The History Channel has been airing "The Curse of Oak Island" for 12 seasons now. Brothers Rick and Marty Lagina and their now prodigious group of cohorts, affectionately referred to as The Brotherhood of the Dig, continue searching for a fabled treasure buried beneath the surface of the small island just off the coast of Nova Scotia. However, they're only the latest in a long line of treasure hunters that includes Franklin D. Roosevelt and even John Wayne. Part of their brotherhood consists of Gary
Drayton, a self-proclaimed "Metal Detecting Ninja" from England, who has backed the swagger by finding numerous "top pocket finds" and "Bobby Dazzlers" during his career, including a 300-year-old Emerald ring valued at $500,000.
Drayton was brought on during season two as the team's metal detection expert and claims his primary tools are his "twin optical scanners" (his eyes), and metal detectors (which Harbor Freight Sells) just complement them. As the primary expert, he conducts most of the detecting and is typically armed with a Minelab CTX 3030 (an Australian brand he's well associated with), packing an 11'' Double-D Smart Coil. He's also used Minelab's SDC 2300, GPX 500, and Equinox, along with metal detectors from other companies, like OKM's eXp 6000 Professional Plus.
Different ground-penetrating detectors, such as OKM's georadar Gepard GPR 3D, have been used to search larger areas, and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which fires lasers at an object and measures the time it takes for the reflected light to bounce back to the sensor, has been used to create 3D representations of the environment.
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The Brotherhood Of The Dig Keeps On Digging And Detecting
After some 230 years of digging, all the while encountering ancient artificial structures, underground tunnels, and highly sophisticated booby traps, no one has ever found anything of significant value. Led by Drayton's metal detecting, the Brotherhood has uncovered a museum's worth of artifacts, all of which have raised even more questions and percolated more theories as to exactly what happened there centuries ago.
Theories abound as to who, what, when, where, and why (as Rick Lagina likes to say) occurred on Oak Island, involving a wide-ranging cast of culprits. Did the Knights Templar use it to hide priceless artifacts taken from the Temple of Solomon, such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail? Was it a convenient stronghold for looted gold belonging to pirates like Captain Kidd and Blackbeard? Do manuscripts written by Sir Francis Bacon that prove he actually wrote some of Shakespeare's plays lie in the Chapel Vault deep underground?
Perhaps Drayton's most important find was during S5 E10 ("The Signs of a Cross") when he and Rick Lagina discovered (using the Minelab CTX 3030) a lead cross buried on the shore at Smith's Cove that could be as old as 900 AD. Those familiar with Templar lore know that on Friday, October 13, 1307, the knights were hunted down and arrested by King Philip. Pope Clement V, under pressure from Philip, dissolved the group in 1312. It's theorized that some knights escaped the purge with many of their treasures, sailed to Oak Island, and deposited them there for safekeeping.
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