THE WONDROUS FORTUNE OF WILLIAM PHIPS
The flaw in the business of treasure hunting, outside of fiction, is
that the persons equipped with the shovels and picks and the ancient
charts so seldom find the hidden gold. The energy, credulity, and
persistence of these explorers are truly admirable but the results have
been singularly shy of dividends the world over. There is genuine
satisfaction, therefore, in sounding the name and fame of the man who
not only went roving in search of lost treasure but also found and
fetched home more of it than any other adventurer known to this kind of
quest.
On the coast of Maine, near where the Kennebec flows past Bath into the
sea, there is a bit of tide water known as Montsweag Bay, hard by the
town of Wiscasset. Into this little bay extends a miniature cape,
pleasantly wooded, which is known as Phips Point, and here it was that
the most illustrious treasure seeker of them all, William Phips, was
born in 1650. The original Pilgrim Fathers, or some of them, were
still hale and hearty, the innumerable ship-loads of furniture brought
over in the _Mayflower_ had not been scattered far from Plymouth, and
this country was so young that the "oldest families" of Boston were all
brand-new.
James Phips, father of the great William, was a gun-smith who had come
over from Bristol in old England to better his fortunes. With the true
pioneering spirit he obtained a grant of land and built his log cabin
at the furthest outpost of settlement toward the eastward. He cleared
his fields, raised some sheep, and betimes repaired the blunderbusses
with which Puritan and Pilgrim were wont to pot the aborigine. The
first biography of William Phips was written by Cotton Mather, whom the
better you know the more heartily you dislike for a canting old bigot
who boot-licked men of rank, wealth, or power, and was infernally
active in getting a score of hapless men and women hanged for
witchcraft in Salem.
Cotton Mather deserves the thanks of all good treasure seekers,
however, for having given us the first-hand story of William Phips whom
he knew well and extravagantly admired. In fact, after this hero had
come sailing home with his treasures and because of these riches was
made Sir William Phips and Royal Governor of Massachusetts by Charles
II, he had his pew in the old North Church of Boston of which Rev.
Cotton Mather was pastor. But this is going ahead too fast, and we
must hark back to the humble beginnings. "His faithful mother, yet
living," wrote Mather in his very curious _Magnalia Christi Americana_,
"had no less than Twenty-six Children, whereof Twenty-one were Sons:
but Equivalent to them all was William, one of the youngest, whom his
Father dying, was left young with his mother, and with her he lived,
keeping ye Sheep in the Wilderness until he was Eighteen Years old."
Then William decided that the care of the farm and the sheep might
safely be left to his twenty brothers, and he apprenticed himself to a
shipwright who was building on the shore near the settlement those
little shallops, pinnaces, and sloops in which our forefathers dared to
trade up and down their own coasts and as far as the West Indies, mere
cockle-shells manned by seamen of astonishing temerity and hardihood.
While at work with hammer and adze, this strapping lump of a lad
listened to the yarns of skippers who had voyaged to Jamaica and the
Bahamas, dodging French privateers or running afoul of pirates who
stripped them of cargo and gear, and perhaps it was then that he first
heard of the treasures that had been lost in wrecked galleons, or
buried by buccaneers of Hispaniola. At any rate, William Phips wished
to see more of the world and to win a chance to go to sea in a ship of
his own, wherefore he set out for Boston after he had served his time,
"having an accountable impulse upon his mind, persuading him, as he
would privately hint unto some of his friends, that he was born to
greater matters."
Twenty-two years old, not yet able to read and write, young Phips found
work with a ship-carpenter and studied his books as industriously as he
plied his trade. Soon he was wooing a "young gentlewoman of good
repute, the daughter of one Captain Roger Spencer," and there was no
resisting this headstrong suitor. They were married, and shortly after
this important event Phips was given a contract to build a ship at a
settlement on Sheepscot river, near his old home on the Kennebec,
"where having launched the ship," Cotton Mather relates, "he also
provided a lading of lumber to bring with him, which would have been to
the advantage of all concerned.
"But just as the ship was hardly finished, the barbarous Indians on
that river broke forth into an open and cruel war upon the English, and
the miserable people, surprised by so sudden a storm of blood, had no
refuge from the infidels but the ship now finishing in the harbor.
Wherefore he left his intended lading behind him, and instead thereof
carried with him his old neighbors and their families, free of all
charges, to Boston. So the first thing he did, after he was his own
man, was to save his father's house, with the rest of the neighborhood
from ruin; but the disappointment which befell him from the loss of his
other lading plunged his affairs into greater embarrassment with such
as he had employed him. But he was hitherto no more than beginning to
make scaffolds for further and higher actions. He would frequently
tell the gentlewoman, his wife, that he should yet be Captain of a
King's Ship; that he should come to have the command of better men than
he was now accounted himself, and that he would be the owner of a fair
brick house in the Green Lane of North Boston."[1]
Inasmuch as William Phips would have been a very sorry scoundrel
indeed, to run away, for the sake of a cargo of lumber, and leave his
old friends and neighbors to be scalped, it seems as Cotton Mather was
sounding the timbrel of praise somewhat over-loud, but the parson was a
fulsome eulogist, and for reasons of his own he proclaimed this
roaring, blustering seafarer and hot-headed royal governor as little
lower than the angels. Here and there Mather drew with firm stroke the
character of the man, so that we catch glimpses of him as a live and
moving figure. "He was of an inclination cutting rather like a hatchet
than a razor; he would propose very considerable matters and then so
cut through them that no difficulties could put by the edge of his
resolution. Being thus of the true temper for doing of great things,
he betakes himself to the sea, the right scene for such things."
