WEBVTT

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[Shannon Ricles] Hi, everyone.

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Thank you so much for joining us today for our webinar,

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Connecting Ancestral Memory through the History

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and Archeology of Slave Ships.

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And I am Shannon Ricles,

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the Education and Outreach Coordinator

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for Monitor and Mallows Bay National Marine Sanctuaries.

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<v ->And I'm Mark Lasavio, the Media and Outreach Coordinator</v>

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for Monitor and Mallows Bay-Potomac River

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National Marine Sanctuaries.

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<v ->So this webinar is brought to you today by NOAA's</v>

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Monitor National Marine Sanctuary in collaboration with

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the North Carolina Office of State Archeology.

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<v ->Partnering since 1975,</v>

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NOAA in the state of North Carolina worked to research,

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honor, and protect the hallmarks of North Carolina's

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underwater cultural heritage, shipwrecks.

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These shipwrecks hold information about the ever changing

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technologies in cultural and physical landscapes.

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They serve as a uniquely accessible underwater museum,

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and a memorial to generations of mariners who lived,

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died, worked, and fought off our shores.

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This is one of many webinars that we'll be hosting

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in the coming months and years

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for the Submerged NC webinar series, in collaboration

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with the North Carolina Office of State Archeology.

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<v ->Monitor is just one of 15 national marine sanctuaries,</v>

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and two marine national monuments

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in the National Marine Sanctuary System.

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And this system encompasses more than 620,000 square miles

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of marine and Great Lake waters from Washington State

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to the Florida Keys, and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.

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Now during this presentation,

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all attendees will be in listen only mode.

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You are welcome to type your questions for the presenter

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into the question box at the bottom of the control panel,

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on the right hand side of your screen.

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This is the same area you can let us know

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about any technical issues that you might be having

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that we can help you with.

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We'll be monitoring incoming questions and technical issues.

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And we'll respond just as quickly as we can.

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We are recording this session, and we'll share the recording

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with registered participants via the webinar archive page.

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And a URL for this web page will be provided

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at the end of the presentation.

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<v ->So today it is my absolute pleasure</v>

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to welcome Kamau Sadiki from Diving With a Purpose.

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Kamau, we will give you presentation.

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<v ->All righty, well.</v>

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Thank you, Mark and Shannon.

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I'm gonna share my screen here, and we will get started.

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So again, thank you Shannon, Mark.

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I really appreciate this incredible opportunity

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to share with the listeners some of my,

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some of my experiences in doing this work.

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And thank you to the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary,

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and all their staff for this incredible series,

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this Submerged NC series been an absolute incredible.

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I listened to one or two of them,

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and looking forward to more to come.

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So, this afternoon we're gonna deal with this topic of.

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Well, it's a topic of enslavement,

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I'll just say right up front.

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And it's a topic that we as a country

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has been struggling with for quite a while.

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So, I hope this topic,

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well, this presentation this afternoon will

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give us a step further toward coming closer together as a,

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as a one interconnected human spirit family.

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So I'm gonna be dealing with the topic of

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connecting the history and archeology of

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the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa, and the Clotilda shipwrecks,

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and trying to bring back into memory

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those that was involved in those wrecks.

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So let me get started.

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Just some quick discussion topics that we gonna,

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we gonna sort of deal with here.

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Talk a bit about the organization that I work with,

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Diving With a Purpose.

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I am a lead instructor, and I sit on the board

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of that nonprofit organization.

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And then just talk a bit about how we have

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to decolonize the narrative.

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The semantics, the words we use around

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this discussion, I think, is very very important.

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And maybe go into a little bit more depth

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on the centerpiece, what I call

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the archeological centerpiece of this whole enslavement era,

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and that is the so-called slave ship.

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Now I highlight a bit, talk a bit,

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and highlight some of those vessels that we know about.

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And then most probably the critical piece,

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this thing about memory reclamation,

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how we get beyond the silence and the shame,

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and begin some real deep dialogue and discussions about

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this period in this country's history and world history.

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And I get closer to this idea that I think

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is very important, just us as a human family.

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And I talk also about, how do we memorialize this period?

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It's a massive, massive historic trauma that has been,

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that is residual from this period.

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And, but how do we, how do we, as a people,

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as human beings memorialize this period?

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Which I think is real important.

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And then get to the essence

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of what this presentation is all about,

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the archeology around the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa,

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and the Clotilda, and my experience in

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engaging and working on both those projects.

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And then at the very end, talk about,

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specifically about artifacts that I've been engaged with,

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and how I've sort of embodied

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what's the essence of those artifacts?

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And giving voice to that silent,

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the silence of those artifacts.

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Okay, let's get started.

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DWP, we are a nonprofit organization.

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We're community focused.

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We got started back in 2003.

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A very incredible gentleman by the name of Ken Stewart,

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and an archeologist at the National Park Service,

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Biscayne National Park down in Florida,

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they got together and collaborated,

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and established this organization.

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And we've been moving forward ever since.

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We found that there was a particular niche in archeology

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that has been overlooked, and that is the shipwrecks

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that was involved in enslavement of African people.

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And so we thought that may require a special focus.

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And so we primarily focus on that,

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but we do all sort of work around underwater archeology.

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Specifically, we provide training to divers.

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Any diver, black, white, it doesn't matter.

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We are again, non-profit.

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We train them, we immerse them into

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a one week training program down in Florida, once a year,

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to teach them how to, excuse me,

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the underwater archeology basis

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of how you document a shipwreck site.

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We go through a land based training initially,

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and then we get in the water and teach them

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those techniques of trilateration, in situ drawing,

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how you evaluate and survey a shipwreck site,

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and not to do further damage to the site.

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You're there to document and extract

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the science and information from the site.

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But once our work is completed, we develop this,

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what we call a site map, or composite map

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of the shipwreck landscape, bring it all together.

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And this is just one example of,

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of the work that we've done, working with the

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Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary down in Key Largo.

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Another critical part of our program is called CARES,

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Collective Approach to Restoring our Ecosystems,

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and it's focused around coral reef restoration,

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conservation survey type work.

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These are some of the young people that we work with.

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We have a youth program we call YDWP.

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And we teach them not only about the coral system,

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but the entire marine environment.

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And that's probably the centerpiece of our program, although

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we do teach adults as well.

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Our youth program we're very, very proud of.

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And we've had some incredible young folks to,

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to come out of the program.

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And here they are taking part, taking care of, rather,

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a coral tree, and growing these coral specimens.

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And eventually they'll be out planted on coral reefing,

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to help them recover.

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Well, we've done some other, some other archeological work,

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not specifically on slave ships, but,

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this is an airplane,

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a P39 Cobra that went down in Biscayne Bay.

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It was flown by a Tuskegee Airmen

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by the name of Frank Moody.

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Right before the war,

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he was doing training up there on Lake Huron.

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And his plane unfortunately crashed into the Lake Huron.

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And 49 years to the day, I'm sorry, 70 years to the day,

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back in April 14, 2015, his wreck was located.

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And one of the center pieces of that wreck

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was the instrument panel, as you see here, of a P39 Cobra.

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It's in a vertical position here.

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But when it was located, it was on the lake sea, lake bed.

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And we identified it by the call number that was on,

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on this particular panel, 221226.

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And that number was tied into

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the plane that Frank Moody was flying.

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And so an archeologist,

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state archeologist up in for the state of Michigan.

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That's me working on the tail section there.

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But the state archeologist up in state,

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for Michigan, Wayne Lusardi,

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he's the principal investigator on this project,

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and have been doing some incredible work on this project.

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This is the centerpiece of that wreck.

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This is the wing. It's almost fully intact.

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This is the port side of the wing.

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You can see the Army star on that wing.

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Now that's a close up of it.

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So it's an incredible specimen.

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But Wayne and others are continuing to work on this site,

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and recovering some of these artifacts

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to put on display in a museum up there.

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This is a drawing of some of the work

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that Wayne is doing up there.

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You can see that tire on the starboard side here.

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It's fully inflated.

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So it makes, they got some very interesting features

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here on this particular artifact.

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So this is the team that that did that work.

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That's Wayne Lusardi on the left there,

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with Eric, Stephanie, myself, Melody,

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Jay Haedlger, and Ernie Franklin,

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that did the work back in 2015.

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And in August of 2021, we memorialized this project

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by putting this, this memorial up there,

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this black granite obelisk there, Eric Denton,

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right to the left of the artifact,

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of the memorial that he drove this effort.

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And that was an incredible day.

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We had Tuskegee Airmen up there.

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It was just an incredible beautiful day.

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And then the memorial just dominates the plaza up there,

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off of Saint Clair in Port Huron, Michigan.

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So if you ever up that way, drop in on it.

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DWP, again is, we work collaboratively.

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And collaboration is a key part of our strategy.

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We are part of the Slave Wrecks Project,

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we're a global partner of the Slave Wrecks Project.

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Slave Wrecks Project is a project under

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the Smithsonian National Museum of African American

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History and Culture, here in Washington DC.

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We have other partners, as well,

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under the Slave Works Project.

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And those are some internationally,

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partners that's listed there.

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Excuse me.

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But we have other partners we work directly with.

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I mentioned the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

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We documented a number of ships down in,

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in the sanctuary, and continue to do good work with them.

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We collaborate with the Society of Black Archeologists.

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They were doing a lot of terrestrial work.

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And so we introduced them to the water,

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and we taught some of their members,

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and still teaching some of their members how to scuba dive.

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And so they're venturing off into underwater archeology now.

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These are two of the shining stars here,

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Dr. Justin Donovan, and Dr. Ayana Flewellen.

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Justin's at UCLA, and Ayana is at Stanford University now,

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doing some incredible work.

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And you probably saw the March 2022,

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issue of National Geographic, that documented our work.

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This is the cover here, with Tara Roberts.

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Tara has really lifted up our organization

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00:13:29.010 --> 00:13:32.823
in an incredible way since her work around.

259
00:13:34.170 --> 00:13:37.500
I should say since she discovered us in the National Museum

260
00:13:37.500 --> 00:13:40.503
of African American History and Culture.

261
00:13:41.880 --> 00:13:45.720
This photograph that had these black female divers

262
00:13:45.720 --> 00:13:49.740
surrounded by, surrounding, I should say, Ken Stewart.

263
00:13:49.740 --> 00:13:51.810
And that really touched her.

264
00:13:51.810 --> 00:13:55.410
And she wanted to find out more, and she went about

265
00:13:55.410 --> 00:13:58.080
just highlighting all the work that we did.

266
00:13:58.080 --> 00:14:02.167
And so she's a, a National Geographic Explorer now,

267
00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:05.730
and was named National Geographic

268
00:14:05.730 --> 00:14:07.770
Explorer of the Year last year.

