Author and Templar researcher Kathleen McGowan Coppens visits Oak Island at the invitation of Rick and Marty Lagina to examine the lead cross in person. After handling the artifact and viewing side-by-side photographs of the Domme prison carvings, Coppens shares intelligence from Tobi Dobler, Grand Master of the modern Knights Templar in France. Dobler believes the cross may have been part of a Templar necklace designed to smuggle gold out of France: the knights would cast rhomboid-shaped gold pieces called pastels, coat them in lead, and wear them on cords around their necks to avoid detection. The square hole in the cross matches the shape used to hang such pieces. Coppens also proposes that the name Canada may derive not from the Iroquois word kanata but from Cana-da, a place name found near Domme, suggesting Templar-era naming predating Jacques Cartier by 300 years. Rick, Marty, Gary Drayton, Dave Blankenship, and Alex Lagina consider the theory intriguing, and the team takes Coppens to Smith's Cove to see the discovery site before she departs.
On Lot 8, near the Nolan property, Rick, Marty, and Gary Drayton metal-detect an area Fred Nolan had identified on his maps as one of 11 sites where he believed subsurface treasure had been recovered. Gary uncovers an ornate lock plate with a clearly defined keyhole and a raised floral design resembling a rose. The handmade, asymmetrical piece is unlike anything a farmer or tradesman would possess, and its decorative style suggests it came from a chest. The find echoes the folding skeleton key Tom Nolan recently gave the team from Fred's collection, and the three missing chests of privateer Captain James Anderson.
At the DMT shaft, Jack Begley and Charles Barkhouse oversee the pumping while the Irving crew spends two days disassembling caissons and clearing an estimated 7,300 gallons of water from the 77-foot hole. Oscillator operator Danny Smith confirms the obstruction sits right at water level. Remote camera specialists Tony and Nick Peverill lower a Spectrum 120 high-definition camera capable of 360-degree views to 1,000 feet. The footage shows clay, rock, and the toothless rim of the caisson, but thick mud obscures the obstruction. Within seconds of the camera reaching bottom, water pours in and fills the shaft to static water level, mimicking the behavior of the original Money Pit's flood tunnels at the historically significant 90-foot mark.
With the camera effort inconclusive, the Irving team probes the shaft bottom with a 25-foot steel H-beam. Mike Jardine concludes the obstruction is most likely cast iron or steel, a material with no record of use by previous searchers at that location. Historian Doug Crowell notes the team drilled through undisturbed ground to reach something man-made, and Rick connects the 90-foot depth to the level where the Onslow Company found the inscribed stone slab above the original treasure vault in 1804.
In an emergency War Room session with Marty and Craig Tester by video, Rick reports the shutdown is costing more than $20,000 per day. The team rules out a dry descent as too dangerous and instead arranges for veteran diver Mike Huntley to go down the flooded shaft to identify the obstruction by touch. Rick frames the obstruction as potentially the most significant structural element encountered in the Money Pit area: if it proves to be a deliberately placed metal plate at the 90-foot level, it could mark the cap of the original treasure chamber.
