The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum is running an exhibit, A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie, from today (Feb 11) through April 15, 2006.
Organized by the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, this poignant and powerful exhibit brings to the surface artifacts recovered from the wreck of the British merchant slave ship, the Henrietta Marie, which sank about 35 miles off the coast of Key West in 1700.
The Henrietta Marie is the only identified and excavated merchant slave ship to have sunk in the course of trade in the New World. Artifacts raised from the ocean floor show that the Henrietta Marie carried pewter ware, ivory, slave shackles, trade beads, and many other artifacts which document every aspect of the slave trade.
The exhibition uses the artifacts and the ship’s records as touchstones for entering the daily lives of the Africans on board the ship as they made the journey to the New World as slaves; the seamen who manned the ship and managed its human cargo; and the traders who ran this notorious enterprise and integrated it into the economy of England.
It’s a well thought out exhibit