269
00:14:07.770 --> 00:14:09.420
And she's just been doing incredible work.

270
00:14:09.420 --> 00:14:11.823
So we always sing Tara's praises.

271
00:14:13.920 --> 00:14:17.280
Well, I always say this was the second cover

272
00:14:17.280 --> 00:14:22.280
that didn't quite make it, but Tara definitely can carry

273
00:14:22.560 --> 00:14:25.350
the cover by herself, for sure.

274
00:14:25.350 --> 00:14:28.380
And there was a, you can see Tara's left

275
00:14:28.380 --> 00:14:30.300
lens in her mask there is fogged up.

276
00:14:30.300 --> 00:14:32.910
So they decided to go with the other cover.

277
00:14:32.910 --> 00:14:33.780
That's fine with me.

278
00:14:33.780 --> 00:14:35.790
So they gave me a spot inside the magazine.

279
00:14:35.790 --> 00:14:38.283
Here's a centerfold here that,

280
00:14:39.270 --> 00:14:41.103
that I was highlighted in as well.

281
00:14:42.630 --> 00:14:47.630
So getting to the topic here, recovering their voices,

282
00:14:47.760 --> 00:14:49.290
connecting the history in the archeology

283
00:14:49.290 --> 00:14:52.410
of Sao Jose Paquete de Africa, and the shipwrecks.

284
00:14:52.410 --> 00:14:54.450
So let's start with some,

285
00:14:54.450 --> 00:14:57.603
some decolonization of the knowledge, if you will.

286
00:14:58.650 --> 00:15:00.270
And so I'd like to make this

287
00:15:00.270 --> 00:15:05.270
somewhat very clear that the descendants, the ancestors,

288
00:15:07.500 --> 00:15:10.173
or my ancestors were never, ever slaves.

289
00:15:11.190 --> 00:15:14.610
I'm a descendant of enslaved people.

290
00:15:14.610 --> 00:15:17.700
But we were never slaves, that we were enslaved

291
00:15:17.700 --> 00:15:20.250
under a global system of white supremacy

292
00:15:20.250 --> 00:15:21.753
that has affected us all.

293
00:15:22.978 --> 00:15:24.870
So I sort of changed the language a little bit,

294
00:15:24.870 --> 00:15:28.503
as opposed to saying the transatlantic slave trade,

295
00:15:29.400 --> 00:15:33.000
it was the transatlantic era of African enslavement,

296
00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:36.240
or the transoceanic era of African enslavement.

297
00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:38.793
Because there was activity in other oceans as well.

298
00:15:40.680 --> 00:15:42.543
And what this period represents is,

299
00:15:43.938 --> 00:15:46.287
in Swahili term, it's called maafa.

300
00:15:46.287 --> 00:15:48.990
And we call it a great disaster.

301
00:15:48.990 --> 00:15:53.250
And what happened was, this era of enslavement

302
00:15:53.250 --> 00:15:55.350
arrested the development of the continent of Africa

303
00:15:55.350 --> 00:15:58.560
and it's people in a profound way.

304
00:15:58.560 --> 00:16:01.170
And it has implications, of course,

305
00:16:01.170 --> 00:16:04.383
right up to today, the modern era.

306
00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:07.650
So with that,

307
00:16:07.650 --> 00:16:11.250
I'll put forth these sort of rhetorical questions

308
00:16:11.250 --> 00:16:14.550
that we should kind of ponder as we go along here.

309
00:16:14.550 --> 00:16:16.500
Can you imagine what it would be like

310
00:16:16.500 --> 00:16:18.930
to live without memory of who you are,

311
00:16:18.930 --> 00:16:22.740
where you came from, your history, your culture?

312
00:16:22.740 --> 00:16:26.160
You have no knowledge of that, you try to find out.

313
00:16:26.160 --> 00:16:28.830
And how important that is for your own humanity,

314
00:16:28.830 --> 00:16:31.710
that's the second question, or the posits.

315
00:16:31.710 --> 00:16:35.220
Memory connects a person to his history and his ancestors.

316
00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:39.120
And if you're disconnected from those ancestors and memory,

317
00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:41.670
how does it affect your identity?

318
00:16:41.670 --> 00:16:46.263
Meaning, your meaning, who you are within the human family.

319
00:16:47.220 --> 00:16:49.950
So these are critical questions, I think,

320
00:16:49.950 --> 00:16:53.130
for those that has been victims of,

321
00:16:53.130 --> 00:16:55.503
of this enslavement era I spoke of earlier.

322
00:16:56.460 --> 00:16:58.383
But more importantly, if we,

323
00:16:59.850 --> 00:17:04.113
people that seeks justice, and what's correct and right,

324
00:17:05.250 --> 00:17:07.380
how does it become possible for a nation founded

325
00:17:07.380 --> 00:17:11.010
on democratic principles of freedom and justice for us all,

326
00:17:11.010 --> 00:17:15.450
to allow over 200 years of shadow slavery and bondage

327
00:17:15.450 --> 00:17:18.600
of more than five million people here in the US.

328
00:17:18.600 --> 00:17:21.390
Globally, of course, there was many more.

329
00:17:21.390 --> 00:17:23.790
But how in the shaping of so-called Western civilization

330
00:17:23.790 --> 00:17:26.220
has a global system of brutal bondage

331
00:17:26.220 --> 00:17:30.120
and oppression existed for more than 400 years,

332
00:17:30.120 --> 00:17:33.483
and not be deeply embedded in our collective memory?

333
00:17:34.590 --> 00:17:37.620
If we try to avoid the question,

334
00:17:37.620 --> 00:17:39.840
I think it becomes more and more challenged,

335
00:17:39.840 --> 00:17:43.185
more and more challenging to deal with

336
00:17:43.185 --> 00:17:46.320
these issues of enslavement.

337
00:17:46.320 --> 00:17:48.720
And we can never really heal from it,

338
00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:53.400
and then restore the harm that it's caused.

339
00:17:53.400 --> 00:17:55.500
So we have to get past the silence and the shame,

340
00:17:55.500 --> 00:17:59.490
and restore the collective memory of these activities,

341
00:17:59.490 --> 00:18:00.960
and the cultural heritage.

342
00:18:00.960 --> 00:18:05.960
And there's been efforts to prevent awareness of this,

343
00:18:05.970 --> 00:18:07.713
of this period in our history,

344
00:18:08.940 --> 00:18:11.280
as you see in the press today.

345
00:18:11.280 --> 00:18:14.073
But it's critically important that,

346
00:18:14.073 --> 00:18:19.050
that culture heritage is important for all people,

347
00:18:19.050 --> 00:18:21.810
in order for us to be a whole person.

348
00:18:21.810 --> 00:18:23.640
And without that sense of cultural heritage,

349
00:18:23.640 --> 00:18:25.830
and identity, and meaning,

350
00:18:25.830 --> 00:18:29.190
you walk around incomplete, not whole,

351
00:18:29.190 --> 00:18:31.590
but at least have a hole in your soul,

352
00:18:31.590 --> 00:18:34.773
because of the lack of that awareness.

353
00:18:36.030 --> 00:18:39.150
So we have to go through this reclamation process

354
00:18:39.150 --> 00:18:42.180
of our social memory, all of us collectively,

355
00:18:42.180 --> 00:18:44.820
and restore memory and collective identity.

356
00:18:44.820 --> 00:18:48.750
Because it is the first step in terms of

357
00:18:48.750 --> 00:18:53.750
repairing the harm, in order for us to heal,

358
00:18:54.360 --> 00:18:57.543
and then repair the harm that has been done.

359
00:18:59.250 --> 00:19:02.760
And we do that by being honest with ourselves,

360
00:19:02.760 --> 00:19:06.600
and going through this process of reclamation,

361
00:19:06.600 --> 00:19:09.970
and memory retention, and saying that

362
00:19:11.850 --> 00:19:16.170
ways of knowing, becoming conscious,

363
00:19:16.170 --> 00:19:19.890
it's just not through reading books and so forth, right?

364
00:19:19.890 --> 00:19:21.570
There's oral traditions that has

365
00:19:21.570 --> 00:19:23.400
a lot of embedded knowledge in it.

366
00:19:23.400 --> 00:19:26.710
And we can become aware of those systems

367
00:19:27.660 --> 00:19:30.360
that's not necessarily written, if you will,

368
00:19:30.360 --> 00:19:32.550
and have transfer of knowledge and information

369
00:19:32.550 --> 00:19:34.173
through these oral traditions.

370
00:19:37.380 --> 00:19:40.560
So the enslavement era is filled with a lot of murder,

371
00:19:40.560 --> 00:19:44.070
torture, terror, just atrocious

372
00:19:44.070 --> 00:19:47.160
things that one human being has done to another.

373
00:19:47.160 --> 00:19:49.500
And we have to simply acknowledge that.

374
00:19:49.500 --> 00:19:51.900
The historical record is very clear on that.

375
00:19:51.900 --> 00:19:54.690
And with that acknowledgement, I think we can sit down

376
00:19:54.690 --> 00:19:59.193
and really consciously start moving forward, I hope.

377
00:20:00.060 --> 00:20:02.790
For those that was victim of this process, they resisted,

378
00:20:02.790 --> 00:20:04.830
they resisted in many, many ways,

379
00:20:04.830 --> 00:20:07.170
from the very beginning of the process

380
00:20:07.170 --> 00:20:09.933
to the time that they arrived on these foreign shores.

381
00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:14.850
And a lot of individuals that are part of that history,

382
00:20:14.850 --> 00:20:16.710
the Amistad, Sengbe Pieh.

383
00:20:16.710 --> 00:20:18.510
You might know him as Joseph Cinque.

384
00:20:19.770 --> 00:20:22.080
Nat Turner, of course.

385
00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:24.660
Zumbi of Palmares, down in Brazil,

386
00:20:24.660 --> 00:20:26.313
who resisted for quite a while.

387
00:20:27.420 --> 00:20:30.543
But I think for the descendant community today,

388
00:20:31.860 --> 00:20:33.690
we are still somewhat scarred.

389
00:20:33.690 --> 00:20:36.783
And all of us are basically victims of this process.

390
00:20:38.460 --> 00:20:42.750
As I said earlier, there's been massive historic trauma

391
00:20:42.750 --> 00:20:46.740
that this process has left us with.

392
00:20:46.740 --> 00:20:48.270
And that trauma has been passed on

393
00:20:48.270 --> 00:20:50.640
from generation to generation.

394
00:20:50.640 --> 00:20:54.480
I feel it every time I dive on these wreck sites,

395
00:20:54.480 --> 00:20:57.270
'cause I tend to embody that experience.

396
00:20:57.270 --> 00:21:01.800
But that trauma is played out in behaviors we see daily.

397
00:21:01.800 --> 00:21:03.513
We can see enough in the press.

