Ship (3m).
L:
60 (18.3m). Tons:
120 tons. Hull:
wood. Comp:
18-20 crew. Arm:
8 guns. Built:
France?; <1697.
Probably named for the French wife of Charles I, Henrietta Marie is believed to have been a French merchantman captured during the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-97) between England, the Netherlands and their Protestant allies, and France. At war's end, the ship was sold and entered service in the lucrative triangular trade. This cartographic euphemism refers to the three-legged voyages that formed the basis of the hideous slave trade for English and colonial merchants. In addition to slaves, taken from Africa to Caribbean and North American ports, the cargoes included cheap trade goods from Britain, or iron and rum from the colonies, taken to Africa, and sugar and molasses taken to the merchants' homeports, supplemented with fruit and hardwoods for England and hard currency for the colonies.
The most profitable leg of the three was the innocuous-sounding "Middle Passage," in which millions of people were shipped in chains from West Africa to the West Indies. Estimates of the total number of people shipped from Africa to South and North America during the three centuries of the slave trade range from ten to twenty million. Of the total, about 65 percent were shipped to Brazil, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica. About 30 percent went to other European colonies in the Caribbean and South America, and about 5 percent to Britain's North American colonies and the United States. Britain outlawed the trade only in 1807, followed the next year by the United States; however, it was not until the abolition of slavery, starting with Britain in 1833 and ending with Brazil in 1888, that the traffic in humans finally died out.
Henrietta Marie seems to have first sailed in the slave trade in 1697, sailing to West Africa under Captain William Deacon and unloading her human cargo in Barbados in 1698 before returning to London. In 1699-1700, she made roughly the same voyage under Thomas Chamberlain, offloading in Jamaica rather than Barbados. At the end of 1700, the little three-masted ship sailed for Africa for the third and last time. Embarking an estimated 400 people from throughout West Africa, Henrietta Marie began the forty-day crossing of the Atlantic. It is possible that she stopped briefly at Barbados to ship fresh water and supplies, but the majority of her slaves was sold at Jamaica. There she loaded 81 hogsheads (57 tons) of sugar and smaller amounts of logwood, cotton, and tobacco. Sailing for England in early spring, Henrietta Marie headed west to round Cuba before turning east again to head through the Strait of Florida. Unfortunately, the ship ran aground on a coral reef in the Dry Tortugas, west of the Florida Keys. There were no known survivors, and the wreck went unnoticed for 270 years.
In 1972, divers looking for the remains of
Nuestra Seņora de Atocha located the remains of the Henrietta Marie, which they first identified by the presence of cannon and leg irons, some of which were designed specifically for children. Excavation on the site, known simply as the English wreck, didn't begin until 1983. In that year, the ship's bell was discovered. Inscribed "The Henrietta Marie 1699," this is believed to be a replacement watch bell. The positive identification of a ship whose history could be traced in contemporary records led to increased interest in her and the eventual recovery of thousands of artifacts and fragments. Because of its association with the slave trade, the site was of particular interest to African Americans, and in 1992 the National Association of Black Scuba Divers placed a marker at the site "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.'"
Sullivan, Slave Ship.