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[Illustration: Sir William Phips, first royal governor of
Massachusetts.]
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Phips had no notion of being a beggarly New England trading skipper,
carrying codfish and pine boards to the West Indies and threshing
homeward with molasses and niggers in the hold, or coasting to Virginia
for tobacco. A man of mettle won prizes by bold strokes and large
hazards, and treasure seeking was the game for William. Among the
taverns of the Boston water-front he picked up tidings and rumors of
many a silver-laden galleon of Spain that had shivered her timbers on
this or that low-lying reef of the Bahama Passage where there was
neither buoy nor lighthouse. Here was a chance to win that "fair brick
house in the Green Lane of North Boston" and Phips busied himself with
picking up information until he was primed to make a voyage of
discovery. Keeping his errand to himself, he steered for the West
Indies, probably in a small chartered sloop or brig, and prowled from
one key and island to another.
This was in the year 1681, and the waters in which Phips dared to
venture were swarming with pirates and buccaneers who would have cut
his throat for a doubloon. Morgan had sacked Panama only eleven years
before; Tortuga, off the coast of Hayti, was still the haunt of as
choice a lot of cutthroats as ever sailed blue water; and men who had
been plundering and killing with Pierre le Grande, Bartholomew Portugez
and Montbars the Exterminator, were still at their old trade afloat.
Mariners had not done talking about the exploit of L'Ollonais who had
found three hundred thousand dollars' worth of Spanish treasure hidden
on a key off the coast of Cuba. He it was who amused himself by
cutting out the hearts of live Spaniards and gnawing these morsels, or
slicing off the heads of a whole ship's crew and drinking their blood.
A rare one for hunting buried treasure was this fiend of a pirate.
When he took Maracaibo, as Esquemeling relates in the story of his own
experiences as a buccaneer, "L'Ollonais, who never used to make any
great amount of murdering, though in cold blood, ten or twelve
Spaniards, drew his cutlass and hacked one to pieces in the presence of
all the rest, saying: 'If you do not confess and declare where you have
hidden the rest of your goods, I will do the like to all your
companions.' At last, amongst these horrible cruelties and inhuman
threats, one was found who promised to conduct him and show the place
where the rest of the Spaniards were hidden. But those that were fled,
having intelligence that one discovered their lurking holes to the
Pirates, changed the place, and buried all the remnant of their riches
underground; insomuch that the Pirates could not find them out, unless
some other person of their own party should reveal them."
From this first voyage undertaken by Phips he escaped with his skin and
a certain amount of treasure, "what just served him a little to furnish
him for a voyage to England," says Mather. The important fact was that
he had found what he sought and knew where there was a vast deal more
of it. A large ship, well armed and manned, was needed to bring away
the booty, and Captain William Phips intended to find backing in London
for the adventure. He crossed the Atlantic in "a vessel not much
unlike that which the Dutchmen stamped on their first coin," and no
sooner had his stubby, high-pooped ark of a craft cast anchor in the
Thames than he was buzzing ashore with his tale of the treasure wreck.
It was no less a person than the king himself whom Phips was bent on
enlisting as a partner, and he was not to be driven from Whitehall by
lords or flunkies. With bulldog persistence he held to his purpose
month after month, until almost a year had passed. At length, through
the friends he had made at Court, he gained the ear of Charles II, and
that gay monarch was pleased to take a fling at treasure hunting as a
sporting proposition, with an eye also to a share of the plunder.
He gave Phips a frigate of the king's navy, the _Rose_ of eighteen guns
and ninety-five men, which had been captured from the Algerine
corsairs. As "Captain of a King's Ship," he recruited a crew of all
sorts, mostly hard characters, and sailed from London in September,
1683, bound first to Boston, and thence to find the treasure. Alas,
for the cloak of piety with which Cotton Mather covered William Phips
from head to heels. Other accounts show convincingly that he was a
bullying, profane, and godless sea dog, yet honest withal, and as brave
as a lion, an excellent man to have at your elbow in a tight pinch, or
to be in charge of the quarter-deck in a gale of wind. The real Phips
is a more likeable character than the stuffed image that Cotton Mather
tried to make of him.
While in Boston harbor in the _Rose_, Captain Phips carried things with
a high hand. Another skipper had got wind of the treasure and was
about to make sail for the West Indies in a ship called the _Good
Intent_. Phips tried to bluff him, then to frighten him, and finally
struck a partnership so that the two vessels sailed in company.
Refusing to show the Boston magistrates his papers, Phips was haled to
court where he abused the bench in language blazing with deep-sea
oaths, and was fined several hundred pounds. His sailors got drunk
ashore and fought the constables and cracked the heads of peaceable
citizens. Staid Boston was glad when the _Rose_ frigate and her
turbulent company bore away for the West Indies.
