de Menneval, a good soldier and a man of character. Such was the country on which Massachusetts had determined to make a descent. Seven vessels, carrying two hundred and eighty-five sailors, and four or five hundred militiamen, were commissioned for the expedition, which was put under the command of Sir William Phipps, "a rugged son of New England," as Parkman calls him. Phipps was, in truth, an early American example of a self-made man. His knighthood, as well as a comfortable fortune, had been won by adventurous and successful service at sea. One of his biographers tells us that he was born "at a despicable plantation on the river Kennebec." His early years were passed in sheep-tending. The attacks of the Indians drove him, in the year 1676, to Boston, where he applied himself to learning the trade of ship-building, and where he also married Mary Hull, widow of one John Hull, a woman several years his senior and of much better education and social position than he. A year later we find him in command of a sailing vessel. A Spanish treasure vessel had been wrecked somewhere off the Bahamas some forty years before, and Phipps felt confident that if he were furnished with a suitable ship he could find the wreck and recover the treasure. He made an application to the English government, and was granted the use of a vessel called the _Algier Rose_. His first expedition was not successful; but on a second attempt he located the wreck, and by the aid of a diving-bell--a comparatively recent invention at the time--recovered treasure to the value of L300,000. He had next to face a mutiny on his vessel, which he only quelled by dint of personal courage and address. On reaching England he received as his own share of the booty L16,000; but James II further recognized his services by creating him a knight. This was in the summer of 1687. Phipps then returned to Boston, and was henceforth a man of substance and influence in the community.