Madeleine Burnside and
Rosamarie Robotham

The earliest slave ship ever discovered lies in a water grave off the coast of Florida. Taking into account of the ship's dramatic wreck as a starting point, this powerful and fascinating volume tells the story of the largest business of its time - the international slave trade - and of its people and nations that created it. Spirits of the Passage combines profiles, illustrations, anecdotes, and incisive narrative to create a compelling depiction of one of history's darkest times.

This book is currently available at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum Gift Shop.
Call 305-294-2633 x24 to place your order.

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Featuring 16 pages of the Henrietta Marie.

This book is currently available at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum Gift Shop.
Call 305-294-2633 x24 to place your order.

Mel Fisher Maritime 
Heritage Society

This book is currently available at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum Gift Shop.
Call 305-294-2633 x24 to place your order.

George Sullivan

Gr.5-8. In telling the story of the Henrietta Marie, a slave ship that sank 35 miles off the Florida coast in the early 1700s, Sullivan delves into the Atlantic slave trade, conditions aboard slave ships, research into historical records of the Henrietta Marie, and the search for the ship itself. Describing methods of underwater archaeology, he discusses the artifacts recovered and some of the inferences that can be drawn from them. The book ends with the placement of a plaque on the underwater site, and Sullivan's reflections on the significance of the project. Black-and-white photographs, maps, and reproductions of period drawings and engravings illustrate the text. Well-researched and clearly written, this book offers another perspective on slavery, marine archaeology, treasure hunting, and the process of recovering history itself.

This book is currently available at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum Gift Shop.
Call 305-294-2633 x24 to place your order.

Michael H. Cottman

When prize-winning journalist and avid scuba diver Michael Cottman participated in an underwater expedition to survey the sunken wreck of a slave ship off the coast of Florida, he was overwhelmed by powerful feelings of kinship and oneness with his African ancestors. As he held in his hands the very shackles that once had bound men, women, and children in their tortured passage from their African homeland to America, Michael Cottman became determined to tell their stories and the story behind the ship that had carried them away from all they knew and loved. The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie is a fascinating look at one man's quest to reconstruct the journey of a British slave ship with all the detail and accuracy available to us at the end of the twentieth century.

Michael H. Cottman

 For most Afro-Americans, the slave ship was the vessel that ushered their unwilling ancestors from their homeland to the New World. That is why Michael Cottman's Spirit Dive resonates with such horror and history, as he uncovers the sordid tale of the Henrietta Marie , which sailed from London to West Africa and on to America, where it sank off the coast of Key West in 1700. In an emotional narrative that combines scuba diving; American, Caribbean, and African history; and underwater archeology, Cottman's descriptions of the ship's discovery, the horrible instruments of bondage the Africans were forced to endure, and the soul-killing greed that dehumanized the Europeans who participated in this hellish "business" make Spirit Dive an unforgettable read. "I needed to know about the man who had captained the Henrietta Marie ," Cottman writes. "The ironmongers who had manufactured the shackles for the ship; the crewmen who had set the sails and helped navigate the 120-ton vessel from London to Africa; the deckhands who had enslaved the Africans as part of their daily duties, men who had showed no remorse in senselessly slaughtering rebellious human beings in the time it takes to think." --Eugene Holley Jr.