On a hot summer day in the murky waters of the man-made Millbrook Quarry in Northern Virginia, two dozen people outfitted in scuba gear take turns going down to a depth of 30 feet, testing their compass-reading skills, flooding their masks and practising emergency ascents without air. The sight is not so unusual, since Millbrook is the main training site for scuba divers in the greater Washington DC area. What is unusual is that all of the divers are African American, and that the majority of them are certified and qualified to search for, document and help excavate slave trade shipwrecks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are members of Diving with a Purpose (DWP)<\/a>, a non-profit organisation dedicated to researching, conserving and protecting submerged heritage sites, including the documentation and interpretation of African slave trade shipwrecks. DWP is part of a global network known as the Slave Wrecks Project (SWP), based at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which uses shipwrecks as a point of entry into understanding the global history and impact of the slave trade. The SWP also works to create exhibitions, train divers and archaeologists, promote greater diversity in scholarship, and to engage and support local communities where the wrecks are found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all DWP divers are archaeologists or historians by training. Mainly, they are people who love to dive and who want to make a difference in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take Jay V Haigler<\/a>, a retired engineer, PADI-certified master diver training instructor and accredited scientific diver. He\u2019s big and tall, with a booming voice and an easy, infectious laugh. Or Kamau Sadiki, whose thin, wire-framed glasses complement his quietly serious manner. Or Dr Albert Jos\u00e9 Jones, founder of the first diving club for African Americans. He\u2019s in his 80s and walks with a cane, but slides into the water with ease. Or finally, Ken Stewart, who got DWP off the ground. He\u2019s in his 70s but walks with the slickness of an uptown New Yorker. In 2018, Ken was named \u2018Sea Hero of the Year\u2019 by Scuba Diving magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These and other DWP divers, together with the black historians and archaeologists of the SWP, are by their very presence turning the maritime archaeological world on its head \u2013 providing a new and deeply personal lens through which to understand the history and legacies of the global slave trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between 1501 and 1866, approximately 12.5 million Africans<\/a> were forcibly transported via ships during the Middle Passage (the Atlantic Ocean crossing, or middle leg, of the slave trade from Africa to the Americas). Historians at the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database<\/a> estimate that 1.8 million of them perished during the journey. Although hundreds of slave ships sank, only a handful of vessels have been found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside of the SWP, very few divers, maritime archaeologists, historians or treasure hunters are searching for these ships, most likely because their treasures perished onboard \u2013 and, of course, because the facts and figures of the slave trade have been glossed over in the history books. A 2017 Southern Poverty Law Center survey<\/a> found that fewer than half of US high school seniors could define the Middle Passage. Most knew very little about slavery overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For DWP, the purpose of this work is not simply finding these shipwrecks and filling in the missing stories of the global slave trade. It also matters who tells those stories. Its ethos is that people of black African descent must find their own histories and tell their own stories: of vessels found; of the people analysing the wrecks; of the ancestors who perished and the descendants who survived them; of the relevance of this history today; of humanity, nuance, complexity and light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The spirit of DWP\u2019s work is captured in the memorialising of the S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9 Paquete Africa<\/em>, when DWP members participated in key aspects of researching, diving on and honouring what is still the only working slave ship to be fully documented by maritime archaeologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sunk with its captive human cargo still aboard in 1794, the S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9<\/em> was found off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1980s, but initially misidentified as a merchant ship. The true story of the wreck was verified in 2015<\/a>, under the leadership of the SWP founding partners Iziko Museums of South Africa and the George Washington University, after years of painstaking research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The purpose of this work is not simply finding these shipwrecks and filling in the missing stories of the global slave trade. It also matters who tells those stories<\/p>\n\n\n\nSea heroes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Missing stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Spiritual weight<\/h2>\n\n\n\n