The Slave Trade in the Gulf of Mexico: The Potential for Furthering Research through the Archaeology of Shipwrecked Slave Ships

Summary

For more than 300 years, the slave trade transported human cargo to slave markets along the American Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and throughout the Caribbean. In 1808, Congress banned the slave trade throughout the U.S., although smuggling, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, continued for another half-century. While thousands of slave ship voyages have been documented, only a few slave ships have ever been investigated archaeologically worldwide. In the Gulf of Mexico, an untold number of vessels engaged in the coastwise trade and smuggling were lost at sea. This paper will discuss the slave trade in the Gulf of Mexico, the importance of New Orleans as a major center for the trade, and how data gathered from Henrietta Marie, the only slave ship found in the Gulf of Mexico to date, can inform the archaeological community.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• To "Hazard a Turbulent Sea:" Marine Archaeology in the Gulf of Mexico--Examining 500 Years of Exploration and Exploitation   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 947