398
00:21:04.470 --> 00:21:06.423
But it's the water that connects us.

399
00:21:07.350 --> 00:21:09.720
It's the water that brought us here,

400
00:21:09.720 --> 00:21:12.030
and it's the water that connects us.

401
00:21:12.030 --> 00:21:14.160
And Toni Morrison had this expression.

402
00:21:14.160 --> 00:21:16.620
She said, "All water has a perfect memory.

403
00:21:16.620 --> 00:21:21.000
It is forever trying to get back to where it was."

404
00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:23.850
And that's sort of like trying to reclaim that memory

405
00:21:23.850 --> 00:21:28.320
to get back to where we were as a people, as a humanity.

406
00:21:28.320 --> 00:21:31.230
And so this beautiful piece of art here by

407
00:21:31.230 --> 00:21:33.600
this artist out in California, Calida Rawles,

408
00:21:33.600 --> 00:21:35.880
The Space In Which We Travel,

409
00:21:35.880 --> 00:21:38.733
shows these two women underwater.

410
00:21:39.900 --> 00:21:42.540
Are they happy? Are they playing?

411
00:21:42.540 --> 00:21:44.430
Are they enjoying themselves?

412
00:21:44.430 --> 00:21:46.230
Are they in trauma?

413
00:21:46.230 --> 00:21:48.000
Are they shocked? Are they trying to survive?

414
00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:49.000
Are they struggling?

415
00:21:50.310 --> 00:21:51.840
Take note of their arms here.

416
00:21:51.840 --> 00:21:56.103
The arms look like a DNA helix to me.

417
00:21:57.060 --> 00:22:00.750
So, it sort of implies that genetic trauma

418
00:22:00.750 --> 00:22:03.300
that I was speaking of earlier.

419
00:22:03.300 --> 00:22:08.300
All the poets have sort of alluded to this trauma as well.

420
00:22:08.820 --> 00:22:13.820
Derek Walcott, who is a Saint Vincent poet, and a part of,

421
00:22:15.313 --> 00:22:17.850
a stanza from his great poem, "The Sea is History,"

422
00:22:17.850 --> 00:22:22.850
he said, in referencing the Africans who are now

423
00:22:23.190 --> 00:22:25.710
on the bottom of the Atlantic seabed,

424
00:22:25.710 --> 00:22:29.287
that bones soldered by coral to bones are mosaics,

425
00:22:29.287 --> 00:22:32.697
"Mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow."

426
00:22:33.660 --> 00:22:34.710
And Lucille Clifton,

427
00:22:34.710 --> 00:22:38.970
who is the former Poet Laureate of State of Maryland,

428
00:22:38.970 --> 00:22:42.727
she says in her poem, "Atlantic is a Sea of Bones",

429
00:22:42.727 --> 00:22:47.190
"Atlantic is a sea of bones, my bones, my elegant Afrikans

430
00:22:47.190 --> 00:22:50.820
connecting Whydah and New York, a bridge of ivory.

431
00:22:50.820 --> 00:22:52.887
Seabed, they call it."

432
00:22:54.930 --> 00:22:59.430
And even UNESCO has established conventions on how we,

433
00:22:59.430 --> 00:23:02.940
how we identify and protect under water cultural heritage,

434
00:23:02.940 --> 00:23:06.540
not just of artifacts, and things, and structures,

435
00:23:06.540 --> 00:23:09.630
but also human remains.

436
00:23:09.630 --> 00:23:10.950
Because in the Atlantic,

437
00:23:10.950 --> 00:23:14.790
there lies some two million Africans,

438
00:23:14.790 --> 00:23:17.630
not those that died on the continent of Africa,

439
00:23:17.630 --> 00:23:19.184
or those that died once they reached

440
00:23:19.184 --> 00:23:20.518
the islands of the Caribbean,

441
00:23:20.518 --> 00:23:23.310
or the continents of North and South America.

442
00:23:23.310 --> 00:23:25.830
But two million African souls are on the bottom

443
00:23:25.830 --> 00:23:30.830
of the Atlantic seabed, unacknowledged, voiceless,

444
00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:34.830
without any sense of identity,

445
00:23:34.830 --> 00:23:39.573
and never ritualistically been told to rest in peace.

446
00:23:40.410 --> 00:23:42.240
How do we acknowledge those individuals

447
00:23:42.240 --> 00:23:44.343
that went over the sides of these vessels?

448
00:23:48.090 --> 00:23:50.430
The National Association of Black Scuba Divers

449
00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:52.440
put down a memorial on the Henrietta Marie

450
00:23:52.440 --> 00:23:54.090
back in the early '90s,

451
00:23:54.090 --> 00:23:57.453
in just a very small way trying to memorialize them.

452
00:23:58.590 --> 00:24:00.880
But as I said earlier, this slave ship

453
00:24:01.830 --> 00:24:06.830
is a critical piece in this collective memory process.

454
00:24:08.310 --> 00:24:10.867
Marcus Rekider wrote a book called,

455
00:24:10.867 --> 00:24:13.137
"The Slave Ship, a Human History."

456
00:24:13.137 --> 00:24:17.430
And in that, he centered the slave ship

457
00:24:17.430 --> 00:24:19.173
as part of this whole process.

458
00:24:20.610 --> 00:24:21.443
He said that,

459
00:24:21.443 --> 00:24:24.139
and I think it might be instructive to read this.

460
00:24:24.139 --> 00:24:28.110
"The ship was thus central to a profound,

461
00:24:28.110 --> 00:24:30.060
interrelated set of economic changes

462
00:24:30.060 --> 00:24:32.670
essential to the rise of capitalism:

463
00:24:32.670 --> 00:24:34.620
the seizure of new lands,

464
00:24:34.620 --> 00:24:36.360
the expropriation of millions of people,

465
00:24:36.360 --> 00:24:40.110
and the redeployment in growing market-oriented

466
00:24:40.110 --> 00:24:43.260
sectors of the economy, the mining of gold and silver,

467
00:24:43.260 --> 00:24:45.450
the cultivating of tobacco and sugar,

468
00:24:45.450 --> 00:24:49.110
the concomitant rise of long distance commerce,

469
00:24:49.110 --> 00:24:52.500
and finally a planned accumulation of wealth and capital

470
00:24:52.500 --> 00:24:55.143
beyond anything the world has ever seen.

471
00:24:56.310 --> 00:25:00.840
Slowly, fitfully, unevenly, but with undoubted power,

472
00:25:00.840 --> 00:25:02.400
a world market and an international

473
00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:04.470
capitalist system emerged.

474
00:25:04.470 --> 00:25:07.470
Each phase of the process from exploration, to settlement,

475
00:25:07.470 --> 00:25:10.110
to production, to trade, and to this construction

476
00:25:10.110 --> 00:25:14.610
of a new economic order, required massive fleets of ships

477
00:25:14.610 --> 00:25:16.980
and their capacity to transport both

478
00:25:16.980 --> 00:25:21.300
expropriated laborers, and the new commodities."

479
00:25:21.300 --> 00:25:24.480
And at the center of all this was The Guineaman,

480
00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:26.613
or the so-called slave ship.

481
00:25:28.890 --> 00:25:30.810
This shows the route that they took

482
00:25:30.810 --> 00:25:32.523
during the era of enslavement.

483
00:25:33.840 --> 00:25:37.440
But taking those routes were some 12,000 ships

484
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:39.780
that forcefully transported Africans

485
00:25:39.780 --> 00:25:42.330
to the Caribbean and the New World in the Americas.

486
00:25:43.200 --> 00:25:47.250
Those 12,000 ships took some 40,000 voyages

487
00:25:47.250 --> 00:25:49.443
across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

488
00:25:51.030 --> 00:25:53.313
The historical record sort of shows that,

489
00:25:53.313 --> 00:25:57.090
that was about 1000 plus, about 1,020,

490
00:25:57.090 --> 00:26:02.090
I think, the slave voyages database shows of those vessels.

491
00:26:02.623 --> 00:26:05.823
1,020 was involved in wrecking events.

492
00:26:07.230 --> 00:26:09.210
But if you look at the anthropological,

493
00:26:09.210 --> 00:26:14.210
or archeological record, we probably know about 15 or so.

494
00:26:14.940 --> 00:26:17.700
And just a few of those have been

495
00:26:17.700 --> 00:26:20.733
systematically, scientifically documented.

496
00:26:22.140 --> 00:26:23.853
And this whole process involved,

497
00:26:24.810 --> 00:26:28.740
the academic records today says 12.4 rather consistently.

498
00:26:28.740 --> 00:26:31.860
But I think it's many many, many many more than that.

499
00:26:31.860 --> 00:26:35.040
15 million would be even a conservative number,

500
00:26:35.040 --> 00:26:37.140
from what I've discovered.

501
00:26:37.140 --> 00:26:39.930
But we do know there's been the largest

502
00:26:39.930 --> 00:26:44.790
forced migration in human history of human beings,

503
00:26:44.790 --> 00:26:46.380
if you want to call it a migration.

504
00:26:46.380 --> 00:26:50.313
But again, it has to be qualified as a forced migration.

505
00:26:52.643 --> 00:26:54.660
And this is some data from the

506
00:26:54.660 --> 00:26:58.890
Slave Voyages Database that shows the movement

507
00:26:58.890 --> 00:27:02.490
of these individuals over time, over the centuries.

508
00:27:02.490 --> 00:27:04.140
But more particularly highlighted here,

509
00:27:04.140 --> 00:27:06.720
is the latter part of the 18th century,

510
00:27:06.720 --> 00:27:09.240
and the role that the Portuguese played,

511
00:27:09.240 --> 00:27:11.530
moving some almost six million people

512
00:27:12.660 --> 00:27:14.790
over the time of their involvement.

513
00:27:14.790 --> 00:27:16.710
But more specifically as part of the latter part

514
00:27:16.710 --> 00:27:20.130
of the 17th century, of those six million,

515
00:27:20.130 --> 00:27:23.231
were almost five million individuals that they

516
00:27:23.231 --> 00:27:26.613
brought out of Africa into the Americas.

517
00:27:27.840 --> 00:27:31.473
And here's just a short list of those ships that was,

518
00:27:32.340 --> 00:27:33.750
that we have some awareness of,

519
00:27:33.750 --> 00:27:35.970
some archeological awareness of,

520
00:27:35.970 --> 00:27:38.250
that was involved in the trade.

521
00:27:38.250 --> 00:27:41.550
The ones that's highlighted here are ones that

522
00:27:41.550 --> 00:27:43.173
I personally have worked on.

523
00:27:47.700 --> 00:27:50.490
And again, they're all. Some are in Europe.

524
00:27:50.490 --> 00:27:53.430
Most are in the Caribbean.

