These Divers Search For Slave Shipwrecks and Discover Their Ancestors | National Geographic

I am a light in the bottom of the ocean, buried in the silence of years. I am the lights of the spirits. I often think of the Middle Passage as the origin story for Africans in the Americas. During that transatlantic slave trade period, we know there were tens of thousands of ships that traversed the Atlantic. We estimate that there are 12.5 million people who were taken from Africa. The intent was to make as much money or profit as possible. Often as many as 600 people would be chained together and put in the bottom of a cargo hold of a ship. People suffered from starvation and illness. There were sharks that followed the ships because of blood that was in the water from people they threw overboard. When you're trying to engage in the subject of slavery, there are no easy conversations. The work is in the attempt to tell the truth, to confront, to help people reckon with this history. Africans who live in various countries in Africa don't think of themselves as Black. That's an outside observation. Before people boarded those ships, they belonged to this ethnic group or this tribe. That's when this thing called Black was born. Where do we put our sorrow? Where do we reconcile our history? And where do we reconnect with our heritage? All of us look for a touchstone. Generations later, there are people who are descended from the continent and they can go back and touch these historic sites, even underwater. There were some 12,000 slave ships involved in the trade. So it's a tremendous amount of work. So y'all want to come join us and dive on purpose? I was living in D.C. and the Museum of African American History and Culture had opened. And at the very bottom of it, it has artifacts from a ship. They were part of the larger story that I was getting. And then I make it to the second floor. There was this picture and I go to read the plaque about it. And it says it's this group called Diving with a Purpose. And this is a part of the Slave Wrecks Project, which is a larger collaboration of partners who are dedicated to finding these slave ships around the world. Then I see the name of this guy, Ken Stewart. So I used to go diving. We would get on the boat and the folks on the boat wouldn't buddy up with me. My assumption is, is because I was black. It happened several times and I didn't know really what to do. Then I found out about Dr. Jones and the rest is history. A lot of people consider me to be the dean of African American divers. And I learned to dive in the military. My first official dive was 1951. Dr. Jones is truly one of the greatest black men I have ever met. When I came back from the military, there were people who had heard about diving, but they didn't know how to do it. One by one, people started contacting me. So I said, well, let's form a club. These people were intent on telling their own stories. And I thought the human journey of Africans in the Americas has not been told from this lens anywhere. Our first summit, two archaeologists came in to give a talk on a Henrietta Marie slave ship. Well, once we saw the shackles, it really upset the people. We decided we were going to put a plaque down on the Henrietta Marie. Now I've made over 6,000 dives. That was one of the most memorable dives I had because it was like diving on a grave site. You do feel like you're visiting the souls of your ancestors when you're down there. It's just difficult to explain the feeling. Sorrow. Anger. Disgust. And you feel a sort of feeling of helplessness. We said, you know, we need to go out and find these slave ships. And then we got lucky. That Ken Stewart met Brenda Lazendorf, who was an archaeologist at Key Biscayne State Park. She needed divers, we had divers. She said, I will train you guys to do this work if you would help me map these ships. She says, you know, I'm the lone diver here in the park. And you know, as a diver, we can't dive alone. Her and Ken were the visionaries for this program. After a few years, you know, of under her instruction and tutelage, she said, OK, now it's your turn. I'm going to sit back a little bit. She said that we're not to keep this program to ourselves. You have to train other people. There's a rise in the interest and study of the African diaspora and of our past. But there's not real space made for people who actually look like us. This lens of people who are descended from Africa is crucially important because these are stories that have not been told. All right, thank you. When presented with this opportunity to expand my impact, create pathways for students, it seemed like a no-brainer. It's like, OK, so how are we going to get these kids in the water? Attention, everybody. Attention on deck. Make sure that you're close to and with your buddy. We have an hour trip to the dive site. You will be getting a briefing. And before you get into the water, I'll be recording your time in. So what we're doing out here on this very beautiful day, we have what we call some underwater archaeology advocates. What we teach here is the basic principles of how