There was something wrong with Phip's information or the Spanish wreck
had been cleaned of her treasure before he found the place. The _Rose_
and the _Good Intent_ lay at the edge of a reef somewhere near Nassau
for several months, sending down native divers and dredging with such
scanty returns that the crew became mutinous and determined on a
program very popular in those days. Armed with cutlasses, they charged
aft and demanded of Phips that he "join them in running away with the
ship to drive a trade of piracy in the South Seas. Captain Phips ...
with a most undaunted fortitude, rushed in upon them, and with the
blows of his bare hands felled many of them and quelled all the rest."
It became necessary to careen the _Rose_ and clean the planking all
fouled with tropical growth, and she was beached on "a desolate Spanish
island." The men were given shore liberty, all but eight or ten, and
the rogues were no sooner out of the ship than "they all entered into
an agreement which they signed in a ring (a round-robin), that about
seven o'clock that evening they would seize the captain and those eight
or ten which they knew to be true to him, and leave them to perish on
the island, and so be gone away into the South Seas to seek their
fortune.... These knaves, considering that they should want a
carpenter with them in their villainous expedition, sent a messenger to
fetch unto them the carpenter who was then at work upon the vessel; and
unto him they showed their articles; telling him what he must look for
if he did not subscribe among them.
"The carpenter, being an honest fellow, did with much importunity
prevail for one half hour's time to consider the matter; and returning
to work upon the vessel, with a spy by them set upon him, he feigned
himself taken with a fit of the collick, for the relief whereof he
suddenly ran into the captain in the great cabin for a dram. Where,
when he came, his business was only in brief to tell the captain of the
horrible distress which he has fallen into; but the captain bid him as
briefly return to the rogues in the woods and sign their articles, and
leave him to provide for the rest.
"The carpenter was no sooner gone than Captain Phips, calling together
the few friends that were left him aboard, whereof the gunner was one,
demanded of them whether they would stand by him in this extremity,
whereto they replied they would stand by him if he could save them, and
he answered, 'By the help of God, he did not fear it.' All their
provisions had been carried ashore to a tent made for that purpose,
about which they had placed several great guns, to defend it in case of
any assault from Spaniards. Wherefore Captain Phips immediately
ordered those guns to be silently drawn and turned; and so pulling up
the bridge, he charged his great guns aboard and brought them to bear
on every side of the tent.
"By this time the army of rebels came out of the woods; but as they
drew near to the tent of provisions they saw such a change of
circumstances that they cried out, _We are betrayed_! And they were
soon confirmed in it when they heard the captain with a stern fury call
to them, _Stand off, ye wretches, at your peril_. He quickly cast them
into more than ordinary confusion when they saw him ready to fire his
great guns upon them.
"And when he had signified unto them his resolve to abandon them unto
all the desolation which they had proposed for him, he caused the
bridge to be again laid, and his men began to take the provisions on
board. When the wretches beheld what was coming upon them, they fell
to very humble entreaties; and at last fell down upon their knees
protesting that they never had anything against him, except only his
unwillingness to go away with the King's ship upon the South Sea
design. But upon all other accounts they would choose rather to live
and die with him than with any man in the world. However, when they
saw how much he was dissatisfied at it, they would insist upon it no
more, and humbly begged his pardon. And when he judged that he had
kept them on their knees long enough, he having first secured their
arms, received them aboard, but he immediately weighed anchor and
arriving at Jamaica, turned them off."
This is a very proper incident to have happened in a hunt for hidden
treasure, and Cotton Mather tells it well. One forgives Phips for
damning the eyes of the Boston magistrates, and likely enough they
deserved it, when it is recalled that the witchcraft trials were held
only a few years later. Having rid himself of the mutineers, Captain
Phips shipped other scoundrels in their stead, there being small choice
at Jamaica where every other man had been pirating or was planning to
go again. His first quest for treasure had been a failure, but he was
not the man to quit, and so he filled away for Hispaniola, now Hayti
and San Domingo, where every bay and reef had a treasure story of its
own.
The small island of Tortuga off that coast had long been the
headquarters of the most successful pirates and buccaneers of those
seas, and Frederick A. Ober, who knows the West Indies as well as any
living man, declares not only that Cuba, the Isle of Pines, Jamaica,
and Hispaniola are girdled with Spanish wrecks containing "as yet
unrecovered millions and millions in gold and silver," but also that
"during the successive occupancies of Tortuga by the various pirate
bands great treasure was hidden in the forest, and in the caves with
which the island abounds. Now and again the present cultivators of
Tortuga find coins of ancient dates, fragments of gold chains, and
pieces of quaint jewelry cast up by the waves or revealed by the
shifting sands.
"It was not without reason that the only harbor of the buccaneers was
called Treasure Cove, nor for nothing that they dug the deep caves
deeper, hollowing out lateral tunnels and blasting holes beneath the
frowning cliffs. The island now belongs to Hayti, the inhabitants of
which have not the requisite sagacity to conduct an intelligent search
for the long-buried treasures; and as they resent the intrusion of
foreigners, it is probable that the buccaneers' spoils will remain an
unknown quantity for many years to come."
