1687 - A Successful Treasure Hunt

William Phipps or Phips, aged 36, originally a shipwright before becoming a complete ship captain and a famous treasure hunter, retrieved the wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de la Concepción off the coast of Hispaniola and achieve to recover a few jewels, some gold and 34 tons of silver from it.

Nuestra Señora de la Concepción was the flagship of the Treasure Fleet in 1641. She sank in a hurricane.

Phips has got a particular skill to spot the shipwrecks and to recover their treasures. He developed it in the early 80s when he changed his life of a shipwright in Massachusetts to become a captain and a treasure hunter in the Bahamas.

He was known to be courageous, resourceful and reliable so he was entrusted a small ship and funds to establish a venture by John Hull, a businessman of Boston. He set his base at Charles Town on New Providence, the main island of the Bahamas archipelago, where reports and tales located treasures under water. Phips effectively found sources of information and exercised his seamanship to run a small business of wreck exploration.

¤ He made his first reputation by a prowess : he saved colonists from a raid of Indians in 1676 and brought them up to Boston in a ship he had built in his shipyard which was ransacked during the raid.

¤ Charles Town was a base of privateers. There were also British settlers who developed wreck search for their own sake since they lacked resources. We may think that Phipps found informers in both communities. However, he succeeded in finding wrecks and treasures in them through means of underwater exploration. In 1684, a year after Phips’ departure, Charles Town was ransacked and destroyed by Spanish privateer Juan de Alarcón.

When he came to London in 1683 with reinforced ambition, he had already made a reputation of treasure hunter. This is the reason why he was recruited by Admiral John Narborough, 43 then, Commissioner of the Navy, who believed in the possibility of recovering sunk treasures from the wrecks lying on the shoals in the Caribbeans, especially around the Bahamas.

¤ It seems that one fifth at least of the silver transported by the treasure fleets has sunk in the Caribbeans. Some persons are aware of this amazing mine under sea.

Phips was entrusted with the 20-gun Rose of Algiers with a twofold task : transporting a representative to Boston, which was the front for the second, that is hunting treasure under sea off Hispaniola. In parallel, Narborough ordered a mission of treasure hunting to two ships, the Falcon and the Bonetta, which achieved nothing in a year and a half of search.

On his own, Phips had found a little precious metal, for some £1,400 worth, but he had chiefly collected extra valuable information. He was convinced of his further success and imparted his faith to Narborough and consorts who funded an expedition and entrusted him with two ships, the 22-gun frigate James and Mary and the sloop Henry of London. He had three divers with him and he also brought a diving bell of his invention.

¤ Amongst the shareholders, we may notice Admiral Richard Haddock, 58, Commissioner of the Victualling Office and Member of the Parliament. Haddock & Narborough were certainly not persons easy to convince. The elements displayed by Phips should be credible.

This third campaign (1686-87) has been fast and decisive. Narborough had pieces of information that wrecks lied North of Hispaniola. Phips has got extra clues from his first passage that concur with them. We do not know for sure but it seems that hydrography of currents has fed his thoughts through a methodic tracing of the shoals of Ambrosia, Navidad and Mouchoir in the strait between the Southern islands of the Bahamas archipelago and Hispaniola. They are sixty feet deep in the shallow parts and extend over 500 square miles – which sets an immense field of exploration that he criss-crosses according to hydrographic criteria, likely mapping of depths, and of strength & direction of currents, to spot the eligible banks.

Anyway, he sets in a base in Samana bay on the Northern coast of Hispaniola and sends the sloop on the Ambrosia bank where, after a few weeks, the divers find a wreck and guns around in shallow waters. They easily find thousands of doubloons around. Afterwards, Phipps sets an efficient process on the bank to fish gold and silver through the diving bell. Alas, we do not know the details of his apparatus and of the process he implements, which are certainly crafty to fish such a quantity of metal.

Phipps returns direct to England to avoid leaks. In vain : there has been invisible witnesses. The Ambrosia bank is renamed Banco de la Plata or Silver Bank at once. Many boats anchor and collect silver from the wreck which still contains much metal.

The treasure collected by Phips amounts to £205,000 – a huge sum which satisfies the crown, the investors and the crew. Phips is even knighted.

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IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

NOTE A - About the treasure.

Bahamian fishers collect most of the silver easy to spot and grasp. Narborough sails to the bank in 1688 to discover that he has been overtaken. Only £10,000 in silver is recovered by his crew from the wreck. He falls ill and dies there.

The rest of the treasure will be retrieved in 1978 by Burt B Webber, an American amateur treasure hunter who explores the area with a former minesweeper and precise magnetometers. The hull has completely disappeared into coral forms. But there is still a large amount of silver and the operation turns to be highly profitable.

NOTE B - About William Phips’ military & political career.

Phips will not be fortunate in war operations against the French at Quebec (New France) in 1690, at the beginning of the Nine Years' War.

He will nevertheless be appointed Governor of Massachusetts in 1691. He enters office at the very time of the Puritan witchcraft hysteria at Salem. He slowly succeeds in taking control of it then in stopping it after a number of illegitimate executions he could not prevent. He will be disapproved and recalled to London where he dies upon his arrival. A sad end for an outstanding character and an obvious talent for hydrography.

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CREDIT

Unknown Painter – Portrait of William Phips – engraving, circa 1691 - © Maine Memorial Network