Of all the theories surrounding Oak Island, few are grounded in as much documented history as the case for Sir William Phips. Born on the Maine frontier in 1651, Phips rose from humble origins as a shepherd boy and ship's carpenter to become one of the most remarkable figures in colonial New England. He would recover a fortune in Spanish silver from the bottom of the Caribbean, receive a knighthood from the King of England, lead military campaigns across Nova Scotia, and serve as the first royally appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Along the way, according to a theory first advanced by researchers Graham Harris and Les MacPhie, he may also have built the Oak Island Money Pit.
The Treasure of the Concepción
The story begins with a shipwreck. On September 20, 1641, the Spanish treasure fleet set sail from Havana bound for Seville. Among its vessels was the Nuestra Señora de la Pura y Limpia Concepción, a 600-ton galleon serving as vice-flagship, her hold packed with silver from the mines of Mexico and Potosí alongside silks, porcelain, and jade from the Orient trade. Already leaking from an earlier hurricane and fitted with an undersized rudder, the Concepción was dangerously unseaworthy. Eight days out, a second hurricane struck. The fleet scattered, and the crippled galleon drifted for weeks under a jury-rigged sail before running aground on the Silver Bank reef north of Hispaniola on October 31, 1641. Most of her crew survived, but the vast treasure sank with the ship.
For more than four decades, Spanish, English, and Dutch salvors searched for the wreck without success. Then William Phips entered the picture. A self-taught mariner with a talent for persuasion, Phips convinced the Duke of Albemarle and other English investors to finance an expedition. In January 1687, his divers located the Concepción on the reef. Over the following months, working with local free-divers and improvised salvage equipment, Phips and his crew recovered silver coins, bullion, doubloons, jewellery, and other valuables weighing more than 30 tons. The haul was officially valued at over £205,000, a staggering sum for the period. Phips returned to England a hero. King James II knighted him in June 1687, appointed him Provost Marshal General of the Dominion of New England, and claimed a royal share of the proceeds. Phips received roughly £11,000 for himself, enough to make him one of the wealthiest men in the colonies.
The Glorious Revolution
The political landscape that followed is where the Oak Island theory takes shape. James II, a Catholic monarch deeply unpopular with England's Protestant majority, faced growing opposition from powerful figures determined to remove him from power. Among them was Lord Charles Mordaunt, a political exile living in Holland, who was actively courting William III, Prince of Orange, to invade England and seize the throne. What Mordaunt needed was money to finance an invasion force of over 600 vessels and 40,000 men.
In September 1687, a return expedition sailed from Portsmouth to the Concepción wreck site. The flotilla included HMS Foresight under Sir John Narborough, Phips aboard his vessel the Good Luck, and several other ships. Lord Mordaunt arrived at the wreck in February 1688 with four men-of-war. While the official record claims the second expedition recovered little treasure, the theory advanced by Harris and MacPhie, and later expanded by Oak Island historian Hammerson Peters, argues otherwise. Mordaunt returned to Holland in mid-1688, and within months, the invasion of England was underway. William III's forces landed at Torbay in November 1688, and James II fled the country in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. Mordaunt was soon rewarded with the post of Lord of the Treasury, an appointment Harris and MacPhie considered telling given his well-known inability to manage his own finances.
According to the theory, Phips sailed separately from the wreck site to Nova Scotia aboard the Good Luck, carrying a portion of the recovered silver. On Oak Island, he and his crew constructed the Money Pit to secure the treasure. But the plan went wrong. An underground cavern collapsed during construction, flooding the shaft and trapping the deposit beyond recovery. Phips sailed for England to report the disaster. Over the following decades, the Crown allegedly dispatched engineering teams to retrieve the treasure, but each attempt failed. By the 1750s, the theory holds, the British government decided to booby-trap the island with flood tunnels and defensive shafts rather than allow the lost silver to fall into other hands.
