‘People did not go quietly’: divers explore wreck of 18th-century slave ship where mutiny took place

Slave Wrecks Project ( SWP ) is a programme dedicated to searching for slave ship wrecks globally and to training Africans and people of African descent in underwater archaeology.

The shipwreck has not been formally confirmed as L'Aurore , but evidence pointing to its likely identity includes the fact that the ship lies in the area described in the captain’s account; that its structure shows that it was constructed using a French technique.

More than 1,000 slave ships involved in the transatlantic slave trade sank around the world.

Fewer than a dozen have been located and documented as archaeological sites.

Part of the reason is the lack of economic value in the ships.

Another reason is underrepresentation of people of African ancestry in maritime archaeology.

The search for L'Aurore and the discovery of the presumed site has gone largely unnoticed by the wider community of Ilha de Mozambique .

Residents know that there are shipwrecks related to the slave trade off the island, but they don't know much more than that.