THE WATER IS COOL AGAINST MY SKIN,
the silence absolute, and as I hover over the remains,
I feel peaceful, thankful, a sense of coming home.
Descend underwater with me—not too deep, maybe
only 20 feet or so—and you’ll see about 30 other divers,
paired in sets of two. They calmly float in place, despite
strong currents off the coast of Key Largo, Florida,
sketching images of coral-encrusted artifacts or taking
measurements. For the first time, I am helping map the
remains of a shipwreck.
Most of the divers are African American. We’re
training as underwater archaeology advocates, gain-
ing the skills necessary to join expeditions and help
document the wreckage of slave ships being found
around the world, ships such as the São José Paquete
d’Africa in South Africa, the Fredericus Quartus and
Christianus Quintus in Costa Rica, and the Clotilda in
the United States. An estimated 12.5 million Africans
were forced onto ships like these during the trans-
atlantic slave trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries,
38 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC