1932/10/01 by Cyrus H. Karraker · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Maritime and Coastal Archaeology #Treasure #Archaeology #Art #Oceanography #Geography #Geology
paper · doi:10.2307/359331
openalex publication_date 1932/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
O F all our colonial governors no character is quite so romantic and appealing as Sir William Phips ambitious, courageous, vain, blustering, profane, and withal an intensely interesting sea-captain of the late seventeenth century. His life is the fascinating story of a poor, unlettered New England boy rising to wealth, fame, knighthood, and the governorship of Massachusetts through daring, ingenuity, remarkable pertinacity and extraordinary good fortune. Truly Phips was, as Cotton Mather wrote of him, a man of destiny. We are only now really beginning to understand Phips, after some two hundred and fifty years of obscurity. While our knowledge of his early life as a shepherd-boy in Maine, carpenter at Boston, and merchant-captain still remains shadowy, the succeeding mysterious years as treasure-hunter leading to rank and power as provost marshal-general, military leader, and governor, are at last appearing in a clearer light. It is to the immediate background of Phips's meteoric rise to fame and fortune, his years as treasure-hunter, that we direct our attention. During the years I682-I688 Phips seems to have been occupied completely with the search for Spanish