Exhibition. Museum director lonnie bunch and paul gar dull lo talk about the saga of the ship called sal jose. Take us back to december 27th, 1794 camps bay off south africa and the final hours of the sal jose. On december 27th, 1794, a ship that was heading from Mozambique Island around the cape of good hope heading towards brazil, northeast brazil, came close to capetown, south africa. Capetown was often a landing point for ships before they made their way across the long atlantic voyage. This ship came to close to shore and got call in swells in a storm and struck rocks about 100 yards, 350 feet or so from shore. The captain was captaining the ship called the sal jose tried to salvage what he could from the crew. They attempted a rescue from ship to shore. He rescued himself. He rescued along with the crew he rescued about half of the 400 enslaved mozambiquens were all aboard and the other half captured from the interior of africa and brought on board in early december perished in those waves that night. Lonnie bunch, recently the image of a young syrian boy who drowned became the image of a migrant crisis taking place right now in europe. Is humanized this crisis that is happening. Is that what you want to do with the sal jose, does that human size the slave trade in. In many way history museums tend to tell the grand story and often forget to humanize them. It struck us when you think of the millions of people who were taken via the Middle Passage to the new world, many who perished, you realize when you Start Talking numbers in the millions, its hard for the public to understand, even care be touched by it. Our goal was to say how do we humanize this slave trade by focusing on a single ship, letting people understand what happened on that ship and letting people understand who some of the people were on the ship and most importantly, letting people realize that its not about the millions, its about in this case the 412. Of the slaves who survived that wreck, what happened to them after they came ashore . After the wreck, two days later, the ship captain had to testify in court, it was a dutch court at that time and testify to the loss of property. And that included those human beings who were lost. The other 200 someodd people were sold back into slavery in the western cape and there they lived out their lives and what remained of them. Their loss to us right now but our research is continuing into to see if we can find descendant communities for those people with our partners. Do we know any of the names of the slaves . We dont know the names of anyone but were very lucky to bring those to bring their spirits in some ways back into memory and back into history. So that we can begin to reclaim them. Lonnie bunch, ive heard you say what youre trying to do at the national mau see up of African American history and culture, find moments of sadness and moments of resiliency. Is this all a moment of sadness . The story of slavery is a story of loss of power, sometimes loss of life, the loss of family. Its very sad in that regard. On the other hand, its also a story of the resiliency of people to survive. One of the things that strikes me is that often people, africanamerican sometimes, are embarrassed by their slave ancestors. They want to talk about those who are free or those who struck a blow for freedom. For me, africanamericans that survive the Middle Passage, survive that sort of transition to this new horrible harsh world, really were so strong that in some ways i want people to rethink about what slavery meant, that yes its not something to celebrate but to celebrate the spirit of those who triumphed and kept family and soul together the best they could. The story of the sal josse, what happened before the wreck and after the wreck. Can you talk about what like was life from december 3rd to december 27th . What would it have been like on that ship . Well, we have very little recorded testimonies of any experiences of people who sur v vifed the Middle Passage. We do have the records of a variety of ships and the accounts that were given by both traders and the few who wrote about their experiences. This is a long voyage. Youre three weeks on a ship in the hold. If youre a man, youre likely shackled the whole time. Your feet as well as your hands. You may be taken outside to exercise above deck, maybe once a day, maybe by the light of the moon. Right . Youre still close to africa so theres going to be a very close watch on whats going on and on the opportunities for escape or rebellion or in some cases suicide. If youre a woman, you may have a little bit more freedom and we need to remember that at large we dont have the demographic breakdown of this particular ship, but within the slave trade and Middle Passage at large, nearly 25 of those who are carried across from africa were classified as children. And so they are all below decks, tightly packed with other kinds of cargo, water kasks, iron ballast bars and drunage used for trade and help weigh things down. It was a horrendous experience. In many ways the way to think about it is, cargo. That in essence the goal here is to pack as many in and try to make as many people survive as possible for the profit margins. So on the one hand, when people are taken above deck, its in part to sort of keep them physically fit, keep them moving, trying to encourage their ability to survive. And i think the thing that is really powerful when you think about what it must have been like, first of all, while you may have many members of tribes that speak similar languages, you had many who didnt. Youve got people who dont know each other. Shackled together. You have this sense of disorientation, where am i going . What does this mean . Who are these people . In some ways, the ability to survive that is really one of the great triumphs of human history. The fact this particular ship was coming from east africa is important here because up until that time most of the slave trade coming from the west african coast youre looking at were talking about 1794. Its the end of the century. Ushered in so many