Diving into Research

Sheila S. Walker ’66 has traveled many places for her research into the global African diaspora. But this year marked the first time she needed her scuba gear for a trip, when she had the opportunity to join a diving expedition off the coast of Key West, Florida, to the site where the Henrietta Marie sank in 1700. 

A cultural anthropologist, writer, and documentarian, Walker first visited Africa as a Bryn Mawr junior. She spent the summer with a family in a kingdom in Cameroon and came back eager to avail herself of the College’s anthropology program. 

“My interest in anthropology was to get to know other cultures from the inside,” she says. “To travel but not be a tourist. Traveling as a tourist is like traveling in a Ziploc bag, and I don’t want to travel in a Ziploc bag.” 

She spends less time on the road than she used to, she says fresh off a plane from Colombia. But traveling is how she draws connections across cultures back to Africa, from food, to names, to the Anansi the Spider stories that endure. 

“There’s no book I can read that’s going to tell me about the elements of African culture brought to different parts of the Americas,” she says. “I have to go.” 

The Henrietta Marie expedition was led by Diving With a Purpose, a nonprofit that locates and documents shipwrecks. The site was originally found while searching for the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, which sank in 1622 laden with silver and gold. 

When the Henrietta Marie went down, it was en route to England from Jamaica, where it had unloaded 191 captive Africans. Amidst the wreckage was a massive mound of shackles. 

“There’s no book I can read that’s going to tell me about the elements of African culture brought to different parts of the Americas. I have to go.” 

The wreck is no longer visible, Walker says, but the ocean floor is marked with a monument placed by the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. Being there was a reminder of how the trafficking of enslaved Africans and their labor led to the material wealth that sailed back to Europe. 

“Finding those ships gives a real material connection between places in the Atlantic world,” Walker says. “I think seeing something like the Henrietta Marie helps us understand the creation of the Americas and the role of Africans in the creation of the Americas.”