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First and foremost, this is in Spanish but it could be interesting to anyone interested in African slavery in the Americas, the DR, even Haiti in colonial times for the following reason.
French slave ships didn’t really sold slaves in any of the Dominican ports in 1770, which is the year this one sunk off the coast of Río San Juan. Many of the French slave ships did went to port in places like Cap François (modern Cap Haitian), Port-au-Prince, etc. Especially in Cap François which had one of the most important slave markets and due to the intensity of the slavery imposed by the French which was very “efficient” (ie, it produced a lot of wealth in a very short tine, but the Africans themselves had a short life expectancy as soon the arrived to the French port, enough died of exhaustion in the plantations and this meant large quatities of Africans needed to be imported to sell new ones and replace the ones that died.) It was common knowledge that a good number of the Africans that were taken to places like Cap François and sold to slave master in Saint-Domingue were expected to be decade within a decade after arriving.
In all likelihood, this recently discovered French slave ship off the north coast of the Dominican Republic was either heading with Africans to Cap François or from Cap François to Africa or elsewhere.
The following video is from 2 days ago of an interview done in Santo Domingo with 2 of the foreigners among the ones that discovered the sunken ship. It’s in Spanish, but you can turn on the automatic translation to English (it isn’t perfect.)
PS. Finding sunken ships from colonial times isn’t a rarity in the Dominican Republic. It’s known there are at least 300 ships from different centuries in colonial times that went down in Dominican waters, most still not discovered. Their existence is known because of records of being at X port and destination Z port and the route they were suppose to take, but the ship never arrived. Usually unforseen hurricanes are the culprit for their sinking. That is just the estimated number in Dominican waters, hundreds more are sunk in Haitian waters and those belonging to other islands.
Many of these ships have very valuable treasure cargo they went down with, such as a ship that departed from Santo Domingo in the early 1500’s. The largest gold nugget ever mined in the Western Hemisphere was mined in Hispaniola and was among the cargo of that ship headed to Spain. The ship sunk with gold nugget and all off the eastern DR due to a hurricane and to this day it hasn’t been found. Just that gold nugget is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Half of everything discovered in Doninican waters belong to the Dominican state and the other half to the discoverers of the sunken ship. That gold nugget is worth so much, that even with the government claiming half what is left will still make its discoverers very rich.
Of course, this sounds easier than whst it’s in reality. Going into Dominican waters not far from any Dominican beach you run into gigantic sea creatures that I think I would die from a heart attack simply looking at those things coming my way. From Orcas to humpback whales, white sharks… If findibg those ships was dependent in me, then they will stay exactly where they have been for the past hundreds of years. lol. Anyone brave enough to think nothing of a killer whale coming your way while you’re X meters under water, give it a try. Who knows, you might hit the jackpot.
This was spotted by a few Dominican fishermen off the coast of Isla Saona, DR. Keep in mind they were in the boat at all times. Imagine what it would be like to be in the water with those creatures coming your way. Yikes!
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