Captain William Phips lay at anchor off one of the rude settlements of
Hispaniola for some time, and his rough-and-ready address won him
friends, among them "a very old Spaniard" who had seen many a galleon
pillaged by the pirates. From this informant Phips "fished up a little
advice about the true spot where lay the wreck which he had hitherto
been seeking ... that it was upon a reef of shoals a few leagues to the
northward of Port de la Plata upon Hispaniola, a port so called, it
seemed, from the landing of some of a shipwrecked company, with a boat
full of plate saved out of their sunken Frigot."
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[Illustration: Map of Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) engraved in
1723, showing the buccaneers at their trade of hunting wild cattle.
The galleon due north of Port Plate on the north coast is almost
exactly in the place where Phips found his treasure.]
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On the very old map of Hispaniola, reproduced herewith, this place is
indicated on the north coast as "Port Plate," and due north of it is
the spirited drawing of a galleon which happens to be very nearly in
the position of the sunken treasure which the old Spaniard described to
Captain Phips. The _Rose_ frigate sailed in search of the reef and
explored it with much care but failed to find the wreck. Phips was
confident that he was on the right track, however, and decided to
return to England, refit and ship a new crew. The riff-raff which he
had picked up at Jamaica in place of the mutineers were hardly the lads
to be trusted with a great store of treasure on board.
At about this time, Charles II quit his earthly kingdom and it is to be
hoped found another kind of treasure laid up for him. James II needed
all his warships, and he promptly took the _Rose_ frigate from Captain
Phips and set him adrift to shift for himself. A man of less
inflexible resolution and courage might have been disheartened, but
Phips made a louder noise than ever with his treasure story, and would
not budge from London. He was put in jail, somehow got himself out,
and stood up to his enemies and silenced them, all the while seeking
noble patrons with money to venture on another voyage.
At length, and a year had been spent in this manner, Phips interested
the Duke of Albemarle, son of the famous General Monk who had been
active in restoring Charles II to the throne of the Stuarts. Several
other gentlemen of the Court took shares in the speculation, including
a naval man, Sir John Narborough. They put up L2,400 to outfit a ship,
and the King was persuaded to grant Phips letters of patent, or a
commission as a duly authorized treasure seeker, in return for which
favor His Majesty was to receive one-tenth of the booty. To Phips was
promised a sixteenth of what he should recover.
This enterprise was conceived in 1686, and was so singularly like the
partnership formed ten years later to finance the cruise of Captain
Kidd after pirates' plunder that the Earl of Bellomont, Lord Chancellor
Somers, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and William III may have been somewhat
inspired to undertake this unlucky venture by the dazzling success of
the Phips "syndicate."
In a small merchantman called the _James and Mary_, Captain Phips set
sail from England in 1686, having another vessel to serve as a tender.
Arriving at Port de la Plata, he hewed out a large canoe from a
cotton-wood tree, "so large as to carry eight or ten oars," says Cotton
Mather, "for the making of which perigua (as they call it), he did,
with the same industry that he did everything else, employ his own hand
and adze, and endure no little hardship, lying abroad in the woods many
nights together." The canoe was used by a gang of native divers
quartered on board the tender. For some time they worked along the
edge of a reef called the Boilers, guided by the story of that ancient
Spaniard, but found nothing to reward their exertions.
This crew was returning to report to Captain Phips when one of the men,
staring over the side into the wonderfully clear water, spied a "sea
feather" or marine plant of uncommon beauty growing from what appeared
to be a rock. An Indian was sent down to fetch it as a souvenir of the
bootless quest, that they might, however, carry home something with
them. This diver presently bobbed up with the sea feather, and
therewithal a surprising story "that he perceived a number of great
guns in the watery world, where he had found the feather; the report of
which great guns exceedingly astonished the whole company; and at once
turned their despondencies for their ill success into assurances that
they had now lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been
looking for; and they were further confirmed in these assurances when
upon further diving, the Indian fetched up a _Sow_ as they styled it,
or a lump of silver worth perhaps two or three hundred pounds. Upon
this they prudently buoyed the place, that they might readily find it
again; and they went back unto their Captain whom for some while they
distressed with nothing but such bad news as they formerly thought they
must have carried him. Nevertheless, they so slipped the Sow of silver
on one side under the table (where they were now sitting with the
Captain, and hearing him express his resolutions to wait still
patiently upon the Providence of God under these disappointments), that
when he should look on one side, he might see that Odd Thing before
him. At last he saw it and cried out with some agony:
"'_What is this? Whence comes this?_' And then with changed
countenance they told him how and where they got it. Then said he,
'_Thanks be to God! We are made!_' And so away they went, all hands
to work; wherein they had this further piece of remarkable prosperity,
that whereas if they had first fallen upon that part of the Spanish
wreck where the Pieces of Eight had been stowed in bags among the
ballast, they had seen more laborious and less enriching times of it.
Now, most happily, they first fell upon that room in the wreck where
the Bullion had been stored up, and then so prospered in this new
fishery that in a little while they had without the loss of any man's
life, brought up _Thirty Two Tons_ of silver, for it was now come to
measuring silver by tons."
While these jolly treasure seekers were hauling up the silver hand over
fist, one Adderley, a seaman of the New Providence in the Bahamas, was
hired with his vessel to help in the gorgeous salvage operations.
