|
August
7, 1998
Mel
Fisher Maritime Heritage Society
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Archaeologists
Place Replica Cannons
at Site of Henrietta
Marie Shipwreck
KEY WEST, FL — As part of an effort to
create a meaningful historical experience for divers
visiting the wrecksite of the English merchant slave
ship Henrietta
Marie, a team of archaeologists from Key West’s
Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society placed two replica
cannons on the shipwreck site today.
Wrecked in 1700 in Gulf of Mexico waters
35 miles west of Key West, the Henrietta
Marie was discovered in 1972 by a subsidiary group
of Fisher’s divers. It remains one of only a handful
of slave shipwrecks in the Western Hemisphere ever
identified by name.
Believed to be the world’s biggest
source of tangible objects from the early years of the
slave trade, the shipwreck has been the subject of
intensive archaeological investigations which have
revealed previously unknown insights into the early
transcontinental trade in African men, women and
children. Among the most significant artifacts found at
the Henrietta
Marie site are rigging elements, two cast-iron
cannons, approximately 90 sets of shackles, Venetian
glass trade beads, ivory, and the largest collection of
English-made William III pewter ware ever discovered in
one place.
The replica cannons, fabricated out of
concrete in the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society’s
conservation laboratories, were cast from molds made of
the pair found at the shipwreck site, which have been
dated to the late 17th century. The original cannons,
each approximately 6’ long and weighing 800 pounds,
are undergoing conservation in the society’s
laboratories and will shortly be placed on display in
its Key West museum.
In May of 1993, the National Association
of Black Scuba Divers placed a memorial plaque on the
site of the Henrietta
Marie. The simple bronze marker, which faces the
African shore thousands of miles away, bears the name of
the slave ship and reads, “In memory and recognition
of the courage, pain and suffering of enslaved African
people. Speak her name and gently touch the souls of our
ancestors.”
“The
concept was to place the cannons within roughly 50’ of
the memorial plaque so that, when divers make a
pilgrimage to the memorial, they’ll get a sense of
what the wreck was like before the excavation,”
reports Dr. Madeleine Burnside, executive director of
the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society. Burnside
accompanied the society’s director of archaeology,
Corey Malcom; board member George Robb; and
archaeologist Abraham Lopez to the Henrietta Marie site to place the cannons.
As well inspiring the memorial at the
shipwreck site, the Henrietta Marie is the subject of the first major museum exhibition
in the United States devoted to the transatlantic slave
trade. In May of 1995, the society unveiled “A Slave
Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta
Marie,” which uses the vessel as a focal point to
examine the slave trade, the conditions that spawned it,
and its still-evident effects on society. The
critically-acclaimed exhibition is currently on a
six-year national museum tour sponsored by the General
Motors Corporation.
Both the creation of the exhibition and
the placement of the replica cannons are part of the
society’s multi-year plan to increase public awareness
of the Henrietta
Marie and its historical importance. Other elements
in the plan have included the release of Burnside’s
book Spirits of
the Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the
Seventeenth Century (Simon & Schuster, 1997),
the publication of a comprehensive archaeological site
report funded by the Florida Department of Historical
Resources, extensive survey work on the area where the
shipwreck was found, and upgrading the area to create an
underwater historic site for divers.
“To be putting artifacts back into the
water is unusual for us,” says archaeologist Malcom,
“but we know that a visit to the site is a pilgrimage
for many people, and we want to make it as rich and as
meaningful an experience as possible.”
Founded in 1982, the Mel Fisher Maritime
Heritage Society is an independent not-for-profit
organization dedicated to exhibition, education,
archaeology, preservation, and research into New World
maritime activity. Its Key West museum holds the most
comprehensive single collection of 17th-century maritime
and shipwreck antiquities in the Western Hemisphere.
|
