[Shannon Ricles] Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for joining us today for our webinar,
Connecting Ancestral Memory through the History
and Archeology of Slave Ships.
And I am Shannon Ricles,
the Education and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor and Mallows Bay National Marine Sanctuaries.
-: And I'm Mark Lasavio, the Media and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor and Mallows Bay-Potomac River
National Marine Sanctuaries.
-: So this webinar is brought to you today by NOAA's
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary in collaboration with
the North Carolina Office of State Archeology.
-: Partnering since 1975,
NOAA in the state of North Carolina worked to research,
honor, and protect the hallmarks of North Carolina's
underwater cultural heritage, shipwrecks.
These shipwrecks hold information about the ever changing
technologies in cultural and physical landscapes.
They serve as a uniquely accessible underwater museum,
and a memorial to generations of mariners who lived,
died, worked, and fought off our shores.
This is one of many webinars that we'll be hosting
in the coming months and years
for the Submerged NC webinar series, in collaboration
with the North Carolina Office of State Archeology.
-: Monitor is just one of 15 national marine sanctuaries,
and two marine national monuments
in the National Marine Sanctuary System.
And this system encompasses more than 620,000 square miles
of marine and Great Lake waters from Washington State
to the Florida Keys, and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.
Now during this presentation,
all attendees will be in listen only mode.
You are welcome to type your questions for the presenter
into the question box at the bottom of the control panel,
on the right hand side of your screen.
This is the same area you can let us know
about any technical issues that you might be having
that we can help you with.
We'll be monitoring incoming questions and technical issues.
And we'll respond just as quickly as we can.
We are recording this session, and we'll share the recording
with registered participants via the webinar archive page.
And a URL for this web page will be provided
at the end of the presentation.
-: So today it is my absolute pleasure
to welcome Kamau Sadiki from Diving With a Purpose.
Kamau, we will give you presentation.
-: All righty, well.
Thank you, Mark and Shannon.
I'm gonna share my screen here, and we will get started.
So again, thank you Shannon, Mark.
I really appreciate this incredible opportunity
to share with the listeners some of my,
some of my experiences in doing this work.
And thank you to the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary,
and all their staff for this incredible series,
this Submerged NC series been an absolute incredible.
I listened to one or two of them,
and looking forward to more to come.
So, this afternoon we're gonna deal with this topic of.
Well, it's a topic of enslavement,
I'll just say right up front.
And it's a topic that we as a country
has been struggling with for quite a while.
So, I hope this topic,
well, this presentation this afternoon will
give us a step further toward coming closer together as a,
as a one interconnected human spirit family.
So I'm gonna be dealing with the topic of
connecting the history and archeology of
the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa, and the Clotilda shipwrecks,
and trying to bring back into memory
those that was involved in those wrecks.
So let me get started.
Just some quick discussion topics that we gonna,
we gonna sort of deal with here.
Talk a bit about the organization that I work with,
Diving With a Purpose.
I am a lead instructor, and I sit on the board
of that nonprofit organization.
And then just talk a bit about how we have
to decolonize the narrative.
The semantics, the words we use around
this discussion, I think, is very very important.
And maybe go into a little bit more depth
on the centerpiece, what I call
the archeological centerpiece of this whole enslavement era,
and that is the so-called slave ship.
Now I highlight a bit, talk a bit,
and highlight some of those vessels that we know about.
And then most probably the critical piece,
this thing about memory reclamation,
how we get beyond the silence and the shame,
and begin some real deep dialogue and discussions about
this period in this country's history and world history.
And I get closer to this idea that I think
is very important, just us as a human family.
And I talk also about, how do we memorialize this period?
It's a massive, massive historic trauma that has been,
that is residual from this period.
And, but how do we, how do we, as a people,
as human beings memorialize this period?
Which I think is real important.
And then get to the essence
of what this presentation is all about,
the archeology around the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa,
and the Clotilda, and my experience in
engaging and working on both those projects.
And then at the very end, talk about,
specifically about artifacts that I've been engaged with,
and how I've sort of embodied
what's the essence of those artifacts?
And giving voice to that silent,
the silence of those artifacts.
Okay, let's get started.
DWP, we are a nonprofit organization.
We're community focused.
We got started back in 2003.
A very incredible gentleman by the name of Ken Stewart,
and an archeologist at the National Park Service,
Biscayne National Park down in Florida,
they got together and collaborated,
and established this organization.
And we've been moving forward ever since.
We found that there was a particular niche in archeology
that has been overlooked, and that is the shipwrecks
that was involved in enslavement of African people.
And so we thought that may require a special focus.
And so we primarily focus on that,
but we do all sort of work around underwater archeology.
Specifically, we provide training to divers.
Any diver, black, white, it doesn't matter.
We are again, non-profit.
We train them, we immerse them into
a one week training program down in Florida, once a year,
to teach them how to, excuse me,
the underwater archeology basis
of how you document a shipwreck site.
We go through a land based training initially,
and then we get in the water and teach them
those techniques of trilateration, in situ drawing,
how you evaluate and survey a shipwreck site,
and not to do further damage to the site.