Alas, after Adderley had recovered six tons of bullion, the sight of so
much treasure was too much for him. He took his share to the Bermudas
and led such a gay life with it that he went mad and died after a year
or two. Hard-hearted William Phips was a man of another kind, and he
drove his crew of divers and wreckers, the sailors keeping busy on deck
at hammering from the silver bars a crust of limestone several inches
thick from which "they knocked out whole bushels of pieces of eight
which were grown thereinto. Besides that incredible treasure of plate
in various forms, thus fetched up from seven or eight fathoms under
water, there were vast riches of Gold, and Pearls, and Jewels, which
they also lit upon: and indeed for a more comprehensive invoice, I must
but summarily say, _All that a Spanish frigot was to be enriched
withal_."
At length the little squadron ran short of provisions, and most
reluctantly Captain Phips decided to run for England with his precious
cargo and return the next year. He swore all his men to secrecy,
believing that there was more good fishing at the wreck. During the
homeward voyage, his seamen quite naturally yearned for a share of the
profits, they having signed on for monthly wages. They were for taking
the ship "to be gone and lead a short life and a merry one," but Phips
argued them out of this rebellious state of mind, promising every man a
share of the silver, and if his employers would not agree to this, to
pay them from his own pocket.
Up the Thames sailed the lucky little merchantman, _James and Mary_ in
the year of 1687, with three hundred thousand pounds sterling
freightage of treasure in her hold, which would amount to a good deal
more than a million and a half dollars nowadays. Captain Phips played
fair with his seamen, and they fled ashore in the greatest good humor
to fling their pieces of eight among the taverns and girls of Wapping,
Limehouse, and Rotherhite. The King was given his tenth of the cargo,
and a handsome fortune it was. To Phips fell his allotted share of a
sixteenth, which set him up with sixteen thousand pounds sterling. The
Duke of Albemarle was so much gratified that he sent to that
"gentlewoman" Mrs. William Phips, a gold cup worth a thousand pounds.
Phips showed himself an honest man in age when sea morals were
exceeding lax, and not a penny of the treasure, beyond what was due
him, stuck to his fingers. Men of his integrity were not over
plentiful in England after the Restoration, and the King liked and
trusted this brusque, stalwart sailor from New England. At Windsor
Castle he was knighted and now it was Sir William Phips, if you please.
Judge Sewall's diary contains this entry, Friday, October 21, 1687:
"I went to offer my Lady Phips my House by Mr. Moody's and to
congratulate her preferment. As to the former, she had bought Sam'
Wakefield's House and Ground last night for L350. I gave her a Gazette
that related her Husband's Knighthood, which she had not seen before;
and wish'd this success might not hinder her passage to a greater and
better estate. She gave me a cup of good Beer and thank'd me for my
visit."
Sir William would have still another try at the wreck, and this time
there was no lack of ships and patronage. A squadron was fitted out in
command of Sir John Narborough, and one of the company was the Duke of
Albemarle. They made their way to the reef, but the remainder of the
treasure had been lifted, and the expedition sailed home empty-handed.
Adderley of New Providence had babbled in his cups and one of his men
had been bribed to take a party of Bermuda wreckers to the reef. The
place was soon swarming with all sorts of craft, some of them from
Jamaica and Hispaniola, and they found a large amount of silver before
they stripped the wreck clean.
The King offered Sir William a place as one of the Commissioners of the
Royal Navy, but he was homesick for New England and desired to be a
person of consequence in his own land. His friends obtained for him a
patent as High Sheriff of Massachusetts and he returned to Boston after
five years' absence "to entertain his Lady with some accomplishment of
his predictions; and then built himself a fair brick house in the very
place which was foretold."
The "fair brick house" was of two stories with a portico and columns.
It stood on the corner of the present Salem Street (then the Green
Lane) and Charter Street, so named by Sir William Phips in honor of the
new charter under which he became the first provincial or royal
governor. There was a lawn and gardens, a watch-house and stables, and
a stately row of butternuts. "North Boston" was then the fashionable
or "Court end" of the town.
The Puritans and Pilgrims were seething with indignation against the
royal government overseas. The original charter under which the Colony
of Massachusetts Bay exercised self-government had been annulled, and
Charles II was determined to bring all the New England Colonies under
the sway of a royal governor. The question of taxation had also begun
to simmer a full century before the Revolution. Sir William Phips
found his berth of High Sheriff a difficult and turbulent business, and
"the infamous Government then rampant there, found a way wholly to put
by the execution of his patent; yea, he was like to have had his person
assassinated in the face of the sun, before his own door."
This rough ship carpenter and treasure seeker weathered the storm and
rose so high in the good graces of the throne that in 1692 he carried
to Massachusetts the new charter signed by William III by virtue of
which he became the first royal governor of that colony, and as an
administrator he was no less interesting than when he was cruising off
the coast of Hispaniola. The manners of the quarterdeck he carried to
the governor's office. His fists were as ready as his tongue, and his
term of two years was enlivened by one lusty quarrel after another. In
nowise ashamed of his humble beginnings, he gave a dinner to his old
friends of the Boston ship-yard and told these honest artisans that if
it were not for his service to the people, he "would be much easier in
returning to his broad axe again."