525
00:27:53.430 --> 00:27:56.430
There's one even in, off the coast of Perth in Australia,

526
00:27:56.430 --> 00:27:59.222
the Jane Matthews, but it was repurposed,

527
00:27:59.222 --> 00:28:01.590
and used for the purposes,

528
00:28:01.590 --> 00:28:05.103
when it went down off the coast of Australia.

529
00:28:06.210 --> 00:28:08.340
So real quickly, let me highlight

530
00:28:08.340 --> 00:28:11.190
just a few of those vessels, and then we'll talk

531
00:28:11.190 --> 00:28:14.343
specifically about the Sao Jose, and the Clotilda.

532
00:28:17.118 --> 00:28:20.137
The Meermin was a Dutch East Indian vessel

533
00:28:21.120 --> 00:28:24.000
that set sail in 1766.

534
00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:27.510
And it was overtaken by its crew.

535
00:28:27.510 --> 00:28:30.480
This is just a slide to show activities of

536
00:28:30.480 --> 00:28:32.520
the Dutch East Indian Company.

537
00:28:32.520 --> 00:28:34.420
They was involved in a lot of trade

538
00:28:35.670 --> 00:28:37.410
over their period of existence,

539
00:28:37.410 --> 00:28:41.103
including the movement of black bodies.

540
00:28:42.180 --> 00:28:43.653
But, Massavana.

541
00:28:44.630 --> 00:28:48.633
And he was a Madagascan king, if you will.

542
00:28:50.490 --> 00:28:53.700
He organized a rebellion on the Meermin,

543
00:28:53.700 --> 00:28:55.053
and he took over the ship.

544
00:28:56.010 --> 00:28:57.753
And he killed some of the crew.

545
00:28:58.650 --> 00:29:01.440
And the remaining crew and the captain,

546
00:29:01.440 --> 00:29:03.090
they took refuge in the vessel,

547
00:29:03.090 --> 00:29:05.613
back in the stern section and captain's quarters.

548
00:29:06.540 --> 00:29:08.010
Once they took over the vessel,

549
00:29:08.010 --> 00:29:10.200
they recognized that they had a problem.

550
00:29:10.200 --> 00:29:11.940
They didn't know how to sail the vessel,

551
00:29:11.940 --> 00:29:13.590
so they had to negotiate.

552
00:29:13.590 --> 00:29:15.240
And they negotiated with the crew

553
00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:17.283
to take them back to Madagascar.

554
00:29:18.510 --> 00:29:21.540
Once they, the crew agreed,

555
00:29:21.540 --> 00:29:24.390
and once they got to back to land,

556
00:29:24.390 --> 00:29:27.123
where they ended up was off the coast of South Africa.

557
00:29:29.070 --> 00:29:32.760
Massavana had doubts that this was Madagascar.

558
00:29:32.760 --> 00:29:36.390
But he eventually told them that yes, this is Madagascar,

559
00:29:36.390 --> 00:29:41.280
and told him to light three fires if it was Madagascar.

560
00:29:41.280 --> 00:29:45.930
So the captain out of desperation, put a note in a bottle,

561
00:29:45.930 --> 00:29:49.170
threw it out the window, and it came ashore.

562
00:29:49.170 --> 00:29:51.810
There was a militia who had formed when they saw

563
00:29:51.810 --> 00:29:56.400
this mysterious boat off the, on the horizon there.

564
00:29:56.400 --> 00:29:58.800
They picked up the bottle, they lit three fires.

565
00:30:00.240 --> 00:30:02.130
Massavana was excited.

566
00:30:02.130 --> 00:30:04.680
They told them to, let's abandon ship.

567
00:30:04.680 --> 00:30:06.360
They came ashore.

568
00:30:06.360 --> 00:30:09.243
And of course, he was arrested, some of them was killed.

569
00:30:10.140 --> 00:30:13.440
Massavana was eventually put on trial.

570
00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:15.160
And he was imprisoned on

571
00:30:17.700 --> 00:30:19.850
Robben Island here, you see in the upper right.

572
00:30:23.129 --> 00:30:25.773
And this is the Lion Head in the lower left here.

573
00:30:26.622 --> 00:30:27.950
And so keep that in mind when we talk,

574
00:30:27.950 --> 00:30:31.113
in a bit, about the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa.

575
00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:35.280
Massavana eventually died on Robben Island.

576
00:30:35.280 --> 00:30:38.973
We think his grave is on the island there.

577
00:30:41.550 --> 00:30:44.403
A colleague who worked on the Sao Jose,

578
00:30:46.708 --> 00:30:50.340
Yako Bishov, he did some critical work on the Meermin.

579
00:30:50.340 --> 00:30:51.990
I should mention that.

580
00:30:51.990 --> 00:30:55.598
The Zong Massacre, just real quickly highlighted here.

581
00:30:55.598 --> 00:30:57.900
It was trying to get into Jamaica,

582
00:30:57.900 --> 00:31:00.270
misnavigated cause of an incompetent captain,

583
00:31:00.270 --> 00:31:02.830
whatever the reason, and ended up

584
00:31:03.690 --> 00:31:07.980
two or three days away from Jamaica in the Gulf of Mexico.

585
00:31:07.980 --> 00:31:10.590
He figured that he didn't have enough provisions

586
00:31:10.590 --> 00:31:12.810
to get back to Jamaica.

587
00:31:12.810 --> 00:31:15.060
So he decided to throw overboard,

588
00:31:15.060 --> 00:31:18.210
132 African men, women, and children,

589
00:31:18.210 --> 00:31:21.273
and claim the insurance for them once he got to Jamaica.

590
00:31:24.060 --> 00:31:29.060
Another similar incident on the Le Rodeur, pardon my French.

591
00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:35.250
Threw 39 Africans overboard after contacting,

592
00:31:35.250 --> 00:31:38.040
contracting rather, conjunctivitis,

593
00:31:38.040 --> 00:31:41.940
which is an eye disease, blindness disease.

594
00:31:41.940 --> 00:31:44.640
And he began to throw all those individuals overboard.

595
00:31:46.350 --> 00:31:49.590
Another real tragic incident was aboard the Luesden,

596
00:31:49.590 --> 00:31:53.643
which was a Dutch vessel that set sail in 1738.

597
00:31:55.050 --> 00:31:59.520
Trying to get into Surinam, another captain misnavigated,

598
00:31:59.520 --> 00:32:04.520
and decided to turn around and get back to, on course.

599
00:32:06.900 --> 00:32:08.433
But he came out of the river,

600
00:32:09.510 --> 00:32:11.730
the Damari River that he had misnavigated on,

601
00:32:11.730 --> 00:32:14.040
got out of the mouth of the river.

602
00:32:14.040 --> 00:32:17.073
A storm came up, we think it was a hurricane possibly.

603
00:32:19.620 --> 00:32:23.070
He decided to wait out the storm by dropping the bow anchor.

604
00:32:23.070 --> 00:32:24.360
And it swung the ship round,

605
00:32:24.360 --> 00:32:27.090
and struck the stern into the reef.

606
00:32:27.090 --> 00:32:28.710
It started taking on water.

607
00:32:28.710 --> 00:32:30.760
He saw that he was gonna lose the vessel.

608
00:32:31.607 --> 00:32:34.350
And the vessel, the Luesden, was a huge vessel.

609
00:32:34.350 --> 00:32:37.470
It had about 700 individuals on it.

610
00:32:37.470 --> 00:32:40.953
And he told the crew to abandon ship.

611
00:32:41.910 --> 00:32:44.400
But prior to giving those instructions to abandon ship,

612
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:47.700
he also instructed them to lock down the hatches.

613
00:32:47.700 --> 00:32:49.140
And so over a two or three day period,

614
00:32:49.140 --> 00:32:52.230
as the Luesden broke up, these Africans fell into the water

615
00:32:52.230 --> 00:32:54.873
with no chance of survival, in shackles.

616
00:32:56.340 --> 00:32:59.010
The Guerrero, another incredible story.

617
00:32:59.010 --> 00:33:01.890
Each one of these vessels have incredible stories.

618
00:33:01.890 --> 00:33:04.470
The Guerrero was a pirated vessel that,

619
00:33:04.470 --> 00:33:07.383
actually DWP got its start on, searching for.

620
00:33:10.020 --> 00:33:12.450
41 Africans drowned when it went down

621
00:33:12.450 --> 00:33:15.723
off the coast of Key Largo, back in 1827.

622
00:33:17.580 --> 00:33:22.023
It had about 400, or 350 to 400 Africans on it.

623
00:33:23.670 --> 00:33:26.550
It was, again, a pirated vessel.

624
00:33:26.550 --> 00:33:29.160
And after it got stuck on the reef,

625
00:33:29.160 --> 00:33:32.070
after being chased by the Nimble,

626
00:33:32.070 --> 00:33:34.230
which was part of the African fleet.

627
00:33:34.230 --> 00:33:36.840
The British and Americans was patrolling the waters

628
00:33:36.840 --> 00:33:39.240
to prevent the importation of Africans,

629
00:33:39.240 --> 00:33:42.810
after passing legislation in 1807 and 1808.

630
00:33:45.660 --> 00:33:48.180
They stayed on this reef overnight.

631
00:33:48.180 --> 00:33:50.070
And then the pirates,

632
00:33:50.070 --> 00:33:54.000
they stole another 300 or so Africans,

633
00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:56.853
hijacked them again, eventually got them into Cuba.

634
00:33:58.410 --> 00:34:01.053
About 120 was taken into Key West.

635
00:34:03.930 --> 00:34:04.950
About three years later,

636
00:34:04.950 --> 00:34:08.940
about 90 of them ending up in Liberia.

637
00:34:08.940 --> 00:34:10.590
That's an incredible story.

638
00:34:10.590 --> 00:34:12.120
There's a lot of research and work

639
00:34:12.120 --> 00:34:15.420
has been done on locating the Guerrero.

640
00:34:15.420 --> 00:34:18.360
But definitively it has not been located yet.

641
00:34:18.360 --> 00:34:21.753
And hopefully that will happen in the near future.

642
00:34:22.590 --> 00:34:25.260
This is some of the artifact that's been discovered,

643
00:34:25.260 --> 00:34:27.270
we think that came off, possibly,

644
00:34:27.270 --> 00:34:29.310
the Nimble or maybe even the Guerrero,

645
00:34:29.310 --> 00:34:32.100
particularly the carronnade there to the right.

646
00:34:32.100 --> 00:34:34.500
That was located in the last effort by

647
00:34:34.500 --> 00:34:38.220
the National Park Service in their search for the Guerrero.

648
00:34:38.220 --> 00:34:42.840
We think it might be in the National Park Service footprint,

649
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:45.903
even possibly the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

650
00:34:48.420 --> 00:34:49.950
Higgs Beach, down in Florida.

