Pages 114 - 119.
And so, by 1674, when a tall, muscular second-generation pioneer married the widow of a "well-bred" Boston merchant, Massachusetts had been populated by English men and women for just fifty-three years.
Twenty-three year-old William Phips hailed from what his biographer, Cotton Mather, described as "a despicable plantation" on the
Kennebec River in Maine.  Raised along with many siblings by his mother after the early death of his father, William was barely literate.  He seems to have caught the widow's attention simply because he was an attractively sunburned giant with the gift of the gab.  His new wife, Mary, taught him to read and write, and helped him rise to the stature of ship carpenter.  She probaly kept him on the right side of the law as well, for instead of turning to buccaneering to make his fortune, which was a course many similar men took at the time, Phips made up his mind to hunt for treasure.
On the voyage to the West Indies, he heard about the treasure galleon Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, which had sunk off Hispaniola
(now the Dominican Republic) in 1641.  The story caught his imagination, and he became obsessed with the notion that he was the one who was fated by the gods to uncover this rich trove.  It is testimony to William's eloquence that Mary agreed to fund a voyage to England to talk the King into backing an expedition, and that, even more amazingly, the strange mission succeeded.
Sir John Narborough, a man who had been fascinated by stories of the wreck for a number of years, was swept up by William's compelling
personality, and Charles succumbed, too.  Phips was given a ship that had been captured from the Algerine corsairs, and permission to go off and hunt for treasure.
That first voyage was a strange one.  The King had put a couple of "spies" on board - John Knepp and Charles Salmon - to look after the
royal interests, and Knepp in particular objected to just about everything, starting off by grumbling that the only bed he was assigned was a lid of a chest.  Then the crew, a scruffy bunch who paying their own way in return for a share of the treasure, went ashore in Ireland to provision the ship by shooting sheep.  Even more infuriatingly, they raided the spies' store of liquor, and when Knepp complained about that they talked thoughtfully and openly about marooning him.
When the ship arrived at Boston, Phips hung about the harbor showing off, the honor of commanding "an actual mann of warr" having given him ideas above his station. Despite Knepp's scandalized arguments, he was determined to force all other ships to strike their colors in deference to his "royal" flag, firing across their bows of any captain who failed to do so.  Then, to add insult to injury, he sent over a boat with a bill for six shillings and eightpence for the cost of the shot.  His men got into drunken brawls on shore, but when Phips was summoned by the Governor's constables to do something about it he merely informed them "he did not care a turd for the Governor," and invited the policemen to kiss his arse.  No doubt, he was getting his own back for various snubs the Boston gentry had handed out to him in the past.
Somewhat naturally, Mary was alarmed by these shenanigans, realizing that Knepp's report was going to do her husband a lot of harm once it arrived in England. Consequently, she was insistent that William make certain that Knepp was on board when they
set sail for the Caribbean. Salmon got to hear of this, and when he told Knepp, the spy jumped to the conclusion that if he did sail, he was unlikely to return, and accordingly he made sure he missed the the ship when Phips finally departed.
Shipboard life was no quieter without Knepp.  Phips was forced to put down two attempts at mutiny, for his men decided they would rather turn pirate than hunt for treasure.  The first time, William waded in with boots and fist, and the second time he aimed the ship's cannon at the troublemakers, hollering, "Stand off, ye wretches, at your peril."
Then, Mary's fears were proved well founded, for he was summoned back to London to explain away Knepp's report.  While he was in
England, in 1685, Charles II died, to be succeeded by James II, who no interest in treasure whatsoever.  Phips had to go about finding backers again. He did not have as much luck at first, but then the Duke of Albemarle, encouraged by his madcap wife, the former Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, agreed to put up a quarter of the capital.  At that, Sir John Narborough's interest was
revived, and he agreed to put up an eighth.  He could certainly afford it.  His second wife (another Elizabeth) had brought
him a hugh dowry, to add to the fortune in prize money he had reaped from three successful expeditions against the Barbary corsairs.  The
partners bought a ship, diplomatically named her James & Mary, sold the other shares to five more investors, and off Phips sailed, for a second attempt.
As Daniel Defoe later described it, " 'twas a mere Project, a Lottery of a Hundred Thousand to One odds."  And yet it proved to be the
greatest commercial success of the seventeenth century. For in February 1687, Phip's divers found a coral-encrusted wreck.  Over six more weeks of intoxicated "fishing", he oversaw the retrival of thirty-four tons of treasure, including a chest of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, more the 63,000 pounds of silver, and 347 pounds of plate.  In one fell swoop, he had taken more treasure than Henry Morgan had seized throughout his lifetime, without the loss of a man.
The expedition reached London in June, and Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty, placed it under guard while the treasure was counted and the Duke of Albermarle and the other investors celbrated with Phips and the crew.
The King's tax on the haul came to £20,872, and Phips's portion was £11,000. There was some talk of a yard-long chain of gold that he
had failed to declare, but everyone was too happy to cast aspersions on the hero. Indeed, James II was so delighted he created Phips a knight, so that the farm boy from Maine was now Sir William.  All kinds of fine positions were offered in England, but Phips was anxious to return home to Mary, and so they made him Provost Marshal of New England, just one rank away from governship, which he eventually achieved.
It was a marvelous triumph for a rowdy ship's carpenter who had been taught to read and write by his wife, and had been snubbed by half of Boston. And Mary, who had backed him all the way, was sent a cup of gold worth £1,000 by the Duke and Duchess of Albermarle - and gained the "fair brick house" in Green Lane, Boston, that her husband had promised her, thirteen
tempestuous years before.

Author's references:
Peter Earle:  The Wreck of the Almiranta: Sir William Phips and the Hispaniola Treasure (London: Macmillan, 1979).  The complete story of the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción and the expeditions to recover the treasure, told in entertaining and well-founded detail.

Alexander Laing:  The American Heritage History of Seafaring America (New York: McGraw-Hill for American Heritage, 1974)  A shorter
version of the Phips story.
 

Thanks Bill for providing this!