Hawthorne has given a picture of him in the days of his greatness, "a
man of strong and sturdy frame, whose face has been roughened by
northern tempests, and blackened by the burning sun of the West Indies.
He wears an immense periwig flowing down over his shoulders. His coat
has a wide embroidery of golden foliage, and his waistcoat likewise is
all flowered over and bedizened with gold. His red, rough hands, which
have done many a good day's work with the hammer and adze, are half
covered by the delicate lace ruffles at his wrists. On a table lies
his silver-headed sword, and in a corner of the room stands his
gold-headed cane, made of a beautifully polished West India wood."
Cotton Mather helps to complete the presentment by relating that "he
was very tall, beyond the common set of men, and thick as well as tall,
and strong as well as thick. He was in all respects exceedingly
robust, and able to conquer such difficulties of diet and travel as
would have killed most men alive. Nor did the fat whereinto he grew
very much in his later years, take away the vigor of his motions."
As a fighting seaman and soldier, Sir William Phips saw hard service
before he was made royal governor. In 1690 he was in command of an
expedition which made a successful raid on the French in Arcadia,
captured Port Royal, and conquered the province. Among the English
state papers in the Public Record office is his own account of this
feat of arms of his expedition against Quebec. "In March, 1690," he
wrote, "I sailed with seven ships and seven hundred men, raised by the
people of New England, reduced Arcadia in three weeks and returned to
Boston. It was then thought well to prosecute a further expedition.
2300 men were raised, with whom and with about thirty ships I sailed
from New England on the 10th, August, 1690, but by bad weather and
contrary winds did not reach Quebec till October. The frost was
already so sharp that it made two inches of ice in a night.
"After summoning Count de Frontenac and receiving a reviling answer, I
brought my ships up within musket shot of their cannon and fired with
such success that I dismounted several of their largest cannon and beat
them from their works in less than twenty-four hours. At the same time
1400 men, who had been landed, defeated a great part of the enemy, and
by the account of the prisoners, the city must have been taken in two
or three days, but the small-pox and fever increased so fast as to
delay the pushing of the siege till the weather became too severe to
permit it. On my leaving Quebec, I received several messages from
French merchants of the best reputation, saying how uneasy they were
under French administration, and how willing they were to be under
their Majesties."
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[Illustration: Permit issued by Sir William Phips as royal governor in
which he uses the title "Vice Admiral" which involved him in disastrous
quarrels.]
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In a "Narrative of the Expedition against Quebec," written at the time,
is this passage:
"Whilst these things were doing on shore, Sir Wm. Phips with his men of
war came close up to ye City. He did acquit himself with ye greatest
bravery. I have diligently enquired of those that know it who affirm
there was nothing wanting in his Part, either as to Conduct or Courage.
He ventured within Pistol shot of their cannon, and soon beat them from
thence, and battered ye Town very much. He was for some Hours warmly
entertained with their great Guns. The Vessel wherein Sir William
commanded had 200 men. It was shot through in a hundred places with
shot of twenty-four pound weight; yet through ye wonderful Providence
of God, but one man was killed and two mortally wounded in that hot
Engagement, which continued ye greatest part of ye night and ye next
day several hours."
Another letter written by Sir William Phips, addressed from Boston to
William Blathwayt, soon after he was made Governor, shows him in a
light even more engaging. The witchcraft frenzy was at its height, and
only three weeks before this date, October 12, 1692, fourteen men and
women had been hanged in Salem. This letter, as copied from the
original document, runs as follows:
"On my arrival I found this Province miserably harrassed by a most
horrible witchcraft or possession of devils, which had broken in upon
several towns. Some scores of poor people were taken with
preternatural torments; some were scalded with brimstone; some had pins
stuck into their flesh, others were hurried into fire and water, and
some were dragged out of their houses and carried over the tops of
trees and hills for many miles together.
"It has been represented to me as much like that of Sweden thirty years
ago, and there were many committed to prison on suspicion of witchcraft
before my arrival. The loud cries and clamor of the friends of the
afflicted, together with the advice of the Deputy Governor and Council,
prevailed with me to appoint a Court of Oyer and Terminer to discover
what witchcraft might be at the bottom, and whether it were not a
possession. The chief judge was the Deputy Governor, and the rest
people of the best prudence and figure that could be pitched upon.
"At Salem in Essex County they convicted more than twenty persons of
witchcraft, and some of the accused confessed their guilt. The Court,
as I understand, began their proceedings with the accusations of the
afflicted persons, and then went upon other evidences to strengthen
that. I was in the East of the Colony throughout almost the whole of
the proceedings, trusting to the Court as the right method of dealing
with cases of witchcraft. But when I returned I found many persons in
a strange ferment of dissatisfaction which was increased by some hot
spirits that blew upon the flame. But on enquiry into the matter, I
found that the Devil had taken upon him the name and shape of several
persons who were doubtless innocent, for which cause I have now
forbidden the committal of any more accused persons.
