Philip Dominic Masters ’59

Philip Masters of Beaufort, N.C., died of melanoma Aug. 18, 2007, in the Bronx, N.Y.

Born in Brooklyn, Phil prepared for Princeton at Kew Forest School. He remained at Princeton at least through bicker, when he joined Prospect Club. Sometime thereafter he left to join the Marines. In 1976 he was listed on the University rolls as having “no good address.” He was, however, far from missing on the world stage.

According to his obituary in The New York Times, Phil was “that unusual amateur who succeeds in a professionalized field,” that of undersea archaeologist. Holding a spectrum of jobs “from jewelry salesman to lighting executive to cabdriver to stockbroker,” he used his free time to research the location of pirate shipwrecks. In a book published in 1719, he read accounts of events

off the coast of North Carolina in June 1718 and of a November 1718 pirate’s trial in Charleston, S.C., the same year that Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, was lost. Acting on a hunch, he formed a diving company and in 1996 discovered “one of the most complete wrecks of a pirate ship ever found,” believed by many to be Blackbeard’s.

Phil is survived by three daughters, a son, and five grandchildren.