You're there to document and extract
the science and information from the site.
But once our work is completed, we develop this,
what we call a site map, or composite map
of the shipwreck landscape, bring it all together.
And this is just one example of,
of the work that we've done, working with the
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary down in Key Largo.
Another critical part of our program is called CARES,
Collective Approach to Restoring our Ecosystems,
and it's focused around coral reef restoration,
conservation survey type work.
These are some of the young people that we work with.
We have a youth program we call YDWP.
And we teach them not only about the coral system,
but the entire marine environment.
And that's probably the centerpiece of our program, although
we do teach adults as well.
Our youth program we're very, very proud of.
And we've had some incredible young folks to,
to come out of the program.
And here they are taking part, taking care of, rather,
a coral tree, and growing these coral specimens.
And eventually they'll be out planted on coral reefing,
to help them recover.
Well, we've done some other, some other archeological work,
not specifically on slave ships, but,
this is an airplane,
a P39 Cobra that went down in Biscayne Bay.
It was flown by a Tuskegee Airmen
by the name of Frank Moody.
Right before the war,
he was doing training up there on Lake Huron.
And his plane unfortunately crashed into the Lake Huron.
And 49 years to the day, I'm sorry, 70 years to the day,
back in April 14, 2015, his wreck was located.
And one of the center pieces of that wreck
was the instrument panel, as you see here, of a P39 Cobra.
It's in a vertical position here.
But when it was located, it was on the lake sea, lake bed.
And we identified it by the call number that was on,
on this particular panel, 221226.
And that number was tied into
the plane that Frank Moody was flying.
And so an archeologist,
state archeologist up in for the state of Michigan.
That's me working on the tail section there.
But the state archeologist up in state,
for Michigan, Wayne Lusardi,
he's the principal investigator on this project,
and have been doing some incredible work on this project.
This is the centerpiece of that wreck.
This is the wing. It's almost fully intact.
This is the port side of the wing.
You can see the Army star on that wing.
Now that's a close up of it.
So it's an incredible specimen.
But Wayne and others are continuing to work on this site,
and recovering some of these artifacts
to put on display in a museum up there.
This is a drawing of some of the work
that Wayne is doing up there.
You can see that tire on the starboard side here.
It's fully inflated.
So it makes, they got some very interesting features
here on this particular artifact.
So this is the team that that did that work.
That's Wayne Lusardi on the left there,
with Eric, Stephanie, myself, Melody,
Jay Haedlger, and Ernie Franklin,
that did the work back in 2015.
And in August of 2021, we memorialized this project
by putting this, this memorial up there,
this black granite obelisk there, Eric Denton,
right to the left of the artifact,
of the memorial that he drove this effort.
And that was an incredible day.
We had Tuskegee Airmen up there.
It was just an incredible beautiful day.
And then the memorial just dominates the plaza up there,
off of Saint Clair in Port Huron, Michigan.
So if you ever up that way, drop in on it.
DWP, again is, we work collaboratively.
And collaboration is a key part of our strategy.
We are part of the Slave Wrecks Project,
we're a global partner of the Slave Wrecks Project.
Slave Wrecks Project is a project under
the Smithsonian National Museum of African American
History and Culture, here in Washington DC.
We have other partners, as well,
under the Slave Works Project.
And those are some internationally,
partners that's listed there.
Excuse me.
But we have other partners we work directly with.
I mentioned the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
We documented a number of ships down in,
in the sanctuary, and continue to do good work with them.
We collaborate with the Society of Black Archeologists.
They were doing a lot of terrestrial work.
And so we introduced them to the water,
and we taught some of their members,
and still teaching some of their members how to scuba dive.
And so they're venturing off into underwater archeology now.
These are two of the shining stars here,
Dr. Justin Donovan, and Dr. Ayana Flewellen.
Justin's at UCLA, and Ayana is at Stanford University now,
doing some incredible work.
And you probably saw the March 2022,
issue of National Geographic, that documented our work.
This is the cover here, with Tara Roberts.
Tara has really lifted up our organization
in an incredible way since her work around.
I should say since she discovered us in the National Museum
of African American History and Culture.
This photograph that had these black female divers
surrounded by, surrounding, I should say, Ken Stewart.
And that really touched her.
And she wanted to find out more, and she went about
just highlighting all the work that we did.
And so she's a, a National Geographic Explorer now,
and was named National Geographic
Explorer of the Year last year.
And she's just been doing incredible work.
So we always sing Tara's praises.
Well, I always say this was the second cover
that didn't quite make it, but Tara definitely can carry
the cover by herself, for sure.
And there was a, you can see Tara's left
lens in her mask there is fogged up.
So they decided to go with the other cover.
That's fine with me.
So they gave me a spot inside the magazine.
Here's a centerfold here that,
that I was highlighted in as well.
So getting to the topic here, recovering their voices,
connecting the history in the archeology
of Sao Jose Paquete de Africa, and the shipwrecks.
So let's start with some,
some decolonization of the knowledge, if you will.