rebellions and revolutions for freedom in the world. Its also at the end of the century that saw the largest single century of the slave trade, right . If historians are estimating that theres around 12 Million People who are transported, 7 million, more than 7 million in that 100 years alone. So its tremendous its the end of a huge century in many respects. And where was the United States in its slave story in 1794 . The president of the United States at that time, george washington, a slave owner. What you have is the 18th century, you have about 600,000 enslaved africans between 600 and 800 thousand living in what eventually became the United States of america. And what you have is many involved in sugar, rice, later cotton. But what you really have is an economy that is built on the slave trade, that so much of what made america work was built on the backs of the enslaved. The labor that was provided, not just to grow the crops but to transform the landscape, to take those swamps in South Carolina and turn them into rice fields and kind of labor that was involved. And also what you also have is this amazing sense of creating the africanamerican. Youve got all of these different africans coming together forming an African American culture, beginning to learn a language, wrestling with christianity so that you have this amazing moment of transformation and in some ways, as americans, we know slavery as a 19th century phenomenon. So much of slavery, the patterns and origins and large numbers of people were really an 18th century phenomenon. Thats why the sal josse is important. It helps us focus or attention on the early period that laid the foundation on which so much the rest of the slave environment was built upon. What is more i think that youre also looking at this period following the American Revolution where all of these principles of liberty are being established, are being struck for. They are not just being struck for by property like men. They are being articulated and forwarded by free blacks and women and by enslaved peoples right . A revolution begins in haiti, right . Soon after, three years before this this voyage in 1791, the enslaved and free blacks of haiti strike for revolution. Its the successful only successful large scale slave revolution in the new world. And if youre a trader and you understand the economic importance of slavery, at large, your understanding that the world is shifting a little bit under you. And the trade from west africa, which has been strong for so long and will continue, may to these people, need to change and so they begin to look for other markets. And thats where mozambique comes in. A place like mozambique which has been oriented towards the indian ocean for almost mill len ya, right, suddenly gets reoriented by the portuguese in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century back around the cape and over primarily to brazil and caribbean. In fact, what happens in mozambique is about a Million People from mozambique are brought mainly to brazil from the late 18th century well into the 19th century. That is where the sal josse was on originally headed to . Absolutely. Part of this that is important it allows us to tell the story of slave trade was much more complicated than just simply west africa to the United States. But also it helps people understand how large the impact of the slave trade was in the caribbean and in latin america and candidly how small it was in the United States compared to that. Before we leave that history, when did the last slave ship land in the United States . How many years after the sinking of the sal josse did it take for the slave trade to be outlawed . Heres what happens. You have with the trade being outlawed in 1808 as part of the compromise of creating the constitution, you begin to see the numbers decline, right . You still see people smuggling in enslaved africans. In fact, the last slave ship that we know about was about 1862 and it was near mobile, alabama. So that in essence, while the formal slave trade was outlawed, the kind of smuggling that went on continued to bring in a trickle, no more, no longer a flood but a trickle of new africans into the United States. And at the same time, what you see in the u. S. Context is the massive buildup of what we what historians call the internal slave trade, the domestic slave trade. Its not as if of course slavery doesnt end but the trading in slavery and america and United States ramps up. You have millions of people who are being moved from the upper south, this area, right, washington, d. C. , alexandria, maryland, down to louisiana, mississippi, texas. One of the and its a massive trade. The largest slave Trading Company in the United States at that time was based in two places, one along nach ez, mississippi was one end and the other was here in alexandria, virginia. The sal josse part of the slave wrecks project. What is the slave wrecks project . What we have is that we realize that the goal of this initially was to find iconic pieces of a slave ship. We didnt set out to find the sal josse, creating a new museum, you wanted people to understand by humanizing the slave trade. We spent a lot of time in cuba looking at ships and figuring out, this is where we begin to do our exploration. As we got close and wanted to make sure we found something, we began to work with the slave wrecks project, an amazing collaboration of scholars in the United States and south africa in brazil, people within the United States park service who want to realize that maritime arcology didnt look for ships of the enslaved. We wanted to work with partners to help us map the ocean floors and begin to identify where other ships could be. Our goal is pretty sim. On the one hand we wanted to find a ship for the museum when we opened. On the other hand, we wanted to stimulate a national and International Conversation and interest in finding the hundreds of ships on the ocean floor. That people in senegal had the training and interest and resources to look in their waters and people in brazil and south africa. On the one hand