Iziko Museums of South Africa (Iziko), in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and George Washington University will announce the findings of an international research partnership this evening at the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum. The Slave Wrecks Project (SWP,) first formed in 2008, provides new knowledge on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, focusing on the São José slave wreck ship, discovered off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa.
The discovery of this 1794 slave ship wreck marks a milestone in the study of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and showcases the results of the Slave Wrecks Project, a unique global partnership among museums and research institutions in the United States and Africa.
Objects from the ship wreck will be unveiled at this historic event this evening at the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum. Remnants of shackles, iron ballast to weigh down the ship and its human cargo, and a wooden pulley block, were retrieved this year from the wreck site of the São José—Paquete de Africa, a Portuguese slave ship which sank off the coast of Cape Town on its way to Brazil while carrying hundreds of enslaved Africans from Mozambique.
“The story of the Saõ José’s is more than an African story. It is a story that transcends time, space, place and identity. It is a global story of our inter-connectedness as a human race. It is a story of migration and of untold human wrongs.