And so I'd like to make this
somewhat very clear that the descendants, the ancestors,
or my ancestors were never, ever slaves.
I'm a descendant of enslaved people.
But we were never slaves, that we were enslaved
under a global system of white supremacy
that has affected us all.
So I sort of changed the language a little bit,
as opposed to saying the transatlantic slave trade,
it was the transatlantic era of African enslavement,
or the transoceanic era of African enslavement.
Because there was activity in other oceans as well.
And what this period represents is,
in Swahili term, it's called maafa.
And we call it a great disaster.
And what happened was, this era of enslavement
arrested the development of the continent of Africa
and it's people in a profound way.
And it has implications, of course,
right up to today, the modern era.
So with that,
I'll put forth these sort of rhetorical questions
that we should kind of ponder as we go along here.
Can you imagine what it would be like
to live without memory of who you are,
where you came from, your history, your culture?
You have no knowledge of that, you try to find out.
And how important that is for your own humanity,
that's the second question, or the posits.
Memory connects a person to his history and his ancestors.
And if you're disconnected from those ancestors and memory,
how does it affect your identity?
Meaning, your meaning, who you are within the human family.
So these are critical questions, I think,
for those that has been victims of,
of this enslavement era I spoke of earlier.
But more importantly, if we,
people that seeks justice, and what's correct and right,
how does it become possible for a nation founded
on democratic principles of freedom and justice for us all,
to allow over 200 years of shadow slavery and bondage
of more than five million people here in the US.
Globally, of course, there was many more.
But how in the shaping of so-called Western civilization
has a global system of brutal bondage
and oppression existed for more than 400 years,
and not be deeply embedded in our collective memory?
If we try to avoid the question,
I think it becomes more and more challenged,
more and more challenging to deal with
these issues of enslavement.
And we can never really heal from it,
and then restore the harm that it's caused.
So we have to get past the silence and the shame,
and restore the collective memory of these activities,
and the cultural heritage.
And there's been efforts to prevent awareness of this,
of this period in our history,
as you see in the press today.
But it's critically important that,
that culture heritage is important for all people,
in order for us to be a whole person.
And without that sense of cultural heritage,
and identity, and meaning,
you walk around incomplete, not whole,
but at least have a hole in your soul,
because of the lack of that awareness.
So we have to go through this reclamation process
of our social memory, all of us collectively,
and restore memory and collective identity.
Because it is the first step in terms of
repairing the harm, in order for us to heal,
and then repair the harm that has been done.
And we do that by being honest with ourselves,
and going through this process of reclamation,
and memory retention, and saying that
ways of knowing, becoming conscious,
it's just not through reading books and so forth, right?
There's oral traditions that has
a lot of embedded knowledge in it.
And we can become aware of those systems
that's not necessarily written, if you will,
and have transfer of knowledge and information
through these oral traditions.
So the enslavement era is filled with a lot of murder,
torture, terror, just atrocious
things that one human being has done to another.
And we have to simply acknowledge that.
The historical record is very clear on that.
And with that acknowledgement, I think we can sit down
and really consciously start moving forward, I hope.
For those that was victim of this process, they resisted,
they resisted in many, many ways,
from the very beginning of the process
to the time that they arrived on these foreign shores.
And a lot of individuals that are part of that history,
the Amistad, Sengbe Pieh.
You might know him as Joseph Cinque.
Nat Turner, of course.
Zumbi of Palmares, down in Brazil,
who resisted for quite a while.
But I think for the descendant community today,
we are still somewhat scarred.
And all of us are basically victims of this process.
As I said earlier, there's been massive historic trauma
that this process has left us with.
And that trauma has been passed on
from generation to generation.
I feel it every time I dive on these wreck sites,
'cause I tend to embody that experience.
But that trauma is played out in behaviors we see daily.
We can see enough in the press.
But it's the water that connects us.
It's the water that brought us here,
and it's the water that connects us.
And Toni Morrison had this expression.
She said, "All water has a perfect memory.
It is forever trying to get back to where it was."
And that's sort of like trying to reclaim that memory
to get back to where we were as a people, as a humanity.
And so this beautiful piece of art here by
this artist out in California, Calida Rawles,
The Space In Which We Travel,
shows these two women underwater.
Are they happy? Are they playing?
Are they enjoying themselves?
Are they in trauma?
Are they shocked? Are they trying to survive?
Are they struggling?
Take note of their arms here.
The arms look like a DNA helix to me.
So, it sort of implies that genetic trauma
that I was speaking of earlier.
All the poets have sort of alluded to this trauma as well.
Derek Walcott, who is a Saint Vincent poet, and a part of,
a stanza from his great poem, "The Sea is History,"
he said, in referencing the Africans who are now
on the bottom of the Atlantic seabed,
that bones soldered by coral to bones are mosaics,
"Mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow."
And Lucille Clifton,
who is the former Poet Laureate of State of Maryland,
she says in her poem, "Atlantic is a Sea of Bones",
"Atlantic is a sea of bones, my bones, my elegant Afrikans
connecting Whydah and New York, a bridge of ivory.
Seabed, they call it."