651
00:34:49.950 --> 00:34:52.563
After the wreck of the Guerrero,

652
00:34:53.700 --> 00:34:58.410
they sailed down to Higgs Beach in Key West.

653
00:34:58.410 --> 00:34:59.610
And some of those individuals

654
00:34:59.610 --> 00:35:01.170
that died on the way down there,

655
00:35:01.170 --> 00:35:04.200
at least a few of them, is buried on Higgs Beach.

656
00:35:04.200 --> 00:35:09.200
But more importantly, there was three major interventions

657
00:35:10.680 --> 00:35:14.040
by the British and the US, in capturing the William,

658
00:35:14.040 --> 00:35:18.300
the Wildfire, and the Bogota, some 15 individuals.

659
00:35:18.300 --> 00:35:22.200
But in the process of transporting those individuals

660
00:35:22.200 --> 00:35:24.030
for some sort of disposition,

661
00:35:24.030 --> 00:35:27.780
about 295 of them had died en route.

662
00:35:27.780 --> 00:35:30.390
And they were buried on Higgs Beach here.

663
00:35:30.390 --> 00:35:33.633
And only recently discovered, in about 2002 or so.

664
00:35:34.650 --> 00:35:37.680
But they have been memorialized with this memorial there,

665
00:35:37.680 --> 00:35:40.533
you see an upper right, upper left rather, image here.

666
00:35:41.820 --> 00:35:43.470
So if you're ever done in the Keys,

667
00:35:43.470 --> 00:35:47.613
please drop by and pay your respects to those individuals.

668
00:35:49.440 --> 00:35:51.813
Okay, the Sao Jose Paquete de Africa.

669
00:35:54.181 --> 00:35:57.720
The Sao Jose Paquete de Africa was a Portuguese vessel

670
00:35:57.720 --> 00:36:00.390
that set sail from Mozambique, South Africa,

671
00:36:00.390 --> 00:36:05.190
heading toward Brazil, and was turning the corner

672
00:36:05.190 --> 00:36:09.303
around the cape, where it crashed into the,

673
00:36:10.380 --> 00:36:13.890
the reefs in South Africa there.

674
00:36:13.890 --> 00:36:17.520
This is about a two second, or two minute video,

675
00:36:17.520 --> 00:36:18.843
that I'd just like to show you.

676
00:36:18.843 --> 00:36:20.670
I'll probably have to narrate it a bit,

677
00:36:20.670 --> 00:36:22.500
if the audio is not good.

678
00:36:22.500 --> 00:36:25.200
But it tells you a little bit about the Sao Jose.

679
00:36:25.200 --> 00:36:28.050
It was done by Susan Pershern of the

680
00:36:28.050 --> 00:36:32.580
National Park Service Submerge Resource Center.

681
00:36:32.580 --> 00:36:34.713
She did a good job in putting it together.

682
00:36:51.090 --> 00:36:53.390
I'm not sure if you're hearing the audio good.

683
00:36:55.410 --> 00:36:58.230
<v Shannon>Kamau, we're not able to hear the audio.</v>

684
00:36:58.230 --> 00:37:00.633
<v ->Okay. So, I'll try to narrate a little bit.</v>

685
00:37:01.530 --> 00:37:05.763
So this is the location where the Sao Jose wrecked.

686
00:37:07.380 --> 00:37:12.380
This is Tara, who's part of crew that worked on the site.

687
00:37:13.650 --> 00:37:15.363
Give you a sense of the site,

688
00:37:17.670 --> 00:37:20.463
give you a sense of the dive site where the wreck is.

689
00:37:26.015 --> 00:37:27.630
And so when we was investigating the site,

690
00:37:27.630 --> 00:37:29.010
we had to do a lot of dredging.

691
00:37:29.010 --> 00:37:33.390
She's handing her the dredge head we took down there to,

692
00:37:33.390 --> 00:37:34.893
to work on this site.

693
00:37:39.750 --> 00:37:41.910
Oh, this is a very sandy bottom site,

694
00:37:41.910 --> 00:37:44.940
at about 30 feet or so.

695
00:37:44.940 --> 00:37:48.510
And so we was dredging to remove some of the sand,

696
00:37:48.510 --> 00:37:50.643
to locate some of the artifacts.

697
00:37:54.810 --> 00:37:58.470
And this is showing how we was dredging among the rocks,

698
00:37:58.470 --> 00:38:00.723
and discovering some of the artifacts.

699
00:38:02.670 --> 00:38:04.420
This is me after the dive

700
00:38:06.600 --> 00:38:10.197
where I located this artifact, which we think was a shackle.

701
00:38:21.060 --> 00:38:23.460
And here I'm showing the principal investigator.

702
00:38:23.460 --> 00:38:27.630
That's Yako Bishov there, he's the principal investigator.

703
00:38:27.630 --> 00:38:30.630
Confirming that it was all metal,

704
00:38:30.630 --> 00:38:32.973
that shackle that I located.

705
00:38:43.773 --> 00:38:46.800
And so I'm gonna skip forward here.

706
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:50.400
I was talking about the experience of diving this wreck,

707
00:38:50.400 --> 00:38:53.250
and how it, that process happened.

708
00:38:53.250 --> 00:38:57.693
But we thank the National Park Service for that short video.

709
00:38:59.370 --> 00:39:01.593
Sorry for the audio there folks, but.

710
00:39:02.970 --> 00:39:04.230
I was hearing it loud and clear.

711
00:39:04.230 --> 00:39:05.910
It was difficult to talk over though,

712
00:39:05.910 --> 00:39:08.100
so hopefully that was understandable.

713
00:39:08.100 --> 00:39:09.660
But Yako Bishov and his team

714
00:39:09.660 --> 00:39:12.000
has done some critical work on this site.

715
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:14.340
And Yako actually discovered the deposition of

716
00:39:14.340 --> 00:39:19.340
the captain, that documented the wrecking event.

717
00:39:19.560 --> 00:39:21.540
And in that deposition, you see I have highlighted

718
00:39:21.540 --> 00:39:23.880
that he talked about the process has happened.

719
00:39:23.880 --> 00:39:25.890
But at the end he said they decided

720
00:39:25.890 --> 00:39:28.530
to save the slaves, and the people.

721
00:39:28.530 --> 00:39:30.390
He made a clear distinction between

722
00:39:30.390 --> 00:39:32.403
the slaves not being people.

723
00:39:33.301 --> 00:39:34.710
And he also talked about the number

724
00:39:34.710 --> 00:39:37.860
that died in the wrecking event,

725
00:39:37.860 --> 00:39:39.690
and say they tried to save themselves.

726
00:39:39.690 --> 00:39:41.690
I don't know how that was even possible,

727
00:39:43.350 --> 00:39:44.553
when you are shackled.

728
00:39:45.450 --> 00:39:47.760
But anyway, he also mentioned that

729
00:39:47.760 --> 00:39:48.900
those that did survive,

730
00:39:48.900 --> 00:39:52.410
they were sold into enslavement in the Western Cape.

731
00:39:52.410 --> 00:39:53.610
And as I mentioned earlier,

732
00:39:53.610 --> 00:39:56.370
when I was talking earlier about the Lion's Head.

733
00:39:56.370 --> 00:39:57.597
This is the Lion's Head,

734
00:39:57.597 --> 00:40:01.380
and the wreck of the Sao Jose is right off the Lion's Head.

735
00:40:01.380 --> 00:40:03.780
He mentioned that in his deposition.

736
00:40:03.780 --> 00:40:07.500
That's Cherry Rock, right in the middle of the photo there,

737
00:40:07.500 --> 00:40:09.693
that caused the demise of the Sao Jose.

738
00:40:10.650 --> 00:40:12.600
These are just some closeups.

739
00:40:12.600 --> 00:40:16.350
And so you can see, this is South Africa.

740
00:40:16.350 --> 00:40:18.450
You remember the era of apartheid?

741
00:40:18.450 --> 00:40:20.010
This was a very exclusive beach.

742
00:40:20.010 --> 00:40:23.070
You can see some of the exclusive condominiums there.

743
00:40:23.070 --> 00:40:25.980
And that's Cherry Rock to the right of this photo,

744
00:40:25.980 --> 00:40:27.447
where the Sao Jose went down,

745
00:40:27.447 --> 00:40:30.330
and 212 individuals lost their lives.

746
00:40:30.330 --> 00:40:32.580
But during the era of apartheid,

747
00:40:32.580 --> 00:40:36.120
was totally unaware of this tragedy.

748
00:40:36.120 --> 00:40:38.580
So the archeological work was done.

749
00:40:38.580 --> 00:40:40.530
We put in a baseline.

750
00:40:40.530 --> 00:40:44.670
Here you can see some of the sites of points of interest

751
00:40:44.670 --> 00:40:46.770
that was in the wrecking landscape.

752
00:40:46.770 --> 00:40:49.403
There were cannons there, on the site.

753
00:40:49.403 --> 00:40:51.180
There's some of the cannons there.

754
00:40:51.180 --> 00:40:54.150
But some of the artifacts was being recovered.

755
00:40:54.150 --> 00:40:58.350
These are iron ballasts that was recovered from the site.

756
00:40:58.350 --> 00:41:02.490
We know that they were on the wreck based on the, excuse me,

757
00:41:02.490 --> 00:41:06.303
the journal of the ship when it departed Lisbon, Portugal.

758
00:41:07.920 --> 00:41:10.380
This is one of the pulleys that was,

759
00:41:10.380 --> 00:41:13.890
a sail pulley that was taken from the site, the riggings.

760
00:41:13.890 --> 00:41:15.270
This is one of the wooden members,

761
00:41:15.270 --> 00:41:18.070
one of the first thing I saw when I was diving the site.

762
00:41:19.984 --> 00:41:22.170
And the artifact that I sort of discovered,

763
00:41:22.170 --> 00:41:24.510
which was ended up being a shackle.

764
00:41:24.510 --> 00:41:28.091
And we conserved some of those items, as well,

765
00:41:28.091 --> 00:41:29.523
as we brought them up.

766
00:41:30.750 --> 00:41:33.780
But more importantly, this just gives you a sense where,

767
00:41:33.780 --> 00:41:37.230
the captors on the Sao Jose embarked from,

768
00:41:37.230 --> 00:41:40.980
an island of Mozambique, around the island of Mozambique.

769
00:41:40.980 --> 00:41:43.170
This is Mozambique Island here.

770
00:41:43.170 --> 00:41:48.170
This is Mossuril Bay. And upper left is Mossuril District.

771
00:41:48.180 --> 00:41:52.263
We knew this is where they gathered, and for departure.

