shipwreck

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.

An early work in the French literature of hydraulic engineering. In the preface, Bouillet states that some of the machines he proposes were used in Holland and that some of his descriptions are translations of the Dutch. He describes methods of dredging rivers, constructing slipways and sluices, clearing ports and harbors, and maintaining river banks. He also discusses two techniques of raising a sunken ship and a way of blowing the deck of a ship with gunpowder to reveal cargo and then, salvaging it with diving bells made of copper.