And even UNESCO has established conventions on how we,
how we identify and protect under water cultural heritage,
not just of artifacts, and things, and structures,
but also human remains.
Because in the Atlantic,
there lies some two million Africans,
not those that died on the continent of Africa,
or those that died once they reached
the islands of the Caribbean,
or the continents of North and South America.
But two million African souls are on the bottom
of the Atlantic seabed, unacknowledged, voiceless,
without any sense of identity,
and never ritualistically been told to rest in peace.
How do we acknowledge those individuals
that went over the sides of these vessels?
The National Association of Black Scuba Divers
put down a memorial on the Henrietta Marie
back in the early '90s,
in just a very small way trying to memorialize them.
But as I said earlier, this slave ship
is a critical piece in this collective memory process.
Marcus Rekider wrote a book called,
"The Slave Ship, a Human History."
And in that, he centered the slave ship
as part of this whole process.
He said that,
and I think it might be instructive to read this.
"The ship was thus central to a profound,
interrelated set of economic changes
essential to the rise of capitalism:
the seizure of new lands,
the expropriation of millions of people,
and the redeployment in growing market-oriented
sectors of the economy, the mining of gold and silver,
the cultivating of tobacco and sugar,
the concomitant rise of long distance commerce,
and finally a planned accumulation of wealth and capital
beyond anything the world has ever seen.
Slowly, fitfully, unevenly, but with undoubted power,
a world market and an international
capitalist system emerged.
Each phase of the process from exploration, to settlement,
to production, to trade, and to this construction
of a new economic order, required massive fleets of ships
and their capacity to transport both
expropriated laborers, and the new commodities."
And at the center of all this was The Guineaman,
or the so-called slave ship.
This shows the route that they took
during the era of enslavement.
But taking those routes were some 12,000 ships
that forcefully transported Africans
to the Caribbean and the New World in the Americas.
Those 12,000 ships took some 40,000 voyages
across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
The historical record sort of shows that,
that was about 1000 plus, about 1,020,
I think, the slave voyages database shows of those vessels.
1,020 was involved in wrecking events.
But if you look at the anthropological,
or archeological record, we probably know about 15 or so.
And just a few of those have been
systematically, scientifically documented.
And this whole process involved,
the academic records today says 12.4 rather consistently.
But I think it's many many, many many more than that.
15 million would be even a conservative number,
from what I've discovered.
But we do know there's been the largest
forced migration in human history of human beings,
if you want to call it a migration.
But again, it has to be qualified as a forced migration.
And this is some data from the
Slave Voyages Database that shows the movement
of these individuals over time, over the centuries.
But more particularly highlighted here,
is the latter part of the 18th century,
and the role that the Portuguese played,
moving some almost six million people
over the time of their involvement.
But more specifically as part of the latter part
of the 17th century, of those six million,
were almost five million individuals that they
brought out of Africa into the Americas.
And here's just a short list of those ships that was,
that we have some awareness of,
some archeological awareness of,
that was involved in the trade.
The ones that's highlighted here are ones that
I personally have worked on.
And again, they're all. Some are in Europe.
Most are in the Caribbean.
There's one even in, off the coast of Perth in Australia,
the Jane Matthews, but it was repurposed,
and used for the purposes,
when it went down off the coast of Australia.
So real quickly, let me highlight
just a few of those vessels, and then we'll talk
specifically about the Sao Jose, and the Clotilda.
The Meermin was a Dutch East Indian vessel
that set sail in 1766.
And it was overtaken by its crew.
This is just a slide to show activities of
the Dutch East Indian Company.
They was involved in a lot of trade
over their period of existence,
including the movement of black bodies.
But, Massavana.
And he was a Madagascan king, if you will.
He organized a rebellion on the Meermin,
and he took over the ship.
And he killed some of the crew.
And the remaining crew and the captain,
they took refuge in the vessel,
back in the stern section and captain's quarters.
Once they took over the vessel,
they recognized that they had a problem.
They didn't know how to sail the vessel,
so they had to negotiate.
And they negotiated with the crew
to take them back to Madagascar.
Once they, the crew agreed,
and once they got to back to land,
where they ended up was off the coast of South Africa.
Massavana had doubts that this was Madagascar.
But he eventually told them that yes, this is Madagascar,
and told him to light three fires if it was Madagascar.
So the captain out of desperation, put a note in a bottle,
threw it out the window, and it came ashore.
There was a militia who had formed when they saw
this mysterious boat off the, on the horizon there.
They picked up the bottle, they lit three fires.
Massavana was excited.
They told them to, let's abandon ship.
They came ashore.
And of course, he was arrested, some of them was killed.
Massavana was eventually put on trial.
And he was imprisoned on
Robben Island here, you see in the upper right.
And this is the Lion Head in the lower left here.
And so keep that in mind when we talk,
in a bit, about the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa.
Massavana eventually died on Robben Island.
We think his grave is on the island there.
A colleague who worked on the Sao Jose,
Yako Bishov, he did some critical work on the Meermin.
I should mention that.
The Zong Massacre, just real quickly highlighted here.