"And them that have been committed I would shelter from any proceedings
wherein the innocent could suffer wrong. I would also await the King's
orders in this perplexing affair. I have put a stop to the printing of
any discourses on either side that may increase useless disputes, for
open contests would mean an unextinguishable flame. I have been
grieved to see that some who should have done better services to their
Majesties and this Province have so far taken counsel with passion as
to declare the precipitancy of these matters.... As soon as I had done
fighting the King's enemies, and understood the danger of innocent
people through the accusations of the afflicted, I put a stop to the
Court proceedings till the King's pleasure should be known."
It was Governor Phips who suppressed the witchcraft persecutions and
the special court that had passed so many wicked death sentences was
shorn of its powers by his order. Other prisoners were later
acquitted, and a hundred and fifty released from jail. No sooner was
this burly figure of a man finished with the witchcraft business than
he was leading a force of Indian allies against the French. "His birth
and youth in the East had rendered him well known to the Indians
there," says Cotton Mather, "he had hunted and fished many a weary day
in his childhood with them; and when these rude savages had got the
story that he had found a ship full of money, and was now become all
one a King, they were mightily astonished at it; but when they further
understood that he was now become the Governor of New England, it added
a further degree of consternation to their astonishment."
He was too strenuous a person, was this astonishing William Phips, to
remain tamed and conservative when there was no strong work in hand.
With that gold-headed cane of his he cracked the head of the Captain of
the _Nonesuch_ frigate of the royal navy, and with his hard fists he
pounded the Collector of the Port after swearing at him with such oaths
as better befitted a buccaneer than the governor of the province.
These quarrels arose from a dispute over the authority of Sir William
to lay down the law as he pleased. By virtue of his commission as Vice
Admiral of the Colony he held that he had the right to judge and
condemn naval prizes. The Collector claimed jurisdiction and when he
refused to deliver a cargo of plunder brought in by a privateer, the
governor blacked his eyes for him.
As for the naval skipper, Captain Short, his experience with the Phips
temper was even more disastrous. He refused to lend some of his men to
man a cruiser which the governor wished to send after coastwise
pirates. When next the twain met, Captain Short was first well
threshed, then bundled off to prison, and from there skipped home to
England in a merchantman.
Such methods of administration had served admirably well to rule those
mutinous dogs of seamen aboard the _Rose_ frigate, but they were
resented in Boston, and after other altercations, Governor Phips found
it necessary to go to England to answer the complaints which had been
piling up in the offices of the Lords of the Council of Trade and
Plantations. He sailed in his own yacht, a brigantine built in a
Boston shipyard, and we may be sure that he was ready to face his
accusers with a stout heart.
Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts, analyzed the trouble as
follows:
"Sir William Phips' rule was short. His conduct when captain of a ship
of war is represented very much to his advantage; but further talents
were necessary for the good government of a province. He was of a
benevolent, friendly disposition; at the same time quick and
passionate....
"A vessel arrived from the Bahamas, with a load of fustick, for which
no bond had been given. Col. Foster, a merchant of Boston, a member of
the Council, and fast friend of the Governor, bought the fustick at
such price that he was loth to give up the bargain. The Collector
seized the vessel and goods; and upon Foster's representation to the
Governor, he interposed. There was at that time no Court of Admiralty.
Sir William took a summary way of deciding this case, and sent an order
to the Collector to forbear meddling with the goods, and upon his
refusal to observe orders, the Governor went to the wharf, and after
warm words on both sides, laid hands upon the Collector, but with what
degree of violence was controverted by both. The Governor prevailed,
and the vessel and goods were taken out of the hands of the Collector.
"There had been a misunderstanding also between the Governor and
Captain Short of the _Nonesuch_ frigate. In their passage from England
a prize was taken; and Short complained that the Governor had deprived
him of part of his share or legal interest in her. Whether there were
grounds for it does not appear. The captains of men of war stationed
in the colonies were in those days required to follow such instructions
as the governors gave them relative to their cruises and the protection
of the trade of the colonies, and the Governor, by his commission, had
power in case of any great crime committed by any of the captains of
men of war, to suspend them, and the next officer was to succeed.
"The Governor required Captain Short to order part of the men belonging
to the _Nonesuch_ upon some service, which I do not find mentioned,
probably to some cruiser, there being many picaroons about the eastern
coasts, but he refused to do it. This was ill taken by the Governor;
and meeting Captain Short in the street, warm words passed, and at
length the Governor made use of his cane and broke Short's head. Not
content with this, he committed him to prison. The right of a governor
to commit by his own warrant had not then been questioned.
"From the prison he removed him to the castle, and from those on board
a merchant bound to London, to be delivered to the order of one of
their Majesties' principal secretaries of state; giving the master a
warrant or authority to do so. The vessel, by some accident, put into
Portsmouth in New Hampshire. Sir William who seems to have been
sensible of some irregularity in these proceedings, went to Portsmouth,
required the master of the merchantman to return him the warrant, which
he tore to pieces, and then ordered the cabin of the ship to be opened,
secured Short's chests, and examined the contents.
"Short was prevented going home in this vessel, and went to New York to
take passage from thence for England; but Sir F. Wheeler arriving soon
after at Boston, went for him and carried him home with him. The next
officer succeeded in the command of the ship, until a new captain
arrived from England. Short was restored to the command of as good a
ship."
King William refused to depose the famous treasure finder without
hearing what he had to say in his defense, and Sir William stoutly
swore that those whom he had punished got no more than they deserved.
