Exploring a sunken slave ship was beyond any dream Michael Cottman could have imagined as a young child in his native Detroit.
Fascination with the underwater adventure TV
series “Sea Hunt” lit a fire in Cottman to learn scuba diving, quite a
stretch for a young, black boy growing up in a landlocked city.
Realizing that dream and combining it with his profession as a
journalist later in life led him to capture the incredible story of the
Henrietta Marie, the recovered slave ship he was fortunate enough to
explore as part of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers and
later research across several continents in the early 90s.
That odyssey became the 1998 book, “The Wreck
of the Henrietta Marie: An African American’s Spiritual Journey to
Uncover a Sunken Slave Ship” and the paperback renamed “Spirit Dive” in
1999. Nearly three decades later, the story lives on as National
Geographic released the young adult version, “Shackles from the Deep:
Tracing the Path of a Sunken Slave Ship, a Bitter Past, and a Rich
Legacy” for ages 10 to 16, earlier this year.
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