It was trying to get into Jamaica,
misnavigated cause of an incompetent captain,
whatever the reason, and ended up
two or three days away from Jamaica in the Gulf of Mexico.
He figured that he didn't have enough provisions
to get back to Jamaica.
So he decided to throw overboard,
132 African men, women, and children,
and claim the insurance for them once he got to Jamaica.
Another similar incident on the Le Rodeur, pardon my French.
Threw 39 Africans overboard after contacting,
contracting rather, conjunctivitis,
which is an eye disease, blindness disease.
And he began to throw all those individuals overboard.
Another real tragic incident was aboard the Luesden,
which was a Dutch vessel that set sail in 1738.
Trying to get into Surinam, another captain misnavigated,
and decided to turn around and get back to, on course.
But he came out of the river,
the Damari River that he had misnavigated on,
got out of the mouth of the river.
A storm came up, we think it was a hurricane possibly.
He decided to wait out the storm by dropping the bow anchor.
And it swung the ship round,
and struck the stern into the reef.
It started taking on water.
He saw that he was gonna lose the vessel.
And the vessel, the Luesden, was a huge vessel.
It had about 700 individuals on it.
And he told the crew to abandon ship.
But prior to giving those instructions to abandon ship,
he also instructed them to lock down the hatches.
And so over a two or three day period,
as the Luesden broke up, these Africans fell into the water
with no chance of survival, in shackles.
The Guerrero, another incredible story.
Each one of these vessels have incredible stories.
The Guerrero was a pirated vessel that,
actually DWP got its start on, searching for.
41 Africans drowned when it went down
off the coast of Key Largo, back in 1827.
It had about 400, or 350 to 400 Africans on it.
It was, again, a pirated vessel.
And after it got stuck on the reef,
after being chased by the Nimble,
which was part of the African fleet.
The British and Americans was patrolling the waters
to prevent the importation of Africans,
after passing legislation in 1807 and 1808.
They stayed on this reef overnight.
And then the pirates,
they stole another 300 or so Africans,
hijacked them again, eventually got them into Cuba.
About 120 was taken into Key West.
About three years later,
about 90 of them ending up in Liberia.
That's an incredible story.
There's a lot of research and work
has been done on locating the Guerrero.
But definitively it has not been located yet.
And hopefully that will happen in the near future.
This is some of the artifact that's been discovered,
we think that came off, possibly,
the Nimble or maybe even the Guerrero,
particularly the carronnade there to the right.
That was located in the last effort by
the National Park Service in their search for the Guerrero.
We think it might be in the National Park Service footprint,
even possibly the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Higgs Beach, down in Florida.
After the wreck of the Guerrero,
they sailed down to Higgs Beach in Key West.
And some of those individuals
that died on the way down there,
at least a few of them, is buried on Higgs Beach.
But more importantly, there was three major interventions
by the British and the US, in capturing the William,
the Wildfire, and the Bogota, some 15 individuals.
But in the process of transporting those individuals
for some sort of disposition,
about 295 of them had died en route.
And they were buried on Higgs Beach here.
And only recently discovered, in about 2002 or so.
But they have been memorialized with this memorial there,
you see an upper right, upper left rather, image here.
So if you're ever done in the Keys,
please drop by and pay your respects to those individuals.
Okay, the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa.
The Sao Jose Paquete de Africa was a Portuguese vessel
that set sail from Mozambique, South Africa,
heading toward Brazil, and was turning the corner
around the cape, where it crashed into the,
the reefs in South Africa there.
This is about a two second, or two minute video,
that I'd just like to show you.
I'll probably have to narrate it a bit,
if the audio is not good.
But it tells you a little bit about the Sao Jose.
It was done by Susan Pershern of the
National Park Service Submerge Resource Center.
She did a good job in putting it together.
I'm not sure if you're hearing the audio good.
Shannon: Kamau, we're not able to hear the audio.
-: Okay. So, I'll try to narrate a little bit.
So this is the location where the Sao Jose wrecked.
This is Tara, who's part of crew that worked on the site.
Give you a sense of the site,
give you a sense of the dive site where the wreck is.
And so when we was investigating the site,
we had to do a lot of dredging.
She's handing her the dredge head we took down there to,
to work on this site.
Oh, this is a very sandy bottom site,
at about 30 feet or so.
And so we was dredging to remove some of the sand,
to locate some of the artifacts.
And this is showing how we was dredging among the rocks,
and discovering some of the artifacts.
This is me after the dive
where I located this artifact, which we think was a shackle.
And here I'm showing the principal investigator.
That's Yako Bishov there, he's the principal investigator.
Confirming that it was all metal,
that shackle that I located.
And so I'm gonna skip forward here.
I was talking about the experience of diving this wreck,
and how it, that process happened.
But we thank the National Park Service for that short video.
Sorry for the audio there folks, but.
I was hearing it loud and clear.
It was difficult to talk over though,
so hopefully that was understandable.
But Yako Bishov and his team
has done some critical work on this site.
And Yako actually discovered the deposition of
the captain, that documented the wrecking event.
