CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA—The discovery of a slave ship that sank off the coast of Cape Town in 1794 was announced today at Iziko Museums of South Africa. Identified as the São José-Paquete de Africa, the Portuguese ship was carrying more than 400 enslaved people from Mozambique to Brazil when it struck submerged rocks some 300 feet from shore and sank between two reefs. More than half of the enslaved people were killed, and those who survived were resold into slavery. “This discovery is significant because there has never been archaeological documentation of a vessel that foundered and was lost while carrying a cargo of enslaved persons,” Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), said in a press release. NMAAHC is one of six partners in the United States and Africa working on the Slave Wrecks Project, which identified the site through the captain’s account of the wrecking of the São José and other documents. Iron ballast to compensate for the lighter human cargo, shackles, and copper fastenings and sheathing have been recovered. To read more about great underwater discoveries, go to "History's 10 Greatest Wrecks."
