Marty and the team watch as excavation begins on B4-C, the fifth ten-foot shaft, positioned five feet north of Borehole C1 where traces of gold and silver and evidence of possible tunnels dating to 1488 were found at ninety feet. Andrew reports the shaft is down fourteen feet. On Lot 8, Gary Drayton and Marty recover a hinge and a musket lock plate that Gary identifies as a flintlock. Carmen Legge examines the hinge at the research center and identifies it as a handmade spade hinge, probably from the early 1400s but fitting a range of 1400 to 1670. Carmen notes that many Spanish hinges feature spades and confirms the style could also be Portuguese. He adds that the hinge would have secured a very strong box used for china, dishes, tools, or valuables. At the Interpretive Center, Laird Niven places the lock plate in the SkyScan 1273 CT scanner and uses the resulting scans to dissect the artifact beneath its layer of corrosion. Laird determines the lock plate is not British but could be French or Portuguese.
Rick, Doug Crowell, Alex Lagina, and Peter Fornetti travel to Portugal to meet historical researcher Corjan Mol and Templar historian Joao Fiandeiro. Their first stop is the Church of Fontarcada in Povoa De Lanhoso, donated to the Templars by Lady Teresa in 1126. During the Crusades, members of the Knights Templar arrived in Portugal at the invitation of King Afonso I, who gave them land and wealth in exchange for help battling the Moors. Corjan considers Fontarcada the oldest Templar commandery in Portugal, and Joao describes the church as God's fortress. The group searches the walls for symbols and mason marks. Alex discovers a carving that matches a symbol found on the 90 Foot Stone, one that could be a maker's mark identifying the person who carved it. Outside, Corjan shows the group a Templar cross on the exterior wall, and Doug notices a circle with a dot at its center, a symbol also found on the 90 Foot Stone and the H+O stone that represents gold. When Doug asks Joao whether the H+O stone could be of Portuguese origin, Joao replies that if the Portuguese were on Oak Island, they could have made it. Corjan adds that the same symbol appears over the entrance to the castle of Tomar.
The group travels to Tomar, a city of seven hills like Rome and Jerusalem. There they visit the statue of Gualdim Pais, who was knighted by King Afonso Henriques and returned from a successful military campaign in the Holy Land in 1157 to become the fourth Grand Master of the order, making Tomar the new Templar headquarters. Some researchers believe the Templars' religious treasures were hidden in the city. In 1307 King Phillip IV and Pope Clement V disbanded the Knights Templar across Europe. Thousands of knights were arrested, tortured, and executed, including Grand Master Jacques de Molay, but several hundred fled to Scotland and Portugal carrying priceless religious artifacts. In Portugal, King Dinis later renamed the order the Knights of Christ in 1319, and over time the Templar cross evolved into an elongated form similar to Nolan's Cross on Oak Island.
In Alqueidao Da Serra, the group meets archaeologist Jorge Figueiredo, who is restoring a 2,000-year-old Roman stone road that closely resembles the road found in the Oak Island swamp. Joao explains that larger stones would have been used as a base when building such a road through swampland. Jorge tells the group that other cultures, including the Portuguese, could have copied the Roman construction technology. He also shows them a stone path nearly identical to the cobblestone path found on Oak Island the previous year. When later shown photographs of the Oak Island road, Jorge agrees that the Portuguese could have built it and confirms the technology originated in Europe. Earlier, antiquities expert Terry Deveau had independently concluded the Oak Island road was Portuguese and similar to roads built in Europe in the 1500s.