772
00:41:55.710 --> 00:41:59.100
Once we located the Sao Jose,

773
00:41:59.100 --> 00:42:01.980
we went back to this village and told the,

774
00:42:01.980 --> 00:42:04.470
this village elder and his people, the Makua people

775
00:42:04.470 --> 00:42:06.870
was the primary ethnic group on this vessel,

776
00:42:06.870 --> 00:42:10.920
that we had located their ancestors.

777
00:42:10.920 --> 00:42:11.850
And as I said earlier,

778
00:42:11.850 --> 00:42:14.730
when you're disconnected from your ancestors,

779
00:42:14.730 --> 00:42:16.440
it's a very powerful thing,

780
00:42:16.440 --> 00:42:18.480
and you're always wandering around lost.

781
00:42:18.480 --> 00:42:19.890
So he was profoundly grateful

782
00:42:19.890 --> 00:42:23.370
that we had located their ancestors.

783
00:42:23.370 --> 00:42:24.203
So you can see here,

784
00:42:24.203 --> 00:42:27.423
he's holding a vessel in his hand of cowrie shells.

785
00:42:28.290 --> 00:42:29.130
And he was about to pass

786
00:42:29.130 --> 00:42:31.860
that vessel off to Dr. Lonnie Bunch.

787
00:42:31.860 --> 00:42:33.483
But before he did that, he said,

788
00:42:34.380 --> 00:42:37.237
looked at Lonnie Bunch very sternly and said,

789
00:42:37.237 --> 00:42:38.880
"Once the ancestors direct you

790
00:42:38.880 --> 00:42:41.970
to spill the soil over this wreck,

791
00:42:41.970 --> 00:42:43.620
it will be the first time our people

792
00:42:43.620 --> 00:42:46.290
will have slept in their homeland.

793
00:42:46.290 --> 00:42:49.350
Bring them home. Look in their eyes.

794
00:42:49.350 --> 00:42:52.440
We want you to deliver a message to our loved ones,

795
00:42:52.440 --> 00:42:54.477
that we have never forgotten."

796
00:42:55.710 --> 00:42:58.500
This is the last visual that his ancestors had,

797
00:42:58.500 --> 00:43:01.845
going down this 'ramp of slaves', it's called,

798
00:43:01.845 --> 00:43:03.150
in the Mossuril District,

799
00:43:03.150 --> 00:43:05.460
and looking back at their homeland.

800
00:43:05.460 --> 00:43:08.250
Here he's passing it off to Lonnie Bunch.

801
00:43:08.250 --> 00:43:10.380
Lonnie passed it to me.

802
00:43:10.380 --> 00:43:12.480
And we took it down to this site,

803
00:43:12.480 --> 00:43:16.260
to memorialize what happened at this site.

804
00:43:16.260 --> 00:43:20.790
That's myself. That's who you saw in the video, Tara.

805
00:43:20.790 --> 00:43:24.000
And Yara, who was an ethnic Makua.

806
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:27.030
We deposited the sands on the site,

807
00:43:27.030 --> 00:43:29.430
to bring his people back home.

808
00:43:29.430 --> 00:43:30.600
And we went back to his village,

809
00:43:30.600 --> 00:43:32.100
and told him that we did that.

810
00:43:33.112 --> 00:43:36.243
And he was very, very pleased that we did that.

811
00:43:38.850 --> 00:43:41.130
Very quickly, we'll wrap up with the discussion

812
00:43:41.130 --> 00:43:43.923
on the Clotilda, and the work around the Clotilda.

813
00:43:45.900 --> 00:43:48.090
You probably heard some portions

814
00:43:48.090 --> 00:43:49.540
of the story of the Clotilda.

815
00:43:50.780 --> 00:43:55.780
In 1860, it set sail from Mobile, Alabama, went to Whydah,

816
00:43:57.690 --> 00:44:01.470
what was known as Dahomey at the time, currently Benin.

817
00:44:01.470 --> 00:44:04.680
And returned on July ninth, 1860

818
00:44:06.660 --> 00:44:09.780
with 110 individuals in its hold.

819
00:44:09.780 --> 00:44:14.100
The whole episode was because of a bet that Timothy Meaher,

820
00:44:14.100 --> 00:44:16.350
the perpetrator of this crime,

821
00:44:16.350 --> 00:44:18.480
and his captain, William Foster,

822
00:44:18.480 --> 00:44:21.510
had made that they can thumb the nose up at the North,

823
00:44:21.510 --> 00:44:24.060
and bring Africans in against the law,

824
00:44:24.060 --> 00:44:27.990
with the risk of being hanged if they were caught.

825
00:44:27.990 --> 00:44:31.380
So Captain Foster said when they returned,

826
00:44:31.380 --> 00:44:33.330
that he offloaded the captives,

827
00:44:33.330 --> 00:44:37.157
that they disembarked along the Spanish River.

828
00:44:37.157 --> 00:44:39.150
And he was instructed to take

829
00:44:39.150 --> 00:44:41.733
the Clotilda upriver and burn it.

830
00:44:43.710 --> 00:44:46.560
Here's a quick graphic you can see.

831
00:44:46.560 --> 00:44:48.573
Lower right is Mobile.

832
00:44:49.798 --> 00:44:52.740
Up middle of the photograph is Africa Town.

833
00:44:52.740 --> 00:44:57.740
And this is 12 Mile Island where, where the Clotilda lie,

834
00:44:58.740 --> 00:45:02.073
to the right, East Channel of 12 Mile Island.

835
00:45:03.810 --> 00:45:06.510
What got this story really going was,

836
00:45:06.510 --> 00:45:11.510
back in January of 2018, a news reporter said that he had

837
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:14.730
probably located where the Clotilda lie,

838
00:45:14.730 --> 00:45:17.670
but it not ended up being the Clotilda.

839
00:45:17.670 --> 00:45:22.470
So the search for the Clotilda really started in earnest.

840
00:45:22.470 --> 00:45:26.640
And the Alabama Historical Commission called in

841
00:45:26.640 --> 00:45:29.793
some archeologists, particularly with SEARCH,

842
00:45:30.750 --> 00:45:32.670
which is a cultural management organization.

843
00:45:32.670 --> 00:45:35.670
We brought in magnetometers, side scan sonars,

844
00:45:35.670 --> 00:45:38.490
sub bottom profilers to scan the river,

845
00:45:38.490 --> 00:45:41.190
did an extensive search up and down the river,

846
00:45:41.190 --> 00:45:44.220
and zoomed in on several targets

847
00:45:44.220 --> 00:45:46.650
that was near the property of the Meaher's,

848
00:45:46.650 --> 00:45:49.563
who still own property along the river there.

849
00:45:50.580 --> 00:45:54.240
And the side scan sonar image that we collected

850
00:45:54.240 --> 00:45:56.910
was of these images here, that we zoomed in,

851
00:45:56.910 --> 00:45:58.800
as good candidates of the Clotilda.

852
00:45:58.800 --> 00:46:03.060
One we identified as one 1Ba704.

853
00:46:03.060 --> 00:46:04.530
And we, after measurements,

854
00:46:04.530 --> 00:46:06.390
and really analyzing the sonar image.

855
00:46:06.390 --> 00:46:10.083
was pretty confident that it was of the Clotilda.

856
00:46:11.340 --> 00:46:16.233
So this makes it an extremely interesting artifact.

857
00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:21.450
Out of the 12,000 vessels that we mentioned earlier,

858
00:46:21.450 --> 00:46:23.730
this is the only vessel in the historical record

859
00:46:23.730 --> 00:46:26.130
that's basically still intact.

860
00:46:26.130 --> 00:46:27.330
So it's extremely unique,

861
00:46:27.330 --> 00:46:29.493
and very, very archeologically important.

862
00:46:30.360 --> 00:46:33.120
You can see some of the disarticulated members of the wreck.

863
00:46:33.120 --> 00:46:34.650
And these are trees and other things

864
00:46:34.650 --> 00:46:36.753
aligned around the wreck as well.

865
00:46:38.520 --> 00:46:41.940
We identified the center board that was on the wreck.

866
00:46:41.940 --> 00:46:43.350
We knew there was copper sheeting

867
00:46:43.350 --> 00:46:47.160
there was evidence of copper sheeting on the wreck.

868
00:46:47.160 --> 00:46:48.780
Some wood samples that was collected.

869
00:46:48.780 --> 00:46:51.450
We knew it was white oak and pine.

870
00:46:51.450 --> 00:46:53.850
We had the certification record of the vessels,

871
00:46:53.850 --> 00:46:56.836
so we knew, had the specifications.

872
00:46:56.836 --> 00:46:58.736
And based on what we saw in the sonar,

873
00:46:59.700 --> 00:47:01.590
the side scan sonar images,

874
00:47:01.590 --> 00:47:04.560
we just cross referenced them, and it began to line up.

875
00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:06.120
And we had high level of confidence

876
00:47:06.120 --> 00:47:07.653
that it was the Clotilda.

877
00:47:08.670 --> 00:47:11.880
Several books have been written about the Clotilda.

878
00:47:11.880 --> 00:47:15.960
There's just few here, but this one really highlight

879
00:47:15.960 --> 00:47:20.820
the human experience based on the work of Cudjoe Lewis.

880
00:47:20.820 --> 00:47:25.820
This is an image of Cudjoe here on the cover

881
00:47:26.070 --> 00:47:29.970
of "The Barracoon" that was written by Zora Neale Hurston,

882
00:47:29.970 --> 00:47:32.700
a well known anthropologist and folklorist

883
00:47:32.700 --> 00:47:35.430
who interviewed him back in the 1920s.

884
00:47:35.430 --> 00:47:39.496
So we remember them by calling out their names, always,

885
00:47:39.496 --> 00:47:42.126
Oluale Kazoola Lewis,

886
00:47:42.126 --> 00:47:46.537
Rashudis, Redoshi rather, Sally Adams,

887
00:47:48.270 --> 00:47:49.533
Matilda McCrear,

888
00:47:51.459 --> 00:47:53.133
Kupollee Pollee Allen,

889
00:47:54.466 --> 00:47:55.299
Ossa Keeby,

890
00:47:58.230 --> 00:47:59.883
Abache Clara Turner,

891
00:48:01.260 --> 00:48:02.433
Charlie Lewis,

892
00:48:04.650 --> 00:48:06.630
Gumpa Peter Lee.

893
00:48:06.630 --> 00:48:09.150
Those individuals established,

894
00:48:09.150 --> 00:48:10.800
along with some of the others,

895
00:48:10.800 --> 00:48:13.683
Africatown, which still exists today.

896
00:48:14.580 --> 00:48:17.063
This is the chimney of Gumpa Lee.

897
00:48:17.063 --> 00:48:20.940
It's on his old homestead in Africatown.

898
00:48:20.940 --> 00:48:22.770
You can see a major highway there that

899
00:48:22.770 --> 00:48:24.870
State of Alabama put right down through

900
00:48:24.870 --> 00:48:28.050
the middle of the community, and really impacted.

