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Show H istoncal I Mghlighls if CMna Scott Idaho. (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) Strenuous American WHEN a German bomb fell on the Church of St. Mary Wool-noth Wool-noth in London recently, its explosion explo-sion had repercussions in America. For it not only destroyed the church but it also blasted into oblivion the dust of a "strenuous American" whose career won him the right to that characterization two centuries before Theodore Roosevelt made the use of the term popular. William Phips was his name or, more accurately, ac-curately, Sir William Phips and he was born on February 2, 1651, in Pemmaquid, now the city of Bristol, Maine, but at that time a town in the British colony of Massachusetts I bay. j He was the son of a gunsmith I who is described as a man "in humble hum-ble circumstances." But there was nothing humble about the size of his family. There were 26 children and William was his twenty-first son! At the age of 18 William bound himself to a ship-carpenter and at the end of his term of service went to Boston where he started out on his amazing career. Ten years after he left his birthplace birth-place he was the master of his own ship. In 1684 he set out to recover the lost "Hispaniola Treasure" which lay beneath the clear waters of the Bahamas in a wrecked Spanish galleon. His first search was a failure fail-ure but three years later, under the patronage of the duke of Albemarle U zt y; J . 4$ he recovered bullion, coin and plate worth more than a million and a half dollars. So generous was William Phips and so liberal was he to his sailors that his own share amounted to only $90,000, as compared to the duke of Albemarle's $250,000. King James II, who by law was entitled to one-tenth of all treasure discovered by his subjects, received nearly $150,000 and he was so grateful to the bold young colonial that he made Phips a knight and gave him a commission as high sheriff of New England. In 1690 Sir William commanded an expedition against the French at Port Royal in Acadia which captured cap-tured that place and later in the year he was placed at the head of an expedition of 34 vessels, manned by 1,500 sailors and carrying 1,300 New England militia which attempted attempt-ed to take Quebec. After a siege of several days, the colonials were forced to withdraw and, when nine of his ships were later wrecked, Phips greatly depressed by his failure, fail-ure, returned to Boston. However, he did not suffer any loss in prestige, pres-tige, for when he went to England to urge another expedition against Canada, the king appointed him captain-general and governor-in-. chief of the Massachusetts Bay colony. col-ony. Phips arrived in Boston in May, 1692, and immediately asserted his authority by putting an end to the witchcraft nonsense by organizing a special court to pass upon all such cases. As a result the jails were soon emptied of persons accused of witchcraft, but it won Phips the enmity en-mity of powerful political and ecclesiastical ec-clesiastical forces in the colony. They began making claims of dishonesty dis-honesty and cruelty against him and in 1694 he was summoned to England Eng-land to answer to these charges. Assured by crown officials that he was still in royal favor, he was preparing pre-paring to return to New England to resume his duties as governor when he died suddenly of a malignant fever on February 18, 1695. He was buried beneath the floor of the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth and there his bones lay for 245 years all but forgotten until the explosion of a German bomb reminded his countrymen once more of this early-day "strenuous American." In his day Phips was noted for his height six feet, three inches his mighty fists and his sense of humor. hu-mor. While he was short on "book learning," he was long on signs and superstitions. He believed that seven was his lucky number and, since he was the twenty-first, or the thrice seventh, son, he believed that the three sevens gave him a triple advantage over other men. He must have felt assured of that when, after one failure, he recovered recov-ered so much of the "Hispaniola Treasure." |