And in that deposition, you see I have highlighted
that he talked about the process has happened.
But at the end he said they decided
to save the slaves, and the people.
He made a clear distinction between
the slaves not being people.
And he also talked about the number
that died in the wrecking event,
and say they tried to save themselves.
I don't know how that was even possible,
when you are shackled.
But anyway, he also mentioned that
those that did survive,
they were sold into enslavement in the Western Cape.
And as I mentioned earlier,
when I was talking earlier about the Lion's Head.
This is the Lion's Head,
and the wreck of the Sao Jose is right off the Lion's Head.
He mentioned that in his deposition.
That's Cherry Rock, right in the middle of the photo there,
that caused the demise of the Sao Jose.
These are just some closeups.
And so you can see, this is South Africa.
You remember the era of apartheid?
This was a very exclusive beach.
You can see some of the exclusive condominiums there.
And that's Cherry Rock to the right of this photo,
where the Sao Jose went down,
and 212 individuals lost their lives.
But during the era of apartheid,
was totally unaware of this tragedy.
So the archeological work was done.
We put in a baseline.
Here you can see some of the sites of points of interest
that was in the wrecking landscape.
There were cannons there, on the site.
There's some of the cannons there.
But some of the artifacts was being recovered.
These are iron ballasts that was recovered from the site.
We know that they were on the wreck based on the, excuse me,
the journal of the ship when it departed Lisbon, Portugal.
This is one of the pulleys that was,
a sail pulley that was taken from the site, the riggings.
This is one of the wooden members,
one of the first thing I saw when I was diving the site.
And the artifact that I sort of discovered,
which was ended up being a shackle.
And we conserved some of those items, as well,
as we brought them up.
But more importantly, this just gives you a sense where,
the captors on the Sao Jose embarked from,
an island of Mozambique, around the island of Mozambique.
This is Mozambique Island here.
This is Mossuril Bay. And upper left is Mossuril District.
We knew this is where they gathered, and for departure.
Once we located the Sao Jose,
we went back to this village and told the,
this village elder and his people, the Makua people
was the primary ethnic group on this vessel,
that we had located their ancestors.
And as I said earlier,
when you're disconnected from your ancestors,
it's a very powerful thing,
and you're always wandering around lost.
So he was profoundly grateful
that we had located their ancestors.
So you can see here,
he's holding a vessel in his hand of cowrie shells.
And he was about to pass
that vessel off to Dr. Lonnie Bunch.
But before he did that, he said,
looked at Lonnie Bunch very sternly and said,
"Once the ancestors direct you
to spill the soil over this wreck,
it will be the first time our people
will have slept in their homeland.
Bring them home. Look in their eyes.
We want you to deliver a message to our loved ones,
that we have never forgotten."
This is the last visual that his ancestors had,
going down this 'ramp of slaves', it's called,
in the Mossuril District,
and looking back at their homeland.
Here he's passing it off to Lonnie Bunch.
Lonnie passed it to me.
And we took it down to this site,
to memorialize what happened at this site.
That's myself. That's who you saw in the video, Tara.
And Yara, who was an ethnic Makua.
We deposited the sands on the site,
to bring his people back home.
And we went back to his village,
and told him that we did that.
And he was very, very pleased that we did that.
Very quickly, we'll wrap up with the discussion
on the Clotilda, and the work around the Clotilda.
You probably heard some portions
of the story of the Clotilda.
In 1860, it set sail from Mobile, Alabama, went to Whydah,
what was known as Dahomey at the time, currently Benin.
And returned on July ninth, 1860
with 110 individuals in its hold.
The whole episode was because of a bet that Timothy Meaher,
the perpetrator of this crime,
and his captain, William Foster,
had made that they can thumb the nose up at the North,
and bring Africans in against the law,
with the risk of being hanged if they were caught.
So Captain Foster said when they returned,
that he offloaded the captives,
that they disembarked along the Spanish River.
And he was instructed to take
the Clotilda upriver and burn it.
Here's a quick graphic you can see.
Lower right is Mobile.
Up middle of the photograph is Africa Town.
And this is 12 Mile Island where, where the Clotilda lie,
to the right, East Channel of 12 Mile Island.
What got this story really going was,
back in January of 2018, a news reporter said that he had
probably located where the Clotilda lie,
but it not ended up being the Clotilda.
So the search for the Clotilda really started in earnest.
And the Alabama Historical Commission called in
some archeologists, particularly with SEARCH,
which is a cultural management organization.
We brought in magnetometers, side scan sonars,
sub bottom profilers to scan the river,
did an extensive search up and down the river,
and zoomed in on several targets
that was near the property of the Meaher's,
who still own property along the river there.
And the side scan sonar image that we collected
was of these images here, that we zoomed in,
as good candidates of the Clotilda.
One we identified as one 1Ba704.
And we, after measurements,
and really analyzing the sonar image.
was pretty confident that it was of the Clotilda.
So this makes it an extremely interesting artifact.
Out of the 12,000 vessels that we mentioned earlier,
this is the only vessel in the historical record
that's basically still intact.