to document a shipwreck, how to do measurements underwater, basic mapping techniques. We are training them to be able to go into a wrecked shipwreck landscape and begin the initial process of gathering data. So we do maritime archaeology, which enabled us to uncover the Sao Jose. The Sao Jose is a slave ship that starts in Lisbon, travels to Mozambique, picks up captive Africans to sell them into enslavement in Brazil. The ship goes down just off the coast of South Africa. What we're doing here is helping to tell a story on a human scale, a story about a ship and the 512 people who were enslaved aboard that ship. And the search in all its levels for and around the ship creates deep connections. I do recall very distinctively when I first encountered the wreckage of the Sao Jose. Being in the water for me, it can become very, very meditative and quiet and beautiful. But when that beauty sort of encapsulated a slave shipwreck, you know, there's another sort of feeling you get. And I just remember seeing that wreckage there. And so I approached the wood and I reached out and grabbed it and touched it. And whatever you want to call it, I could feel the vibration, the energy, and the pain and the suffering and the horror. It's like I kind of closed my eyes and I could audibly hear the agony in the screen. If I closed my eyes and all I could think was to say inside my head, we never forgot about you. We came looking for you and we found you. When we encounter these slave wreck sites, we like to go back to those people, that particular ethnic group, and tell them that we found their ancestors. In Mozambique Island, we met a gentleman. He is a member of the Makua tribe. And he gave to us a cowry-shelled encased basket. Inside that basket, he had put soil. And that soil came from the site that was the last footfall of people on the African continent before being boarded to ships. He asked us to take the soil and to bring it as close as possible to the wreck. That was an opportunity for healing, and that was an opportunity that was symbolic because it connects the Americas, it connects South Africa, it connects Mozambique, and it connects it to the now and to the past. Now what happens when you take that sense of adventure and you pair it with social responsibility? That's when sparks fly. We're training young people in diving, they're becoming certified divers, and at the heart of that is heritage stewardship. I love this idea of young Black minds stepping into the sea and claiming it. This has been a very successful field school, so we thank you very much for all that you will continue to do as advocates of the ocean and cultural heritage management. I think it was a great year, you did some outstanding work. With that said, we're going to recognize our new advocates. What we can do is gather knowledge and pass it on so that it doesn't stop with one generation of people, but it keeps on going. What would it mean to tell those stories that we don't get in our history books? And I think us asking questions of this history, the ways that we do, bringing these stories to life, it makes them real. These are the kind of stories that we can't let die. That story of resilience, of holding on to humanity, that story of refusing to be dehumanized is such an important story for this world today. I think the healing part of this work is the community that comes out of humanizing these experiences. I didn't expect it to feel this way. And it feels so good. We got you. It feels so, so good. We know that we're speaking for millions of people who are here. We can't see them all, but we know that all of us, every ancestor we've ever had is alive and present within us today. We are their blood, their flesh, their bone. And every generation yet to come is alive and present in us today. The Atlantic is one of the most turbulent of all the oceans. And I've been thinking about the people who've never been honored. They've never even been acknowledged. Their stories are just lost. Perhaps there's something spiritual that's happening in these oceans. There's a need to lay the ancestors to rest. And the search, in fact, never ends. The search for ourselves never ends. So this whole question of identity and culture, particularly for people of African-American descent, is a huge struggle. Who do we call ourselves? Are we Negro? Are we Black? Are we African-Americans? Who are we? I am a Black girl from Atlanta, but I'm also a nerd. I'm really into sci-fi. I'm a yoga enthusiast. Like, there are all these parts of me that make up who I am, but that don't get seen because people just see the Blackness. And that's how I get defined. My wish, my dream for other Black folks around the world is to be able to exist inside of their wholeness and to have people see that and recognize that. That's the work that is happening here. I am the sea light. I have walked the waters. And I have been in the memories lost. Only with the spark of the hope that someday, some diver would look at the artifacts that are the traces left of the people and ask the questions that have not been asked. What people must have come in those ships?