Diving With a Purpose

Diving With a Purpose is a collective of Black scuba divers who search for long-lost slave wrecks. They are on a mission to raise the silent voices of the captive Africans who went down with those vessels and bring them back into our collective memory.

We join their youth diving program - YDWP - in Biscayne National Park, Florida Keys, as they head out onto the ocean in search of the Guerrero. With them is poet and professor Jason Vasser-Elong who has designed a creative writing course to help them articulate their feelings about the Atlantic slave trade as they uncover its legacy. The Guerrero was a pirate ship being chased by a British ship HMS Nimble when it ran aground in 1827. It had 561 captive Africans on board, of which 41 drowned.

The programme is the brainchild of Mr Kenneth Stewart who was named Sea Hero of the Year by Scuba Diving Magazine in 2018. We follow the group’s first attempt at “anomaly hopping”.

Producer: Victoria Ferran
A Just Radio production for BBC World Service

(Photo: Young black diver underwater. Credit: Vando Rogers)