The Golden Reef of Sir William Phips

by Graham Harris

The story of a man's obsession in searching for one of history's richest shipwrecks. It is also a story of treason and intrigue, for Phips's success in recovering vast wealth from the depths of ocean helped unseat a king. The revolution altered the balance of power between England and France in Europe and, later, in North America. It is an unusual story about an unusual man, for Phips was one of North America's foremost adventurers of the seventeenth century.

About Graham Harris

Graham Harris is a retired civil engineer, born and educated in England. A few years ago, after a career that included stints in the diamond mines of South Africa and the petroleum industry of northern Alberta, he settled down to a life of leisure and writing in Bedeque P.E.I. He has combined his experience in mining and research with his love of the English language to investigate and elucidate several of the great mysteries of the world.

His first work of popular interest, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: A Geotechnical Perspective in 1995 tackled the existence and destruction of the ancient Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. This article expounded the hypotheses that these cities were on the shores of the Dead Sea and the industry and commerce of the cities were based upon the salt and bitumen that were traded with Egypt. An earthquake that ignited underground pockets of methane and created mounds of salt destroyed the cities and provided the basis for the familiar myth of divine retribution.

More recently he has turned is attention to the famed “Money Pit” on Nova Scotia's Oak Island. The second edition of the book he co-wrote with fellow geologist, Les Macphie, Oak Island and It's Lost Treasure has been published recently by Formac Books. This book is contains a summary of the well known history of the various searches for the buried treasure and describes the geological reasons why the treasure remains hidden. Graham has done a great amount of historical research and postulates the source of the treasure and the political reasons it was originally hidden.

In “The Golden Reef of Sir William Phips” (Booksurge) Graham outlines in more detail the intrigue that surrounded the recovery of the valuables aboard the Spanish vessel Nuestra Senora de la pura y limpia Concepción by Sir William Phips and his backers. In this tale, he takes the historical facts and rounds out the characters and events with details and conversations, that while not documented, might very well have occurred just as he describes.

Graham takes on another well known character in his study Treasure and Intrigue: The Legacy of Captain Kidd, (Hounslow). Again, a tale of conspiracy and not-so-lost treasure. Here we learn how the notorious pirate was backed and betrayed by some of the most powerful men in London of the last 17th century. Despite his name having been bandied about as the source of the Oak Island treasure, Graham provides documentation that the treasure he buried in the Indian ocean was recovered shortly after Kidd was hanged by the very men who financed his voyages.