Following Hurricane Dorian, which battered Oak Island with nearly 100-mile-per-hour winds and reflooded the swamp with ocean water, Rick Lagina and Scott Barlow estimate two to three days of pumping before excavation can resume. In the War Room, Craig Tester presents dendrochronology results to Rick, Marty Lagina, and the team for a wood sample from the bump-out structure at Smith's Cove: dendrochronologist Dr. Colin Laroque has identified the red spruce timber and dated it to 1741, more than two decades earlier than the nearby slipway and U-shaped structure, both dated to 1769. The date aligns with the first siege of Fortress Louisbourg in 1745 and supports naval historian Chipp Reid's theory that the French may have moved a vast fortune from the fortress to Oak Island in the early 1740s. Rick and historian Doug Crowell then travel 300 miles northeast to Louisbourg, where Parks Canada historian Sarah MacInnes guides them through the original 18th-century French structures. They visit the chapel where French military commander Jean-Baptiste de La Rochefoucauld, the duc d'Anville, is buried, a member of a family with direct ties to the Knights Templar and featured on a mysterious 14th-century map of Oak Island. In the casemates, Rick and Doug find an original stone drain system strikingly similar to the structures found at Smith's Cove. MacInnes shows them plans for the countermine tunnel, a 180-foot cross-shaped passage built through marshy ground in original 18th-century condition, demonstrating that the French possessed the engineering capability to construct tunnels in wet environments like those found on Oak Island.
On Lot 27, Jack Begley, Peter Fornetti, and metal detection expert Gary Drayton search an area stirred up by the hurricane. Gary recovers a piece of cut lead with a sprue consistent with musket ball manufacture, dating to the 1700s or early 1800s. On the beach, the team uncovers an encrusted iron object that, once cleaned, reveals an old ax-head that Gary identifies as a possible ship's rigging ax dating to the 1700s or earlier, a tool commonly kept aboard large sailing vessels for maintenance and gathering construction materials ashore.
At the swamp, now sufficiently drained, Alex Lagina and Billy Gerhardt begin re-exposing the stone-paved area buried under hurricane debris. Geologist Terry Matheson arrives and notes the boulders near the surface are rock types he would not expect to encounter until approximately 120 feet down in the Money Pit area, suggesting they were transported and placed. Rick Lagina, archaeologist Laird Niven, and Gary Drayton examine the feature as more is exposed. Laird states he cannot see any natural way for the rocks to have arrived at this location.
Geoscientist Dr. Ian Spooner conducts a detailed examination of the drained paved area across multiple visits. He observes that the stones are layered with small rocks on the bottom and larger rocks on top, consistent with road-building technique rather than glacial deposit. The feature is level, uniform, and as wide as a two-lane road. Spooner concludes it is a manipulated site, stating he has worked in similar environments but never encountered anything like it and can find no natural process that would produce this stratigraphy. He suggests the paved area may have served as a work surface or dock, consistent with the theory that boats or ships were brought into the swamp and offloaded here. His assessment, combined with Laird's and Terry's observations, establishes the paved area as a man-made feature of potentially significant age.
