From No Return

In 2015, media outlets were abuzz with the news of the discovery of a sunken slave ship near the coast of South Africa. The Portuguese slave ship Sao José Paquete de Africa (often shortened to Sao José) began its journey in 1794 from Mozambique, heading to the cotton and rice plantations of Brazil with a cargo of roughly 500 African captives. The ship never reached its destination—as it rounded the Cape of Good Hope, it was ripped apart by high winds and sank just off the coast. Although the crew survived, 212 of the slaves drowned.

This book chronicles the discovery of the wreck of the Sao José, including its initial misidentification as an 18th-century Dutch merchant ship, and the process of correctly identifying it through research in the Western Cape Archives. Through the Southern African Slave Wrecks and Diasporan Heritage Routes Project, the recovered artifacts were offered to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) as part of a long-term loan. The book details the objects and artifacts found among the wreckage, the archival records that helped to complete the story, and finally the inaugural exhibit of the artifacts in the NMAAHC when it opened in September 2016.