The memorial to the Henrietta Marie sits 20 feet below the calm, blue water off Key West, a concrete marker visible from the surface that reads: “In memory and recognition of the courage, pain and suffering on enslaved African people. Speak her name and gently touch the souls of our ancestors.” In early May, a group of Black divers and community members visited the site as part of a pilgrimage years in the making—a journey to honor the lives of those carried on the slave ship and to feel a connection to their own history.
Ruthie Browning had expected to see “a big, old rock with stuff growing all over it.” Instead, as she floated above the marker, tears filled her eyes. “I thought I’d look at it, pay my respects and that’ll be that,” she said. “But something happened. I gently told myself: If you can be quiet, maybe they will speak.” She said she felt her ancestors’ words: “My daughter, we’re so glad you’re here.”
The pilgrimage was organized by Underwater Adventure Seekers, the world’s oldest Black scuba diving club, and Diving With a Purpose, a nonprofit dedicated to documenting slave shipwrecks. The group had tried to dive to the marker the previous summer, but rough waters kept them away. “The ancestors were not smiling down on us then,” said Jay Haigler, a master diving instructor with Underwater Adventure Seekers. “This year was different.”
Michael Cottman, who has written two books about the Henrietta Marie and was part of the team that installed the marker in 1992, described the site as carrying “spiritual turbulence.” He said such a pilgrimage “was never meant to be easy—even if it wasn’t carrying enslaved people, it embodies the oppression of our people.”
The experience also resonated with Stanford University anthropologist Ayana Omilade Flewellen, who serves on the board of Diving With a Purpose and was conducting underwater interviews for a research project. She said she felt “a kind of tenderness in my heart” and that the spiritual nature of the dive helped her process a traumatic history rooted in death and suffering. “It’s hard to attach your life with this history,” Flewellen said. “The only way I could do that was turn toward what the divers were experiencing on this pilgrimage. That’s where it all bloomed and blossomed.”
The group’s rituals extended onto land. At Higgs Beach, on the south side of Key West, they visited a memorial and burial ground for 297 African refugees who died in 1860 after being rescued by the U.S. Navy from three slave ships—Wildfire, William and Bogota. Corey Malcom, lead historian at the Florida Keys History Center, said most were eventually sent back to Africa, but hundreds died from conditions aboard the ships. The gravesite, largely forgotten for decades, was rediscovered by historians using ground-penetrating radar; a second mass grave containing roughly 100 more bodies was located in 2010 under a community dog park across the street and has since been fenced off.
At the cemetery, the pilgrims held a libation ceremony rooted in Afro-Caribbean spiritual tradition. One by one, participants tearfully thanked their ancestors and poured white rum onto the beach. Addeliar Guy, an elder and avid diver, said honoring ancestors “is very, very important because we’re all connected.”
Below the waves, divers experienced the Henrietta Marie site not as a place of death but of vibrant life. Joel Johnson, president and CEO of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and a first-time open-water diver at the site, said he was struck by fish darting among corals and shells resting on the sandy bottom. “This was not a place of death, but a place of life,” Johnson said. “I didn’t feel like I was grieving for my ancestors. I felt like I was in the stream of history, recognizing that I’m a part of that. It made me happy.”
Michael Philip Davenport, president of Underwater Adventure Seekers, was moved to create art showing ancestors emerging from the monument. “Their spirituality is still in that space,” he said. “I was feeling their lives and their tragedy.”
Remnants of the Henrietta Marie’s wooden hull remain embedded under layers of sand at the site. The wreck was discovered in 1972 by treasure hunter Mel Fisher, and hundreds of artifacts were recovered in 1983. Only a handful of slave ships have been found out of an estimated 35,000 used to transport more than 12 million enslaved Africans; most vessels were intentionally destroyed to hide the illicit trade.
Many of those artifacts occupy an entire floor of the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, including more than 80 sets of iron shackles—many sized for children. Kory Lamberts, who runs a nonprofit focused on making aquatics more equitable, described the visceral impact of seeing them. “It was visceral. It took me to a place,” he said. “These are baby shackles. There’s no sugarcoating it. The truth really hits you.” Lamberts said he brought back fish from the Henrietta Marie site, which he imagined had absorbed the DNA of the ancestors, and the group ate that fish for dinner that night—a gesture he likened to a sacrament. “I wasn’t just bonded with this site through the experience of being there, but at this molecular level with a full circle moment of connection with myself and my history,” he said.
Among the divers, Dr. Melody Garrett connected the pilgrimage directly to current events. A diver with Diving With a Purpose who has searched for the wreck of the Guerrero, a Spanish pirate ship carrying 561 enslaved Africans that sank in 1827, Garrett said the need to document and honor this history is more pressing now than ever. She cited the Trump administration’s moves to remove references to slavery and Black history at National Park Service sites and federal museums, labeling it as divisive “anti-American propaganda.” For Garrett, engaging with pieces of history gives her a strong sense of identity as an American, especially as the country approaches its 250th birthday. “Black people have been here since before this country’s inception, longer than many other people have,” she said. “This is our country.”