The Hispaniola Plate (1683-1893)

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, just where the famous Sir William Phips fished up the silver from the Spanish Plate wreck . --
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 first half of the present century and anterior to that date mark distinctly the spot where the following story principally takes place. Thirty miles due north of Cape Français, on the north coast of San Domingo, is a reef entitled Bajo de la Plata, or Phips's Plate, while more modern maps simply describe it as Silver Bank.
This is, of course, the spot where Sir William Phips--a now forgotten figure in history--obtained the plate mentioned by Defoe; and, so far as I am aware, there is but one detailed account in existence of how he found and secured that plate. This account is contained in a duodecimo volume entitled Pietas in Patriam : the Life of Sir William Phips, published in London in 1697 anonymously, but guaranteed as accurate by several people who knew him. A production entitled The Library of American Biography, edited by one Jared Sparks, also professes to give an accurate biography of Phips, but it is simply a garbled and mangled copy of the London publication. I should also mention that the Biographia Britannica refers to the expedition in the article on Christopher Monk, second Duke of Albemarle. So does a work of the last century entitled The Lives of the Admirals, by Lawrence Echard, and so also do some encyclopædias; but all of them undoubtedly derive their information from Pietas in Patriam .