clue to a similar discovery. If we could locate even one of 

 these three wrecks, perhaps we, too, would come upon 

 wealth untold. Or if these wrecks had aheady been thor- 

 oughly salvaged of their valuable cargo, we might yet find 

 a most complete collection of armament and artifacts rep- 

 resentative of that early century in the New World. 



At the mention of armament, Ed said, "You don't sup- 

 pose — ? Could those brass cannon we were looking for 

 with Eryholme have come from one of these ships?" 



It seemed very possible. Taking the latitudes from 

 Phips's chart, Ed plotted out the position of the wrecks 

 near the edge of the banks. He found that both the copper 

 and the Genuees wrecks lined up exactly with particularly 

 dangerous shoal reefs along the western edge of the bank, 

 while the plate wreck appeared to be somewhere on Mat- 

 anilla shoal, which forms the curve of the bank to the north. 

 Here his theorizing came to an abrupt halt, for there was no 

 longitude given, and this wide shoal, curving off into Lily 

 bank, presented an area of miles which might contain the 

 wreck. This presented a most exciting possibility. Perhaps 

 the brass cannon we had sought were part of the plate 

 wreck, and perhaps Phips's chart would furnish just the 

 clue we needed to locate the cannon. 



So we decided to include a search of these northern 

 banks in the cruise to the Bahamas we were planning with 

 Jane and Barney Crile that summer of 1953. During two 

 trips which we had made to Nassau and the islands the 

 previous winter, we had garnered possibilities of many 

 likely wrecks. From these we had mapped out a summer 

 adventure which would take us across the banks in the 

 vicinity of the Berry islands to Cay Gorda at the eastern 

 end of Northwest Providence channel. Now we planned 

 to end our excursion with a search for the three wrecks 

 which Captain Phips had charted. 



The Bahama Islands 109 