A strong party had been mustered against him, however, and he waged an
uphill fight for vindication until Death, the one foe for whom he did
not think himself a match, took him by the heels and laid him in a
vault beneath the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, London. A guide-book of
that city, published in 1708, contained this description of the
memorial placed therein:
"At the east end of the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, near the northeast
angle, is a pretty white marble monument, adorned with an urn between
two Cupids, the figure of a ship, and also a boat at sea, with persons
in the water; these beheld by a winged eye, all done in basso relieve;
also the seven medals, as that of King William and Queen Mary; some
with Spanish impressions, as the castle, cross-portent, etc. and
likewise the figures of a sea quadrant; cross-staff, and this
inscription:
"'Near this place is interred the Body of Sir William Phips, knight;
who in the year 1687, by his great industry, discovered among the rocks
near the Banks of Bahama on the north side of Hispaniola a Spanish
plate-ship which had been under water 44 years, out of which he took in
gold and silver to the value of L300,000 sterling: and with a fidelity
equal to his conduct, brought it all to London, where it was divided
between himself and the rest of the adventurers. For which great
service he was knighted by his then Majesty, King James the 2nd, and at
the request of the principal inhabitants of New England, he accepted of
the Government of the Massachusetts, in which he continued up to the
time of his death; and discharged his trust with that zeal for the
interests of the country, and with so little regard to his own private
advantage, that he justly gained the good esteem and affection of the
greatest and best part of the inhabitants of that Colony.
"'He died the 18th of February, 1694, and his lady, to perpetuate his
memory, hath caused this monument to be erected.'"
It is far better to know the man as he was, rough-hewn, hasty,
unlettered, but simple and honest as daylight, than to accept the false
and silly epitaph of Cotton Mather, that "he was a person of so sweet a
temper that they who were most intimately acquainted with him would
commonly pronounce him the Best Conditioned Gentleman in the World."
After he had wrested his fortune from the bottom of the sea in
circumstances splendidly romantic, he used the power which his wealth
gained for him wholly in the service of the people of his own country.
During his last visit to London, when he had grown tired of being a
royal governor, he harked back to his old love, and was planning
another treasure voyage. "The Spanish wreck was not the only nor the
richest wreck which he knew to be lying under the water. He knew
particularly that when the ship which had Governor Bobadilla aboard was
cast away, there was, as Peter Martyr says, an entire table of Gold of
Three Thousand Three Hundred and Ten Pounds Weight. And supposing
himself to have gained sufficient information of the right way to such
a wreck, it was his purpose upon his dismission from his Government,
once more to have gone upon his old Fishing-Trade, upon a mighty shelf
of rocks and bank of sands that lie where he had informed himself."
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[Illustration: The oldest existing print of Boston harbor as it
appeared in the time of Sir William Phips, showing the kind of ships in
which he sailed to find his treasure.]
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Never was there so haunting a reference to lost treasure as this
mention of that gold table that went down with Governor Bobadilla. The
words ring like a peal of magic bells. Alas, the pity of it, that Sir
William Phips did not live to fit out a brave ship and go in quest of
this wondrous treasure, for of all men, then or since, he was the man
to find it.
Bobadilla was that governor of Hispaniola who was sent from Spain in
1500 by Ferdinand and Isabella to investigate the affairs of the colony
as administered by Christopher Columbus. He put Columbus in chains and
shipped him home, but the great discoverer found a friendly welcome
there, and was sent back for his fourth voyage. He reached Hispaniola
on the day that Bobadilla was sailing for Spain, in his turn to give
place to a new Governor, Ovando by name. Bobadilla embarked at San
Domingo in the largest ship of the fleet on board of which was put an
immense amount of gold, the revenue collected for the Crown during his
government, which he hoped might ease the disgrace of his recall.
The Spanish historian, Las Casas, besides other old chroniclers,
mention this solid mass of virgin gold which Peter Martyr affirmed had
been fashioned into a table. This enormous nugget had been found by an
Indian woman in a brook on the estate of Francisco de Garay and Miguel
Diaz and had been taken by Bobadilla to send to the king. According to
Las Casas, it weighed three thousand, six hundred castellanos.
When Bobadilla's fleet weighed anchor, Columbus sent a messenger urging
the ships to remain in port because a storm was imminent. The pilots
and seamen scoffed at the warning, and the galleons stood out from San
Domingo only to meet a tropical hurricane of terrific violence. Off
the most easterly point of Hispaniola, Bobadilla's ship went down with
all on board. If this galleon carrying the gold table, besides much
other treasure, had foundered in deep water, it is unlikely that Sir
William Phips would have planned to go in search of her. If, however,
the ship had been smashed on a reef, he may have "fished up"
information from some other ancient Spaniard as to her exact location.
The secret was buried in his grave and he left no chart to show where
he hoped to find that marvelous treasure, and nobody knows the bearings
of that "mighty shelf of rock and bank of sands that lie where he had
informed himself."
[1] In order to make easier reading, this and the following extracts
from Cotton Mather's narrative are somewhat modernized in respect of
quaint spelling, punctuation, and the use of capitals, although, of
course, the wording is unchanged.