So it's extremely unique,
and very, very archeologically important.
You can see some of the disarticulated members of the wreck.
And these are trees and other things
aligned around the wreck as well.
We identified the center board that was on the wreck.
We knew there was copper sheeting
there was evidence of copper sheeting on the wreck.
Some wood samples that was collected.
We knew it was white oak and pine.
We had the certification record of the vessels,
so we knew, had the specifications.
And based on what we saw in the sonar,
the side scan sonar images,
we just cross referenced them, and it began to line up.
And we had high level of confidence
that it was the Clotilda.
Several books have been written about the Clotilda.
There's just few here, but this one really highlight
the human experience based on the work of Cudjoe Lewis.
This is an image of Cudjoe here on the cover
of "The Barracoon" that was written by Zora Neale Hurston,
a well known anthropologist and folklorist
who interviewed him back in the 1920s.
So we remember them by calling out their names, always,
Oluale Kazoola Lewis,
Rashudis, Redoshi rather, Sally Adams,
Matilda McCrear,
Kupollee Pollee Allen,
Ossa Keeby,
Abache Clara Turner,
Charlie Lewis,
Gumpa Peter Lee.
Those individuals established,
along with some of the others,
Africatown, which still exists today.
This is the chimney of Gumpa Lee.
It's on his old homestead in Africatown.
You can see a major highway there that
State of Alabama put right down through
the middle of the community, and really impacted.
That's the highway on the right here.
You can see Gumpa's chimney
from his homestead to the upper left there.
But there was other homes along this roadway here
that was destroyed when this highway was put in.
And the community has suffered devastating economic
and environmental racism and injustices
over its 160 year existence.
And those issues are being trying to be rectified today.
This is the Church, Union Baptist that established
by Oluale Cudjoe Lewis that's still there today.
This is a more modern image here.
And there's a cemetery across the way
where these ancestors are buried in the cemetery.
And this is a memorial for Cudjoe Lewis there.
But back in May of last year, we went and,
and did some more field work to
really, really collect more artifacts,
and tell this incredible story around the Clotilda.
Here you see some of the divers removing some of the,
the material from the site, those trees.
We collected some 94 pieces of material from the site.
We returned them all except four of those,
and those gonna be conserved.
These are some of the pieces that's being conserved.
The one in upper left there is an incredible piece.
It's a pulley that we believe,
Jim Delgado, who you saw in the previous photo,
principal invest, one of the principal investigators.
This is an incredible piece here that was part,
he thinks it was part of the rudder steering
mechanism for the Clotilda.
And this is, the one in the lower right there,
is part of the hull, the upper hull, the gun wall actually,
where actually those 110 people actually could have
grabbed hold of as they was getting on and off the vessel.
So there's something about these artifacts that,
I think embodies the spirit
of these individuals that was on that wreck.
And something that's embedded in this material culture
that can inform us actually, I mean as archeologists.
I'm not an archeologist but a strong advocate of archeology.
But these materials can definitely
inform us in other ways.
There's another whole dimension
of how these artifacts can speak to us.
Now we do acknowledge them ritualistically,
because we think these sites are very sacred sites.
But more importantly there's an archeologist
by the name of Ian McLeod down in Australia.
He's addressed this issue of the spiritual intelligence,
if you will, of these artifacts.
And he said that in few programs specialized in
conservation, these sites and objects,
there appear to be scant attention given
to the issue of the spiritual dimensions of these reports.
When dealing with ship wrecked sites in which
people have perished, an awareness of
the spiritual elements is vital,
if the best outcomes are to be achieved.
He goes on to say that naturally, proscriptive processes
do not work when managing the intangible.
But unless such issues are addressed,
they will be continuing, a continuing disconnect
between the best outcomes for collections
of traditional owners of cultural information.
Once we are sensitized to capturing
and working with the intangible side of things,
we can be transformed to new realms of understanding.
So concerning the Clotilda,
I had incredible experiences diving on this wreck.
This is some side scan images over time.
But once the site was cleared, this is what it looked like.
On the lower right there, all the debris has been cleared.
In the upper left there you can see the trees
that was placed in the river.
This is going toward the center of the river.
This is the riverbank in the lower right here.
This is the Clotilda wreck itself.
You can see all the debris
that's been cleared from the wreck.
So we are able to identify the elements of the wreck,
the forecast of the front part, the back part,
but more importantly these bulkheads here,
this bulkhead here.
But there was a temporary bulkhead here
that delineated where the hold was for the 110 captives.
It was only 26 by 18 feet or so, if you can imagine that.
No bigger than an average living room in a home,
110 people in that space.
So I knew I was gonna be diving this wreck.
This is an image to show you what conditions
looked like on the wreck.
Visibility was very, very poor.
It was a very hazardous site.
There's sharp objects still protruding from the site.
There's water moccasins as well.
Sometimes there was current.
This time there was very light current.
So I knew I was gonna be diving this wreck,
and experience, and how it was gonna affect me.
So a good friend of mine, Sabrina Johnson,
and I composed what we're calling an ancestral prayer.
