“The Curse of Oak Island” is a show that (by nature) is filled to the brim with speculation and conjecture — though admittedly, some of the theories the showrunners put forth are still pretty hard to accept. The show follows a group of treasure hunters led by brothers Rick and Marty Lagina as they attempt to uncover the centuries-old mystery of Oak Island. The Lagina brothers have explored every theory imaginable during their nine seasons on the air, and yet they still have no idea what the treasure on the island actually is — or where all of the items they have discovered actually came from.
One of the most mysterious aspects of the show is the fact that, despite not making any real progress toward finding the treasure of the island itself, the team has actually uncovered a wide array of artifacts that seem to indicate that something happened on the island. According to one theorist on Reddit, there’s actually a perfectly logical explanation for these discoveries, and it has to do with a Portuguese explorer who went missing in 1501 — and the mysterious map he left behind.
Oak Island could have been where Gaspar Corte-Real crash-landed
In a post that includes an incredible amount of citation and research, u/griuaol explained their theory about how the island’s treasure possibly came from a Portuguese explorer named Gaspar Corte-Real. As the Redditor explains, Corte-Real’s ship was lost at sea during a voyage to Newfoundland, though two ships from his fleet did survive and brought back new information and maps regarding the coast of the Canadian island. Mysteriously, these maps do not match up with any part of the Newfoundland coast and are actually more or less a rough depiction of the coast of Nova Scotia — right where Oak Island is.
The theory asserts that the Portuguese explorers mapped an area much farther to the south than they initially intended, and (since we don’t know where Corte-Real himself ended up, along with the rest of his ship) there is a possibility that the explorer crash-landed on Oak Island, where he and his crew set up a small settlement and lived for some time. Perhaps they even hid their valuables in a chest or vault of some sort, leading to the rumors about the famed “money pit.”
As far as theories about Oak Island go, this one is still one of the most plausible and would definitely explain all the European artifacts found on the island. It seems possible that the Lagina brothers will accidentally stumble into an incredible piece of history during their search.