University of Virginia Library

13. Treasure at the Bottom of the Sea
BY COTTON MATHER (1692)[69]

CAPTAIN WILLIAM PHIPS frequently told his wife that he would yet be captain of a king's ship, and that he should be the owner of a fair brick house in the green land north of Boston.[70] One year Captain Phips arrived with a ship and a tender at Port de la Platta.[71] There he made a stout canoe of a stately cotton tree, large enough to carry eight or ten persons. In doing this he used his own hand and adze and endured no little hardship, living out of doors in the woods many nights together. With this canoe he had his men explore the reefs of shoals thereabouts for they rise to within two or three feet of the surface of the sea, and are so steep that a ship striking on them would immediately sink. Captain Phips had dragged from an old Spaniard in a previous voyage a few facts about this spot, which was supposed to be the very spot where a wreck lay. This wreck was supposed to hold a great treasure.

One day after the men in the canoe were returning to Captain Phips and his large boat with bad news about their day's search, one of the men, looking over the side of the canoe into the calm water, spied a sea feather growing, as he judged, out of a rock. He bade one of the Indians to dive down and fetch this feather that they might carry home something with them. The diver who brought up the feather brought also a surprising story. He said that he saw a number of great guns down in the watery land

where he found the feather. That report of these guns astonished the whole company exceedingly, and at once turned their discouragement for their ill-success into assurances that they had now come to the true spot of ground for which they had been looking.

Upon further diving the Indian fetched up a lump of silver worth perhaps two or three hundred pounds.[72] They prudently marked the spot with a buoy, that they might find it readily again. Then they went back to their captain, who for some time had despaired of anything but bad news. They gave a similar report now, meanwhile slipping the lump of silver under the table where the captain was sitting. After hearing him express his determination to wait patiently they pushed the lump to the spot where he was, then he cried out: "Why, what is this?" With changed countenances the men told him how and where they had got it. Then said Captain Phips: "Thanks be to God. We are made."

So away they went, all hands to work. Now most happily they first fell upon that ruined wreck where the bullion had been stored, and they prospered so in this "New Fishery" that in a little while they brought up thirty-two tons of silver; for now it had come to measuring silver by tons.[73]

Thus once again there came into the light of the sun a treasure which had been groaning under the waters for half a hundred years. In this time there had grown upon the plate a crust like limestone seven inches thick. Besides this incredible treasure of plate in various forms, they fetched up from seven or eight fathoms of water vast riches of gold, pearls and jewels.[74]