Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=oCQNAAAAYAAJ
(Harvard College)
"We passed the tropics, as near as we could guess, justwhere the famous Sir William Phips fished up the silver from the Spanish Platewreck."--
Defoe ("Colonel Jack").
To those
OFFICERS OF THE ROYAL NAVY
WITH WHOM I HAVE, FOR SOME YEARS,
SPENT MANY PLEASANT WEEKS ANNUALLY DURING THE
NAVAL MANŒUVRES,
WHILE ACTING AS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF
THE STANDARD,
I VENTURE TO INSCRIBE,
WITH GREAT CORDIALITY, THIS STORY--
PARTLY TRUE AND PARTLY FICTITIOUS--OF
Captain, Sir William Phips, R.N.,
And of
Lieutenants Nicholas and Reginald Crafer, R.N.
Most of the maps of the West Indies published during the firsthalf ofthe present century and anterior to that date mark distinctly the spotwhere the following story principally takes place. Thirty miles duenorth of Cape Français, on the north coast of San Domingo, is a reefentitled "Bajo de la Plata, or Phips's Plate," while more modern mapssimply describe it as "Silver Bank."
This is, of course, the spot where Sir William Phips--a now forgottenfigure in history--obtained the plate mentioned by Defoe; and, so faras I am aware, there is but one detailed account in existence of howhe found and secured that plate. This account is contained in aduodecimo volume entitled "Pietas in Patriam: the Life of SirWilliam Phips," published in London in 1697 anonymously, butguaranteed as accurate by several people who knew him. A productionentitled "The Library of American Biography," edited by one JaredSparks, also professes to give an accurate biography of Phips, but itis simply a garbled and mangled copy of the London publication. Ishould also mention that the "Biographia Britannica" refers to theexpedition in the article on "Christopher Monk, second Duke ofAlbemarle." So does a work of the last century entitled "The Lives ofthe Admirals," by Lawrence Echard, and so also do some encyclopædias;but all of them undoubtedly derive their information from "Pietas inPatriam."
This work I have myself carefully followed, because in it alone are tobe found the descriptions of the "Frygate Algier Rose," her eighteenguns and ninety-five men, of the various mutinies, of Alderly'sarrival on the scene, of the second voyage with the tender, and soforth. Indeed, beyond the requirements of fiction the account isabsolutely an account of what happened until the chase after Alderlyby Nicholas Crafer, when fiction itself becomes predominant. A