Radio Script #365

Little Talks On Common Things
January 26, 1958

One of the most amazing characters produced in colonial Maine was Sir William Phips. It is time we paid appropriate attention to him on this program.

Although Phips turned out to be no common man content with common things, he came from a very common origin, though not quite what a modem writer said it was. That modern writer was well known for his appearance on television’s $64,000 question. He was the great seaman, Peter Freuchen, who died only a few months ago, and whose brilliant book, “The Seven Seas” was published only last November. In that book Freuchen pays tribute to William Phips, saying that Phips was born in Maine in 1651, and remained there, wholly uneducated, and earning his living as a shepherd until he was 18 years old.

I got to wondering how even a European like Peter Freuchen could pull a boner like that. A shepherd boy in the Maine wilderness in the 17th century! Impossible! Nowhere in the whole area from the Piscataqua to the St. Croix was there any chance to graze more than one or two sheep as early as that, and a flock of them large enough to need a shepherd was unheard of. As I read on in Freuchen’s account, I stumbled upon a possible explanation of the seaman’s error. Twice he mentions the Sheepscot River. Sheepscot suggests sheep, and somehow Peter Freuchen got confused and made young William a shepherd.

The fact is that this Maine colonial, who was to be knighted by his king, was born plain William Phips and, unbelievable as it sounds, he was the youngest of 26 children by the same mother. His father, besides being just a pioneer settler, had some abi lity as a gunsmith. Like his 21 brothers and 4 sisters, William was raised to clear the land, plant, tend and reap crops, cut timber, shoot game and catch fish. It is said of him that he grew up undisciplined, with a quick temper causing him to fight first and argue afterwards.

Afraid of nothing, he had a reputation as a tough, self-reliant individual. When William Phips was 18, he became apprenticed to a shipwright at Boothbay, and it was there that he learned the trade of a ship’s carpenter. Soon after his 21st birthday he married the daughter of Captain Roger Spencer.

She was already a rich widow and her money enabled Phips to set up his own shipyard on the Sheepscot River, not far from his birthplace. There he built just one small vessel when disaster struck. An Indian raiding party descended upon the little settlement. Phips piled all the terrified inhabitants, including his widowed mother and his brothers and sisters, aboard his ship and sailed them to the safety of Boston. There he at once secured a berth as captain of a ship in the profitable West Indies trade.

It was on those voyages to the West Indies that Ph ips became interested in sunken treasure. Hundreds — yes, thousands — of persons have sought for sunken or buried treasure throughout the Caribbean, and al I along the Atlantic coast to Nova Scotia. Few searchers ever found any treasure. William Phips, the boy from the wilderness of Maine, was one of very few who ever became rich from finding golden treasure on the Spanish Main.

On one of his trips to the West Indies Phips thought he got accurate information about the location of a sunken ship of Spain’s great treasure fleet. Shortly afterward Phips was in London, where he actually secured an audience with King Charles II. Phips was so persuasive with his story of a sunken treasure ship that the king let him have a navy vessel, the “Rose of Angier”, to go on a hunt for a treasure wreck in the Bahamas.

That was in 1683. Phips found no wreck and no treasure on that voyage, but he did reveal the tough customer he was by physically overpowering a mutiny on his ship. Whi Ie the party was ashore on a Bahama island, most of the 7-335 crew hatched a plot to seize the Rose, maroon her captain, and go off as pirates to make up for their lack of treasure loot. Phips learned of the plot and had the few men loyal to him man the ship’s guns. When the mutineers started for the ship, he had the guns turned on them. He told the mutineers that he would maroon them, as they had planned to do to him, but they begged and pleaded, promising to behave themselves, so Phips took them on board again and returned safely to England.

Phips tried to persuade the King to fit out another expedition, this time to look for the richest ship of Spain’s treasure fleet of 1642, which was known to have been lost. Phips heard it had gone down near the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and Santa Domingo). But King Charles had had enough. There was no royal aid this time for William Phips but he did succeed in interesting the Duke of Albermarle, who persuaded a few other noblemen to join him in Phips’ proposed venture. They fitted out two ships, the “James and Mary” and the “Henry of London”, and off they went across the Atlantic under Phips’ command.

