Ocean of Bones: The Hunt for the Pirate Slave Ship Guerrero

Summary

In the tradition of Shadow Divers and The Wager, the incredible true story of the pirate slave ship Guerrero, which wrecked in the Florida Keys, and the scuba divers who tracked it down nearly 200 years later.

In 1827, the brig Guerrero was racing across the Florida Straits with 561 kidnapped Africans in its hold. Though Britain and the United States had banned the Atlantic slave trade, outlaw captains like José Gomez still attempted to get around their Navy patrols and make for Cuba, where markets remained open. The Spanish captain was particularly ruthless—not only a trader, but a pirate, who didn’t hesitate to use his terror-inspiring fourteen-gun ship with a dragonhead on the prow to steal captives from other vessels.

In 2004, Ken Stewart, a Black diver and Vietnam veteran, learned that the Guerrero might still be in American waters. He marshalled a group he called Diving with a Purpose to go looking for the shipwreck, not only as a historic site but as a graveyard of buried stories that demanded recovery. In partnership with Corey Malcom—a marine archeologist whose affiliation with a famous Floridian treasure hunter made some initially wary of his motives—the group began to piece together what happened to the survivors of the Guerrero. The saga they uncovered involved President John Quincy Adams, an African princess turned American slaveholder, and the founders of Liberia. It was a tale of tragedy as well as survival, connecting ancestors and descendants across thousands of miles of ocean.

Ocean of Bones is a powerful and thrilling book that immerses readers in two connected journeys: one in the 19th century, and one in the 21st. It illuminates a forgotten history that reminds you why the lessons of the past must be kept alive in the present, and tells a story that will stick with you for a lifetime.