Phips in Nova Scotian Waters
What makes the theory especially compelling is the documented record of Phips operating extensively in the waters around Nova Scotia. In 1690, he commanded a Massachusetts militia force of seven ships and roughly 450 men against French Acadia, capturing Port Royal on May 21 after its governor surrendered. Later that year, he led a larger but ultimately unsuccessful expedition against Quebec. These campaigns demonstrate that Phips was thoroughly familiar with the Nova Scotian coastline and had the maritime resources to reach Oak Island. His known movements between Boston, the Caribbean, England, and the Maritime provinces place him in the right waters at the right time.
Phips went on to become the first royally appointed governor of Massachusetts in 1692, a position secured through the influence of Increase Mather and the favour of the new Protestant monarchs. His tenure was marked by the Salem witch trials, which he initially enabled by establishing the Court of Oyer and Terminer but later shut down after the accusations spiralled out of control. He died in London on February 18, 1695, at the age of 44, leaving behind a legacy that intertwines treasure hunting, colonial politics, and religious upheaval.
The Masonic Thread
A layer of Masonic connections adds further intrigue. During seasons 11 and 12 of The Curse of Oak Island, 32nd-degree Freemason and historical researcher Scott Clarke presented evidence linking Phips to a chain of Masonic figures with direct ties to Oak Island. Clarke noted that Captain Andrew Belcher, a Nova Scotia mariner and Freemason, worked closely with Phips during the Concepción salvage and was later entrusted with inventorying Captain William Kidd's treasure on Gardiner's Island. Belcher's grandson, Jonathan Belcher, served as Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia and was himself a Freemason. Jonathan Belcher's subordinate, Chief Surveyor Charles Morris, another Freemason, created a 1762 map of Mahone Bay that divided Oak Island into 32 lots, making it the only island in the bay to be subdivided in this manner. Clarke argued that this chain of Masonic insiders, spanning three generations, may have known about the treasure on Oak Island and taken deliberate steps to monitor or protect it.
Evidence from the Island
Physical discoveries on Oak Island have lent growing support to the Phips timeline. Archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan, working with the Oak Island team during seasons 11 and 12, identified iron artifacts recovered from Lot 5 whose chemical composition, specifically a high aluminium-to-silicon ratio in trace impurities, matched iron objects from Phips' birthplace and home site in colonial New England. Carmen Legge, the team's blacksmithing expert, examined copper and iron fragments from the same area and dated them to the late 1600s to early 1700s based on their construction and alloy composition. Additional artifacts from Lot 5, including iron straps consistent with a fortified strongbox, copper pieces possibly from a jewellery box or chest, a Tudor-period British coin bearing a portcullis, and 17th-century Venetian trade beads, all fall within the Phips-era window.
Beyond Lot 5, broader evidence from the island aligns with the theory. Several pieces of wood recovered from the Money Pit area have been carbon-dated to the late 1600s and early 1700s. Two human bone fragments found in Season 5, one of European origin and one of Middle Eastern origin, were carbon-dated to the late 1600s through mid-1700s. Core samples from the Oak Island swamp indicate human activity between approximately 1674 and 1700. A 16th or 17th-century English pickaxe has also been recovered. None of these findings prove the Phips theory on their own, but taken together, they establish a consistent pattern of activity on Oak Island during the precise period when Phips was operating in the region.
An Open Case
The William Phips theory remains circumstantial. No document has surfaced placing Phips on Oak Island, and the discrepancy between his reported treasure deliveries and what he may have kept remains a matter of interpretation rather than proof. But the theory has strengths that many competing explanations lack. It is anchored in a verified historical figure with documented access to enormous wealth, proven familiarity with Nova Scotian waters, and a political motive for concealment. The timeline matches the physical evidence. And the Masonic network connecting Phips to later Oak Island history provides a plausible mechanism for the secret to have been maintained across generations. Whether Phips built the Money Pit or merely passed through the same waters that others used before and after him, his story has become one of the most persuasive frameworks for understanding what may lie beneath Oak Island.