And so before I dove this wreck,
I recited this ancestral prayer.
I'd like to just share with you
real quick, and we'll wrap it up.
Ancestors prayer for first dive on the Clotilda.
Reviving the spirits who traveled on the Clotilda.
Beloved ancestors, your voices have been quiet
for 162 years. But your silence ends now.
Your voices and memory are lifted now
from this wretched vessel - through us -
and we welcome you to speak through us.
Our connection will never be broken.
We are because of you. Thank you for reaching out to us.
Blessings to your spirits, always.
And so it touches me every time I read that.
The artifacts from the Clotilda will be housed
in this little small museum that's been erected,
and is scheduled to open on July 8th of this coming summer.
That's the anniversary date of
the disembarkation of the 110 in Africatown.
We're still trying to tell this story,
and reclaim the memory, and we've started what's called
a swim to scuba program down there.
We're teaching young folks how to scuba dive,
working with the swim program in Mobile, Alabama.
We think this is gonna be an incredible project.
And you can imagine descendant children today
diving on the only existing artifact of a slave vessel
where their ancestors came out of,
the hold of the vessel that they came out of.
I'm looking forward to the day we can get these youngsters
diving on that vessel.
It's gonna be a big task, but we think it can be done
over the next several years.
This process has been documented
in several movies over time.
Hopefully you've seen "The Descendant"
that's streaming now on Netflix that tell the story
of the descendant community down in Africatown.
Of course, the exhibitions that I mentioned earlier.
And DWP is continuing this work.
We're gonna continue to work on the Guerrero.
The Wanderer, which was the penultimate vessel, the last,
next to the last vessel that brought
captured Africans into Jekyll Island down in Florida.
The L'Aurore French that's also in
Mossuril Bay, near Mozambique Island.
The Leusden, hopefully we can put some work in on that.
And even the wrecks of Marcus Garvey, Black Star Line,
the first black-owned steam line company in the US.
So with that I'll.
Sorry for rushing a bit, but I'll leave it at that, Shannon.
And the folks want to contact me,
there's contact information.
Shannon: Okay.
-: Thank you so very much.
Shannon: Well thank you, Kamau. That was excellent.
I didn't wanna interrupt you.
I knew we were getting close to the time.
And I thought nope, this is worth hearing.
Thank you. It's a fantastic lecture, really appreciate it.
We're not gonna have a lot of time for questions,
but I do want to just make sure that everybody knows.
Go ahead and enter your questions into the question box,
because we will download these questions
and send them to Kamau.
And he will try to answer as many as he can.
And also, there is his bio,
so be sure you download that from the chat box.
Let me see if I can get the screen to go.
And again, here is his email address.
If you have anything you would like to follow up
with Kamau on, please email him directly.
That's perfectly okay.
So Kamau, we're just gonna take maybe one question.
And I'm going to ask you, maybe a fairly simple one.
I hope so anyway.
How deep is the Clotilda? What's the water depth?
-: Yeah, sure, sure.
As I tried to illustrate with that side scan sonar image,
the bow is pointing upstream, and the wreck itself
is laying up against the riverbank, sort of, underwater.
And so at the bow, depending on the river level,
it's at most six to eight feet deep.
And sometimes over the 160 year period, the river got so low
where the bow was actually sticking out of the water.
And if you go down the wreck, the stern section,
which more toward the center of the river, is about 20 feet.
So it's not very deep.
There's a lot of, there's been barge traffic
up and down that river and,
it's been impacted by some of that traffic, I should say.
But at most 20 feet at the shallow, it was six feet.
Shannon: Okay. That's, yeah, that's pretty shallow.
All right, so.
Now a video recording of Kamau's presentation
will be available on our sanctuary's webinar archive page.
And it's gonna be found at the URL that's listed there.
And in addition, the webinar will be archived
on Monitor's National Marine Sanctuary's website.
You'll just click on the multimedia section
in the toolbar to access the webinar box.
It usually takes about 10 days for us to get these posted.
So stay tuned.
You'll also be able to find future webinars
in that same section.
And don't worry, all of this information
will be sent to you in a follow up email
when the recording is ready for your viewing.
Mark: And make sure you join us on March 7th,
for Allyson Ropp, who will be exploring
the history, archeology, and cultural memory
of piracy in Colonial North Carolina.
If you're big fan of pirates,
you won't wanna miss this webinar.
And, of course, we invite you to follow us on social media
to stay in touch with what's happening on the sanctuary,
including updates about upcoming webinars,
and when this webinar will be posted for you to review.
Shannon: And lastly, as you exit the webinar,
there is a short survey for formal and informal educators.
If you are an educator,
NOAA would really appreciate it if you would take
just a minute or two to complete the survey.
Your answers will help NOAA
develop future webinars to meet your needs.
Your participation is voluntary.
And as always, your answers will be completely anonymous.
So once again, we want to thank you, Kamau,
for an excellent presentation.
And thank everyone for taking the time today to join us.
Have a wonderful day.
And this concludes the presentation for all.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, Shannon. Thank you, Mark.
Shannon: You're welcome.