Sunken ship offers clues on Africans bound for slavery
Captives instead sailed to freedom
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times | October 3, 2004

BAMBARRA, Turks and Caicos Islands -- Lobster fisherman Dolphus Arthur spotted the wooden hull 25 years ago, nearly buried in the fine silt between two massive hydras of coral just off the coast of uninhabited East Caicos.

Over the years, he would occasionally see the shipwreck as he piloted his open boat around the craggy reef or dived for his spiny prey. But he did not know until archeologists discovered the ruin in early September that the ship probably carried his own ancestors from West Africa to the alabaster shores of these islands, then and now under British dominion.

In a disaster that proved a deliverance for the 193 slaves on board, the brigantine Trouvadore, which foundered in 1841, brought its captive cargo to freedom instead of plantation bondage. All of the Spanish ship's captives, who had been en route to Spanish-ruled Cuba, made it ashore to the abolitionist embrace of the British colonial rulers -- except for one woman, who was shot to death on the beach by the crew as she sought to escape.

That fateful turn has only recently come to Caribbean chroniclers' attention, stirring curiosity throughout the region about the little-studied history of the islands' black populations.

"There was always talk among the old people about a shipwreck," 53-year-old Arthur recalls. "My grandmother lived to be 106. She was always talking about how we came from Africa but we had always been free. Now I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention. I've been passing around that wreckage for years now, never knowing it had any connection to me."