Discovered shipwreck inspires commemoration of African slaves

Johannesburg, June 2 (IANS/EFE) South Africa commemorated on Tuesday more than 400 Mozambican slaves who were aboard Portuguese vessel Sao Jose-Paquete de Africa, a slave ship bound for Brazil that sank more than 200 years ago off the coast of Cape Town.

The wreckage of the slave ship, which sank after colliding with a rock two days after Christmas of 1794, was presented on Tuesday at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town to commemorate the first historic finding of a wrecked ship boarded by slaves.

"It is the first concrete evidence of the use of people in East Africa in the transatlantic slave trade," Melissa Scheepers of the Iziko Museum said.

The archaeological success is the fruit of the Slave Wrecks Project (SWP), a collaboration between Iziko, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, or SAHRA, George Washington University and the newly-established National Museum of African American History and Culture of the US.

The first physical evidence of the existence of Sao Jose-Paquete de Africa dates back to the 1980s, when underwater treasure hunters found vestiges of the ship, which was later identified as a Dutch vessel.

Years later, in 2011, Iziko archaeologist Jaco Boshoff found a judicial report in the archives regarding the ship's demise and found that the Dutch ship was actually a slave ship from Mozambique.

Subsequent research uncovered Portuguese documents regarding the boat's cargo and files from Mozambique listing the purchase of the slaves, which all corroborated Boshoff's theory, according to the experts in South Africa.

The files indicated that the crew of the ship was rescued following the crash and taken to land, as approximately half of the slaves were resold in Cape Town.

The other half of the slaves were left for dead in the violent waves of the Atlantic, far from Brazilian sugar plantations, the ship's intended destination when it shipped out on December 3, 1794.

The artifacts recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic will be loaned for 10 years to the Museum of African American History, which will open its doors next year in Washington.

"It is designed almost like a memorial," museum director Lonnie G. Bunch said regarding the presentation of the ship's remnants in the museum.

Among the material found off the coast of Cape Town, an oft-used stopover for ships sailing between the Indian and Atlantic oceans, were shackles and chains used to restrain slaves and various sailing tools made of iron and wood.

Researchers are still hopeful that will find more relics around the wreckage site.

--IANS/EFE

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