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A collaboration of efforts is seeking slave ships from the 1700s and 1800s that might have foundered in the Caribbean waters near Buck Island Reef National Monument and Christiansted National Historic Site/NPS

A multi-agency collaboration is searching the Caribbean waters for wrecks of ships that were bringing slaves to the New World more than 300 years ago, with at least two wrecks discovered and the possibility of another five in the waters near Buck Island Reef National Monument and the Christiansted National Historic Site in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Slave Wrecks Project in the Western Hemisphere got under way in May with the National Park Service working with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and George Washington University.

This work will be used in conjunction with investigations on land sites that are all related to St. Croix’s unique history as an epicenter of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Archaeologists from the organizations are locating and documenting archeological sites associated with the historic trade of enslaved Africans.

Team members, working with park management staff, are using the opportunity to document archaeological sites by means of an extensive marine archeological remote sensing survey program. This effort will directly serve park resource management purposes, while affording opportunities for capacity building, team training, and public outreach and participation for a diverse group of local and national partners (including universities, minority youth outreach programs, and museums) as well as international partners from Africa and the developing world.

So far, 5.3 square miles of waters surrounding Buck Island have been surveyed using a marine magnetometer, which identified over 150 magnetic anomalies. An initial investigation of more than 80 of these anomalies revealed the remains of two shipwrecks and multiple historic anchors that may be associated with as many as five other shipwrecks.

Future work will entail surveying additional areas around Buck Island, investigating and documenting the numerous survey targets, and determining if these discoveries correspond to two known slaving vessels that sank in the late 1700s and early 1800s while bringing cargos of enslaved humans into Christiansted. Plans are being developed for a community archeology project at Christiansted National Historic Site.

On June 2nd, the Slave Wrecks Project team announced the discovery of the São José-Paquete de Africa, a Portuguese slave ship that sank in 1794 off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, on its way to Brazil while carrying more than 400 enslaved Africans from Mozambique. The announcement was made at a historic ceremony held at Iziko Museums of South Africa that garnered a high level of U.S. and international media attention.

To date, only a small percentage of the site has been excavated. A selection of artifacts recovered from the São José wreck, including iron ballast to weigh down the ship and a wooden pulley block, will be loaned by Iziko Museums and the South African government for display in an inaugural exhibition entitled “Slavery and Freedom” at NMAAHC, opening fall 2016. Concurrent exhibits are also planned for the Iziko Museums.

The São José’s voyage was one of the earliest in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from East Africa to the Americas, which continued well into the 19th century. Between 1800 and 1865, over 400,000 East Africans are estimated to have made the journey from Mozambique to Brazil. The ship’s crew and some of the more than 400 enslaved people on board were rescued after the ship ran into submerged rocks about 328 feet from shore. Tragically, more than half of the captives perished in the violent waves, and the survivors were resold into slavery in the Western Cape.

Dr. David W. Morgan, director of the Southeast Archeological Center and regional National Park Service archaeologist for Southeast Region, represented the Park Service in the ceremony in which Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Rooksana Omar, CEO of Iziko Museums, joined in the announcement of the shipwreck’s discovery and the artifact loan agreement.

“Perhaps the single greatest symbol of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is the ships that carried millions of captive Africans across the Atlantic never to return,” said Mr. Bunch. “This discovery is significant because there has never been archeological documentation of a vessel that foundered and was lost while carrying a cargo of enslaved persons. The São José is all the more significant because it represents one of the earliest attempts to bring East Africans into the Trans-Atlantic slave trade—a shift that played a major role in prolonging that tragic trade for decades.”

A memorial service was held at the residence of Justice Albie Sachs, an internationally known human rights and anti-apartheid activist and long term member of the South African Constitutional Court, to honor the memory of those who perished when the ship was lost, and those who survived but were subsequently sold into slavery. As part of the service, a dive team from the U.S., Mozambique, and South Africa symbolically reunited the victims of the wreck with their homeland by depositing earth brought from Mozambique Island—the point of collection for the enslaved forced aboard the São José—in a shell-embroidered basket into the waters at the location of the wreck.

Since 2010, the Slave Wrecks Project has fostered public and scholarly understanding of the role of the slave trade in shaping global history by using maritime archeology as the vehicle for examining enslavement and its far-reaching global impacts. The archaeological investigation of slaver shipwrecks and related terrestrial sites, such as markets in which the enslaved were sold, like at Christiansted NHS, maroon sites and encampments, and free black communities adjacent to Christiansted NHS , promises to provide a new perspective to bear on our understanding of the Trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean trades in enslaved people and on the central role that this process played in constituting the modern world.

This project was conceived as a long-term effort to locate, document, protect, and comparatively analyze sites and locations pertaining to the Trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades, in which archeological and archival research seeks to follow the entire arc of the trade from capture and enslavement in areas of origin in Africa, through the arduous journey to and within slave ships (many of which foundered) to sale at points of destination, and throughout subsequent lives of enslavement characterized by repression, resistance, and ultimately freedom. Future work intends to also research the important but far less well-known process of the internal slave trade within the United States and between North America and the Caribbean.

As a founding member of the Slave Wrecks Project, the National Park Service and its partners have worked with Iziko Museums of South Africa, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, the U.S. National Association of Black SCUBA Divers, and other partners to provide technical assistance to the nations of Mozambique, Senegal, and South Africa. Over the last five years Biscayne National Park, the Submerged Resources Center, and the Southeast Archeological Center have provided training to several groups of African archeology professionals and students at Biscayne National Park and other parks; provided technical assistance in Mozambique and South Africa; and, in the process, greatly expanded the capacity of archeologists and heritage professionals in these countries to conduct maritime archeology and preservation.

The Slave Wrecks Project looks forward to continuing this work in the U.S. Virgin Islands at Christiansted NHS and Buck Island Reef NM, and engaging meaningfully with their descendant communities and other stakeholders over this complex linkage between past and present.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU4HQl-tsCA