901
00:48:28.050 --> 00:48:29.910
That's the highway on the right here.

902
00:48:29.910 --> 00:48:32.250
You can see Gumpa's chimney

903
00:48:32.250 --> 00:48:34.500
from his homestead to the upper left there.

904
00:48:34.500 --> 00:48:37.350
But there was other homes along this roadway here

905
00:48:37.350 --> 00:48:40.290
that was destroyed when this highway was put in.

906
00:48:40.290 --> 00:48:43.260
And the community has suffered devastating economic

907
00:48:43.260 --> 00:48:46.320
and environmental racism and injustices

908
00:48:46.320 --> 00:48:50.490
over its 160 year existence.

909
00:48:50.490 --> 00:48:53.550
And those issues are being trying to be rectified today.

910
00:48:53.550 --> 00:48:57.060
This is the Church, Union Baptist that established

911
00:48:57.060 --> 00:49:02.060
by Oluale Cudjoe Lewis that's still there today.

912
00:49:02.310 --> 00:49:04.413
This is a more modern image here.

913
00:49:05.460 --> 00:49:07.050
And there's a cemetery across the way

914
00:49:07.050 --> 00:49:10.770
where these ancestors are buried in the cemetery.

915
00:49:10.770 --> 00:49:14.523
And this is a memorial for Cudjoe Lewis there.

916
00:49:15.540 --> 00:49:17.963
But back in May of last year, we went and,

917
00:49:17.963 --> 00:49:20.650
and did some more field work to

918
00:49:21.840 --> 00:49:24.630
really, really collect more artifacts,

919
00:49:24.630 --> 00:49:28.650
and tell this incredible story around the Clotilda.

920
00:49:28.650 --> 00:49:30.960
Here you see some of the divers removing some of the,

921
00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:35.130
the material from the site, those trees.

922
00:49:35.130 --> 00:49:40.080
We collected some 94 pieces of material from the site.

923
00:49:40.080 --> 00:49:43.200
We returned them all except four of those,

924
00:49:43.200 --> 00:49:45.960
and those gonna be conserved.

925
00:49:45.960 --> 00:49:48.570
These are some of the pieces that's being conserved.

926
00:49:48.570 --> 00:49:53.370
The one in upper left there is an incredible piece.

927
00:49:53.370 --> 00:49:55.650
It's a pulley that we believe,

928
00:49:55.650 --> 00:49:58.290
Jim Delgado, who you saw in the previous photo,

929
00:49:58.290 --> 00:50:00.940
principal invest, one of the principal investigators.

930
00:50:03.180 --> 00:50:05.850
This is an incredible piece here that was part,

931
00:50:05.850 --> 00:50:08.790
he thinks it was part of the rudder steering

932
00:50:08.790 --> 00:50:11.343
mechanism for the Clotilda.

933
00:50:13.290 --> 00:50:15.270
And this is, the one in the lower right there,

934
00:50:15.270 --> 00:50:20.270
is part of the hull, the upper hull, the gun wall actually,

935
00:50:20.460 --> 00:50:24.930
where actually those 110 people actually could have

936
00:50:24.930 --> 00:50:27.933
grabbed hold of as they was getting on and off the vessel.

937
00:50:28.890 --> 00:50:30.870
So there's something about these artifacts that,

938
00:50:30.870 --> 00:50:33.150
I think embodies the spirit

939
00:50:33.150 --> 00:50:35.350
of these individuals that was on that wreck.

940
00:50:36.984 --> 00:50:39.850
And something that's embedded in this material culture

941
00:50:42.030 --> 00:50:45.495
that can inform us actually, I mean as archeologists.

942
00:50:45.495 --> 00:50:49.500
I'm not an archeologist but a strong advocate of archeology.

943
00:50:49.500 --> 00:50:51.120
But these materials can definitely

944
00:50:51.120 --> 00:50:52.800
inform us in other ways.

945
00:50:52.800 --> 00:50:54.840
There's another whole dimension

946
00:50:54.840 --> 00:50:57.875
of how these artifacts can speak to us.

947
00:50:57.875 --> 00:51:00.030
Now we do acknowledge them ritualistically,

948
00:51:00.030 --> 00:51:04.080
because we think these sites are very sacred sites.

949
00:51:04.080 --> 00:51:07.440
But more importantly there's an archeologist

950
00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:10.620
by the name of Ian McLeod down in Australia.

951
00:51:10.620 --> 00:51:15.270
He's addressed this issue of the spiritual intelligence,

952
00:51:15.270 --> 00:51:17.370
if you will, of these artifacts.

953
00:51:17.370 --> 00:51:20.130
And he said that in few programs specialized in

954
00:51:20.130 --> 00:51:21.810
conservation, these sites and objects,

955
00:51:21.810 --> 00:51:23.850
there appear to be scant attention given

956
00:51:23.850 --> 00:51:28.850
to the issue of the spiritual dimensions of these reports.

957
00:51:28.920 --> 00:51:30.540
When dealing with ship wrecked sites in which

958
00:51:30.540 --> 00:51:32.790
people have perished, an awareness of

959
00:51:32.790 --> 00:51:34.710
the spiritual elements is vital,

960
00:51:34.710 --> 00:51:38.010
if the best outcomes are to be achieved.

961
00:51:38.010 --> 00:51:42.510
He goes on to say that naturally, proscriptive processes

962
00:51:42.510 --> 00:51:45.180
do not work when managing the intangible.

963
00:51:45.180 --> 00:51:46.860
But unless such issues are addressed,

964
00:51:46.860 --> 00:51:49.890
they will be continuing, a continuing disconnect

965
00:51:49.890 --> 00:51:51.810
between the best outcomes for collections

966
00:51:51.810 --> 00:51:54.600
of traditional owners of cultural information.

967
00:51:54.600 --> 00:51:56.340
Once we are sensitized to capturing

968
00:51:56.340 --> 00:51:58.710
and working with the intangible side of things,

969
00:51:58.710 --> 00:52:02.973
we can be transformed to new realms of understanding.

970
00:52:04.080 --> 00:52:06.480
So concerning the Clotilda,

971
00:52:06.480 --> 00:52:09.750
I had incredible experiences diving on this wreck.

972
00:52:09.750 --> 00:52:13.890
This is some side scan images over time.

973
00:52:13.890 --> 00:52:16.860
But once the site was cleared, this is what it looked like.

974
00:52:16.860 --> 00:52:19.830
On the lower right there, all the debris has been cleared.

975
00:52:19.830 --> 00:52:21.450
In the upper left there you can see the trees

976
00:52:21.450 --> 00:52:24.270
that was placed in the river.

977
00:52:24.270 --> 00:52:26.760
This is going toward the center of the river.

978
00:52:26.760 --> 00:52:29.940
This is the riverbank in the lower right here.

979
00:52:29.940 --> 00:52:32.550
This is the Clotilda wreck itself.

980
00:52:32.550 --> 00:52:33.540
You can see all the debris

981
00:52:33.540 --> 00:52:35.290
that's been cleared from the wreck.

982
00:52:36.630 --> 00:52:40.650
So we are able to identify the elements of the wreck,

983
00:52:40.650 --> 00:52:43.410
the forecast of the front part, the back part,

984
00:52:43.410 --> 00:52:46.110
but more importantly these bulkheads here,

985
00:52:46.110 --> 00:52:47.610
this bulkhead here.

986
00:52:47.610 --> 00:52:50.160
But there was a temporary bulkhead here

987
00:52:50.160 --> 00:52:55.160
that delineated where the hold was for the 110 captives.

988
00:52:55.830 --> 00:53:00.600
It was only 26 by 18 feet or so, if you can imagine that.

989
00:53:00.600 --> 00:53:03.484
No bigger than an average living room in a home,

990
00:53:03.484 --> 00:53:06.003
110 people in that space.

991
00:53:07.260 --> 00:53:11.160
So I knew I was gonna be diving this wreck.

992
00:53:11.160 --> 00:53:13.170
This is an image to show you what conditions

993
00:53:13.170 --> 00:53:14.700
looked like on the wreck.

994
00:53:14.700 --> 00:53:16.830
Visibility was very, very poor.

995
00:53:16.830 --> 00:53:18.750
It was a very hazardous site.

996
00:53:18.750 --> 00:53:21.630
There's sharp objects still protruding from the site.

997
00:53:21.630 --> 00:53:23.880
There's water moccasins as well.

998
00:53:23.880 --> 00:53:25.710
Sometimes there was current.

999
00:53:25.710 --> 00:53:28.200
This time there was very light current.

1000
00:53:28.200 --> 00:53:30.570
So I knew I was gonna be diving this wreck,

1001
00:53:30.570 --> 00:53:33.480
and experience, and how it was gonna affect me.

1002
00:53:33.480 --> 00:53:36.420
So a good friend of mine, Sabrina Johnson,

1003
00:53:36.420 --> 00:53:39.480
and I composed what we're calling an ancestral prayer.

1004
00:53:39.480 --> 00:53:41.100
And so before I dove this wreck,

1005
00:53:41.100 --> 00:53:43.110
I recited this ancestral prayer.

1006
00:53:43.110 --> 00:53:44.369
I'd like to just share with you

1007
00:53:44.369 --> 00:53:46.019
real quick, and we'll wrap it up.

1008
00:53:47.280 --> 00:53:49.950
Ancestors prayer for first dive on the Clotilda.

1009
00:53:49.950 --> 00:53:52.450
Reviving the spirits who traveled on the Clotilda.

1010
00:53:53.370 --> 00:53:55.800
Beloved ancestors, your voices have been quiet

1011
00:53:55.800 --> 00:53:59.703
for 162 years. But your silence ends now.

1012
00:54:00.690 --> 00:54:02.550
Your voices and memory are lifted now

1013
00:54:02.550 --> 00:54:05.190
from this wretched vessel - through us -

1014
00:54:05.190 --> 00:54:07.530
and we welcome you to speak through us.

1015
00:54:07.530 --> 00:54:10.020
Our connection will never be broken.

1016
00:54:10.020 --> 00:54:13.920
We are because of you. Thank you for reaching out to us.

1017
00:54:13.920 --> 00:54:16.983
Blessings to your spirits, always.

1018
00:54:20.619 --> 00:54:23.400
And so it touches me every time I read that.

1019
00:54:23.400 --> 00:54:27.450
The artifacts from the Clotilda will be housed

1020
00:54:27.450 --> 00:54:31.020
in this little small museum that's been erected,

1021
00:54:31.020 --> 00:54:35.250
and is scheduled to open on July 8th of this coming summer.

1022
00:54:35.250 --> 00:54:36.600
That's the anniversary date of

1023
00:54:36.600 --> 00:54:39.033
the disembarkation of the 110 in Africatown.

