDR's interest: a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette was reportedly ordered to smuggle the queen's gold and jewels out of France as the Revolution turned bloody in 1792. According to the account, the woman fled to Canada and claimed the jewels were buried in Mahone Bay. Roosevelt, who heard the story through his grandfather Warren Delano Jr.'s connections to the Truro Company, apparently believed this narrative and invested in the 1909 Bowdoin expedition based on it. The team notes that if the lady-in-waiting can be identified by name, it would represent the first direct link between a real historical figure and the Oak Island deposit.
Back on the island, Rick visits researcher Zena Halpern at her New York home, where she presents new material for her forthcoming book on pre-Columbian Templar contact with North America. Halpern traces a 12th-century Templar voyage by a knight named Ralph de Sudeley, from Gloucestershire, England, who she believes was sent on a mission to recover ancient scrolls hidden in North America and stopped at Oak Island. Her Nova Scotia map marks an area from west to east where gold was present, corresponding to the Gold River that flows from New Ross to Mahone Bay, where gold deposits sparked a major rush in the mid-1800s. Halpern then draws a connection between Templar coins bearing four distinctive dots around a cross and the markings on the H/O stone, a fragment salvaged by Gilbert Hedden in 1936 from a massive carved boulder that earlier searchers had dynamited on the island's northern shore in 1921. The four dots on the H/O stone match the embellishment style found exclusively on Templar crosses, according to Halpern's research.
A replacement cofferdam system arrives at Smith's Cove and is successfully installed without incident. With archaeologist Laird Niven on site to coordinate the excavation, Rick, Marty, Charles Barkhouse, and the team begin carefully digging behind the barrier in roughly 9,000 square feet of exposed cove. Within the first layers they find clay that Niven identifies as placed by human hands rather than natural formation, followed by coconut fibre mixed with eelgrass, the same filtering material described by the Truro Company in 1850 when they first uncovered the box drains. Coconut fibre previously found at Smith's Cove was carbon-dated to between 600 and 800 years old, and the nearest living coconut trees are nearly 2,000 miles away. Beneath the organic layers, the team discovers a series of blackened wood timbers running in the same direction, embedded in the clay at a depth that exceeds their initial expectations. Niven confirms the find is significant and suggests a trench may extend deeper.
In the War Room, the team debates where to sink a third and potentially final exploratory shaft in the Money Pit before the season's budget runs out. Dan Blankenship presents his archival maps, and each team member identifies a different preferred location. Craig Tester is given the final decision and selects a spot based on historical records indicating that Chappell's shaft was south of the original Money Pit, placing the new hole at least four feet from the old Hedden shaft, which Gilbert Hedden dug to nearly 125 feet in 1937 before narrowly missing the vault. Rick and Marty's GPS coordinates from last season's discovery of the Hedden shaft remains confirm the offset. The Irving Equipment crew prepares to begin slamming the next caisson.