he was confined, find us a ship. On the other hand, if this was the last fron tier of knowledge, if this is something that will help us understand the slave trade more than anything else that we have now, then how do we help countries around the world do this work . So the slave wrecks project in part is also about education. Helping to train young people to become under water archeologist and finding resources to identify and bring up their own wrecks. Our hope would be that this project would go on for many generations helping us to learn more by bringing up remnants and pieces of these ships. Not just a slave ship but a slave ship that goes down with human cargo on board. Thats the historical significance here. Thats the historical significance of this particular wreck. That goes back to what we talked about in the beginning, the importance of remembering these people, these people who insurgent vifed and or these horrific journeys and that was one of the most moving kpoen enlts what we experienced when lonnie and i traveled to south africa and mozambique this summer. In a way, part of what we wanted to do was to trace the root of the ship, right. From mozambique into south africa. We wanted to meet the people involved. We spent time with the people in the interior where most of the people on the sal jose were macua people. We had this idea that we wanted to get soil from mozambique and spread it over the ship. That was our idea. We got to mozambique and the chiefs had this amazing ceremony for us and took us to a spot where the enslaved were sold, kind of auction spot. They then began to dig dirt and they put dirt in this amazingly beautiful vessel, this shell vessel. Then they said to us in no uncertain terms, basically they said, you thought this was your idea. This is your ancestors telling you what you need to do because once you sprinkle this dirt over the ship, for the First Time Since 1794, our people will sleep in their own land. Youre sitting there crying. Oh, my goodness. And you realize this sort of that its more than a research endeavor. Its more than a museum exhibition. Its really as paul said, its really about recognizing that the slave trade is not about yesterday. Its as much about today and tomorrow for so many people. And it really gave us new insights into how to help people remember and understand the importance of this. Then to finish the story about this soil, so we had planned to have a ceremony in capetown. And overlooking camps bay, we were hosted by an amazing man named alby sacks involved in the antiapartheid movement. We thought we would have a ceremony where i would speak and few others would speak. The day of the ceremony it was horrible. It was pouring rain. The sea was angry, the wind was unbelievably strong. And you suddenly realized, this could have been like the day that the ship went down. It was that bad. We couldnt get boats out and ultimately we had these divers get out as far as they could and then they sprinkled the soil and what happened is as soon as the soil hit the water, the sun came up, rain stopped and wind stopped and suddenly you realized, dont mess with ancestors. You had a real sense that this was a special moment. And we stood there unbelievably connected to peoples whose names well never know and what topped it off, a woman that was part of the ceremony who was a descendant of mozambique slave, raeld a poem in portuguese and english and talked about how important it was that the work we were doing was allowing people to sleep in their own soil, allowing people to be remembered but most importantly allowing us living to recognize how connected we are to this story. And those are the things that make all of the work we do special. Thats why we feel so lucky to be able to do this. Long before that day, before the divers even hit the water, can you talk about the Research Effort and how you originally found the sao jose. This in some ways began long ago. It began long before the museums involvement and began with a desire and initiative to look for wrecks. Much like the one we were engaged in at the museum. And that took time, right . It takes time to look through a variety of archival sources. Youre looking at a combination of archival work and arcology cal work and all sorts of detective work. Anthropology work and talking to fishing communities where they know of wrecks and what they know of the history of wrecks. Theres these variety of techniques and tools you use in a tool kit before you find a wreck and then a variety of sort of detective kind of work, diagnostic testing and cross referencing archives after you find something. So youre not having some kind of confirmation bias, right. This wreck but even beyond that, when you find a wreck. When we found this wreck and ready to sort of confirm what it was to ourselves and begin to talk about, can this be what we think it is . What was the time frame for this this . A period of about seven or eight years. And particularly because this site is like hanging on the divers who can get onto it, have to be very experienced and know what they are doing. And then theyll uncover dredge sand in order to get to some of the material that we found and theyll come back the next day enbe covered over by 6feet more of sand. All of that said, when we began to realize what we had, we realized that we didnt just uncover a ship. What we have uncovered is this story that connected the world, right . Our research had taken us to archives in the netherlands. In portugal, in mozambique and capetown itself and over to brazil. And so what had been a story about a single ship has defined you know, something much more. Something global. And that clearly depended on the expertise, knowledge and skills and capacity of the team that lony referenced, this international team, no one person, no one small group of people could have done this work all on their own. Thats the power. What do we have from the ship . What will we be seeing at the museum . I think were still obviously diving on the ship. One of the things we know we have are these iron ballasts one of the te