They sai led to Puerta Plata, on that part of the island of Hispaniola that is now the Dominican Republic. Whi Ie Phips remained in that harbor on the James and Mary, his chief assistant, Francis Rogers, in the Henry went along the west coast of the island, examining reefs and rocks. One day, in very clear water, Rogers saw far down in the depths such a lovely sea feather that he wanted Phips to have it. So down he sent a diver, who came up with the exciting news that, right where the feather was growing, was what looked like big guns overgrown with coral. Soon other divers located there the hul I of a ship, also encrusted in coral. 30 to 50 feet below the surface of the sea.

She lay on a bank sloping from She lay at a depth which divers of the time could just barely reach. Phips himself soon arrived on the scene and took charge. He sent down divers in constant relays, each man working unti I he col lapsed. Bit by bit they brought up bars and ingots of gold and silver, masses of loose coins, and pieces of gold and si Iver plate. They even salvaged the big brass guns.

When Phips returned to London, he brought with him 27 tons of precious treasure. His cargo was worth t 300,000, easi Iy the equivalent of today’s values of five mi Ilion dollars. It was said to be more than the combined annual income of England’s twenty richest man of the time. As chief backer, the Duke of Albermarle got t 50,000. The King’s share, known as the royal tenth, amounted to h 30,000. Phips himself got t 16,000. In those days even b 16,000 was a great fortune, and Phips was now richer than his wife. The grateful king, who had netted 30,000 without even sponsoring the adventure, knighted this Maine seaman, who ever after was known as Sir William Phips. In 1692 he was appointed the first royal governor of Massachusetts, but was soon recalled to London and accused of misgoverning the colony.

But before all that had happened, Phips had won fame on other counts.

After finding the treasure ship, Phips proceeded to go into the shipping business in Boston. On the corner of Salem and Charter Streets he bui It a big brick house. So it happened that he was right there in Boston when, in 1690, the provincial governor was looking for a competent man to lead an attack on the French stronghold of ‘Port Royal in Nova Scotia. The project was actually of larger scope. The intent was to subdue all Nova Scotia and capture the great citadel at Quebec.

With seven ships manned by 700 men, Phips sailed from Boston on Apri 129, 1690. He went straight to Port Royal on the eastern side of the Bay of Fundy, where the garrison promptly surrendered to Phips’ superior force. The redoubtable Maine adventurer took as prisoners of war the mi litary governor and 38 soldiers. He then sailed back along the coast of Maine toward Penobscot Bay, capturing all French posts on the way, and taking possession of numerous is- lands. He appointed a governor over the conquered territory and returned to Boston with his prisoners and with enough plunder to pay al I the expenses of the expedition.

Flushed with that easy victory, the governments of New England and New York combined to rout out all the French colonies in Nova Scotia and Quebec. Four thousand men were enlisted, many of them from the settlements in Maine. Phips, now promoted to Commodore, commanded the fleet, taking 2,000 men with him. The other 2,000 men under General John Winthrop of Connecticut marched overland to attack Montreal.

In a few weeks both the naval and the land forces were subjecting the citadel of Quebec to a furious bombardment. But the French fought with such courage and skill that the attackers were finally driven in rout to their ships. Phips had another claim to renown, more closely associated with his native Maine. In 1692, as we have said, he was appointed Governor of Massachusetts.

In August of that year, with a force of 450 men, he went to a place about three miles up the river from Pemaquid Point, where he built a massive quadrangular fort, 750 feet in circumference, and named it Fort William Henry.

Built of stone, it cost nearly $100,000. Phips garrisoned it with 60 men and 18 cannon, and for the next 150 years Fort William Henry and its successors would play a prominent part in the history of Maine.

William Henry was not the first fort built on that site. The old wooden stockade erected there by Sir William Andros had resisted many an Indian raid, but was finally destroyed by the tribes aroused in King Phi lip’s War in 1689.

As Provincial Governor, Phips committed the building of the new stone fort to Captains Wing and Bancroft. For several months ten full companies of troops were engaged on the job. The walls were of stone, cemented in lime mortar. The height on the south side fronting the sea was 22 feet, on the land side 12 feet. Eight feet from the ground, where the walls were 6 feet thick, there was a tier of 28 portholes. When finished, it was the most costly and the most impressive fortification north of Boston.

So, when on a summer’s day, you take a ride down to Pemaquid Beach and stroll around the present stone fort, remember that it stands on the site of old Fort William Henry, built 265 years ago by the 26th child of Maine pioneers, a Maine boy who really found sunken treasure on the Spanish Main. And with that salute to Sir William Phips, we must say good night for old times’ sake.

Year: 1958