1024
00:54:43.620 --> 00:54:45.810
We're still trying to tell this story,

1025
00:54:45.810 --> 00:54:49.380
and reclaim the memory, and we've started what's called

1026
00:54:49.380 --> 00:54:51.330
a swim to scuba program down there.

1027
00:54:51.330 --> 00:54:54.180
We're teaching young folks how to scuba dive,

1028
00:54:54.180 --> 00:54:57.420
working with the swim program in Mobile, Alabama.

1029
00:54:57.420 --> 00:55:00.120
We think this is gonna be an incredible project.

1030
00:55:00.120 --> 00:55:03.240
And you can imagine descendant children today

1031
00:55:03.240 --> 00:55:06.540
diving on the only existing artifact of a slave vessel

1032
00:55:06.540 --> 00:55:08.490
where their ancestors came out of,

1033
00:55:08.490 --> 00:55:11.130
the hold of the vessel that they came out of.

1034
00:55:11.130 --> 00:55:14.250
I'm looking forward to the day we can get these youngsters

1035
00:55:14.250 --> 00:55:15.183
diving on that vessel.

1036
00:55:15.183 --> 00:55:18.570
It's gonna be a big task, but we think it can be done

1037
00:55:18.570 --> 00:55:20.073
over the next several years.

1038
00:55:21.420 --> 00:55:22.860
This process has been documented

1039
00:55:22.860 --> 00:55:24.270
in several movies over time.

1040
00:55:24.270 --> 00:55:26.730
Hopefully you've seen "The Descendant"

1041
00:55:26.730 --> 00:55:29.400
that's streaming now on Netflix that tell the story

1042
00:55:29.400 --> 00:55:32.793
of the descendant community down in Africatown.

1043
00:55:33.750 --> 00:55:37.020
Of course, the exhibitions that I mentioned earlier.

1044
00:55:37.020 --> 00:55:39.300
And DWP is continuing this work.

1045
00:55:39.300 --> 00:55:41.610
We're gonna continue to work on the Guerrero.

1046
00:55:41.610 --> 00:55:44.610
The Wanderer, which was the penultimate vessel, the last,

1047
00:55:44.610 --> 00:55:46.620
next to the last vessel that brought

1048
00:55:46.620 --> 00:55:49.500
captured Africans into Jekyll Island down in Florida.

1049
00:55:49.500 --> 00:55:52.540
The L'Aurore French that's also in

1050
00:55:53.490 --> 00:55:56.790
Mossuril Bay, near Mozambique Island.

1051
00:55:56.790 --> 00:56:00.300
The Leusden, hopefully we can put some work in on that.

1052
00:56:00.300 --> 00:56:03.030
And even the wrecks of Marcus Garvey, Black Star Line,

1053
00:56:03.030 --> 00:56:07.803
the first black-owned steam line company in the US.

1054
00:56:08.670 --> 00:56:10.203
So with that I'll.

1055
00:56:11.130 --> 00:56:14.250
Sorry for rushing a bit, but I'll leave it at that, Shannon.

1056
00:56:14.250 --> 00:56:16.950
And the folks want to contact me,

1057
00:56:16.950 --> 00:56:19.165
there's contact information.

1058
00:56:19.165 --> 00:56:20.220
<v Shannon>Okay.</v>

1059
00:56:20.220 --> 00:56:21.603
<v ->Thank you so very much.</v>

1060
00:56:23.160 --> 00:56:26.520
<v Shannon>Well thank you, Kamau. That was excellent.</v>

1061
00:56:26.520 --> 00:56:27.870
I didn't wanna interrupt you.

1062
00:56:27.870 --> 00:56:29.640
I knew we were getting close to the time.

1063
00:56:29.640 --> 00:56:33.330
And I thought nope, this is worth hearing.

1064
00:56:33.330 --> 00:56:37.050
Thank you. It's a fantastic lecture, really appreciate it.

1065
00:56:37.050 --> 00:56:38.760
We're not gonna have a lot of time for questions,

1066
00:56:38.760 --> 00:56:41.370
but I do want to just make sure that everybody knows.

1067
00:56:41.370 --> 00:56:44.400
Go ahead and enter your questions into the question box,

1068
00:56:44.400 --> 00:56:46.320
because we will download these questions

1069
00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:48.360
and send them to Kamau.

1070
00:56:48.360 --> 00:56:51.420
And he will try to answer as many as he can.

1071
00:56:51.420 --> 00:56:54.720
And also, there is his bio,

1072
00:56:54.720 --> 00:56:58.170
so be sure you download that from the chat box.

1073
00:56:58.170 --> 00:57:00.150
Let me see if I can get the screen to go.

1074
00:57:00.150 --> 00:57:02.460
And again, here is his email address.

1075
00:57:02.460 --> 00:57:04.290
If you have anything you would like to follow up

1076
00:57:04.290 --> 00:57:07.320
with Kamau on, please email him directly.

1077
00:57:07.320 --> 00:57:09.540
That's perfectly okay.

1078
00:57:09.540 --> 00:57:12.210
So Kamau, we're just gonna take maybe one question.

1079
00:57:12.210 --> 00:57:15.843
And I'm going to ask you, maybe a fairly simple one.

1080
00:57:16.710 --> 00:57:17.943
I hope so anyway.

1081
00:57:18.960 --> 00:57:23.400
How deep is the Clotilda? What's the water depth?

1082
00:57:23.400 --> 00:57:24.600
<v ->Yeah, sure, sure.</v>

1083
00:57:24.600 --> 00:57:29.600
As I tried to illustrate with that side scan sonar image,

1084
00:57:29.850 --> 00:57:33.420
the bow is pointing upstream, and the wreck itself

1085
00:57:33.420 --> 00:57:37.050
is laying up against the riverbank, sort of, underwater.

1086
00:57:37.050 --> 00:57:41.030
And so at the bow, depending on the river level,

1087
00:57:41.030 --> 00:57:43.320
it's at most six to eight feet deep.

1088
00:57:43.320 --> 00:57:46.830
And sometimes over the 160 year period, the river got so low

1089
00:57:46.830 --> 00:57:49.890
where the bow was actually sticking out of the water.

1090
00:57:49.890 --> 00:57:51.960
And if you go down the wreck, the stern section,

1091
00:57:51.960 --> 00:57:56.130
which more toward the center of the river, is about 20 feet.

1092
00:57:56.130 --> 00:57:57.663
So it's not very deep.

1093
00:57:58.800 --> 00:58:00.930
There's a lot of, there's been barge traffic

1094
00:58:00.930 --> 00:58:03.273
up and down that river and,

1095
00:58:04.350 --> 00:58:07.650
it's been impacted by some of that traffic, I should say.

1096
00:58:07.650 --> 00:58:11.400
But at most 20 feet at the shallow, it was six feet.

1097
00:58:11.400 --> 00:58:14.670
<v Shannon>Okay. That's, yeah, that's pretty shallow.</v>

1098
00:58:14.670 --> 00:58:16.953
All right, so.

1099
00:58:19.470 --> 00:58:21.930
Now a video recording of Kamau's presentation

1100
00:58:21.930 --> 00:58:25.650
will be available on our sanctuary's webinar archive page.

1101
00:58:25.650 --> 00:58:28.400
And it's gonna be found at the URL that's listed there.

1102
00:58:29.340 --> 00:58:31.470
And in addition, the webinar will be archived

1103
00:58:31.470 --> 00:58:34.290
on Monitor's National Marine Sanctuary's website.

1104
00:58:34.290 --> 00:58:36.300
You'll just click on the multimedia section

1105
00:58:36.300 --> 00:58:39.180
in the toolbar to access the webinar box.

1106
00:58:39.180 --> 00:58:42.630
It usually takes about 10 days for us to get these posted.

1107
00:58:42.630 --> 00:58:44.010
So stay tuned.

1108
00:58:44.010 --> 00:58:46.110
You'll also be able to find future webinars

1109
00:58:46.110 --> 00:58:47.280
in that same section.

1110
00:58:47.280 --> 00:58:49.080
And don't worry, all of this information

1111
00:58:49.080 --> 00:58:51.360
will be sent to you in a follow up email

1112
00:58:51.360 --> 00:58:53.610
when the recording is ready for your viewing.

1113
00:58:56.160 --> 00:58:58.800
<v Mark>And make sure you join us on March 7th,</v>

1114
00:58:58.800 --> 00:59:00.630
for Allyson Ropp, who will be exploring

1115
00:59:00.630 --> 00:59:03.060
the history, archeology, and cultural memory

1116
00:59:03.060 --> 00:59:05.190
of piracy in Colonial North Carolina.

1117
00:59:05.190 --> 00:59:06.690
If you're big fan of pirates,

1118
00:59:06.690 --> 00:59:08.700
you won't wanna miss this webinar.

1119
00:59:08.700 --> 00:59:11.370
And, of course, we invite you to follow us on social media

1120
00:59:11.370 --> 00:59:13.470
to stay in touch with what's happening on the sanctuary,

1121
00:59:13.470 --> 00:59:16.290
including updates about upcoming webinars,

1122
00:59:16.290 --> 00:59:19.040
and when this webinar will be posted for you to review.

1123
00:59:21.330 --> 00:59:23.160
<v Shannon>And lastly, as you exit the webinar,</v>

1124
00:59:23.160 --> 00:59:26.460
there is a short survey for formal and informal educators.

1125
00:59:26.460 --> 00:59:27.810
If you are an educator,

1126
00:59:27.810 --> 00:59:29.880
NOAA would really appreciate it if you would take

1127
00:59:29.880 --> 00:59:32.310
just a minute or two to complete the survey.

1128
00:59:32.310 --> 00:59:34.140
Your answers will help NOAA

1129
00:59:34.140 --> 00:59:36.240
develop future webinars to meet your needs.

1130
00:59:36.240 --> 00:59:37.950
Your participation is voluntary.

1131
00:59:37.950 --> 00:59:41.103
And as always, your answers will be completely anonymous.

1132
00:59:42.180 --> 00:59:44.220
So once again, we want to thank you, Kamau,

1133
00:59:44.220 --> 00:59:45.870
for an excellent presentation.

1134
00:59:45.870 --> 00:59:49.260
And thank everyone for taking the time today to join us.

1135
00:59:49.260 --> 00:59:50.370
Have a wonderful day.

1136
00:59:50.370 --> 00:59:53.340
And this concludes the presentation for all.

1137
00:59:53.340 --> 00:59:54.436
Thank you.

1138
00:59:54.436 --> 00:59:56.130
<v ->Thank you, Shannon. Thank you, Mark.</v>

1139
00:59:56.130 --> 00:59:57.480
<v Shannon>You're welcome.</v>