I'm glad that you got 'er running, but if you have that much water that the plugs are wet with water, you have a blown headgasket. I'll bet that the continuous cranking with the throttle wide open blew out enough water that you could start it, but the "white smoke" was the engine getting rid of the coolant that had leaked in. With the car running, look for bubbles in the coolant, or cloudy coolant, or a dropped level in the coolant.

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1991 300 SEL
218,000 Km

"Xsbank's rules of mechanical intervention: Always go for the easiest solution first; 90% of what ails a gasoline engine is ignition; After that its all a WAG."