Options Menu   Watch Program   Program Details   Classroom Guide   Search the Video   Print Transcript Video Search:

Mr. MICHAEL COTTMAN (Author): This--Brian, this is an extraordinary
archaeological and historical discovery in America and, I--I dare say,
throughout the world. This is the only slave ship in the world that's
been scientifically documented, the only slave ship in the world where
artifacts have been recovered and, more importantly, 7,000 artifacts
were recovered from the ocean floor. And of those artifacts, more
than 100 pair were from the slave ship called the Henrietta Marie.
And it's the largest collection of slave ship shackles ever found on
one site--on one ship. So this--this particular ship--this--Henrietta
Marie, has an--just an incredible story to tell and a story that has
not been told before.

LAMB: In the book you have a lot of pictures, and there's this one.
Is this--are these your hands?

Mr. COTTMAN: Those are my hands. Absolutely.

LAMB: Where--where did you have that picture taken?

Mr. COTTMAN: That picture was taken in Key West, Florida, back in
1991 or 1992, and it was in a laboratory--upstairs laboratory of the
Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, and this is the organization
that has overseen a lot of the excavation of the artifacts on this
particular wreck site.

LAMB: Where is the wreck located now?

Mr. COTTMAN: The wreck's located 37 miles west of Key West, Florida,
in about thirty feet of water on an area--on a reef called New Ground
Reef. And we can talk a little bit about it later, but it makes a
really incredible place to dive because it's such a shallow site. So
divers and underwater archaeologists can actually work this site for
hours and hours at a time without worrying about decompression
sickness.

LAMB: How many times have you dived?

Mr. COTTMAN: More than two dozen.

LAMB: On that site?

Mr. COTTMAN: On that site.

LAMB: When did all this start for you?

Mr. COTTMAN: This started back in the early '90s. The--the ship, in
fact, was discovered in 1972 by divers working with the Mel Fisher
Maritime Heritage Society, and this is the organization that helped me
out tremendously with the research and actually set the stage for the
discovery of the ship. But the person who--one of the people who
located the ship is in the book, and his name is Moe Molinar. And
he's Panamanian. He's just a footnote here. Moe Molinar is probably
one of the--the only successful underwater treasure hunters of African
descent that--that we know of, and he's probably a story in his--in
hisself.

But Moe was looking for--and a group of divers with the Mel--Mel
Fisher Maritime Heritage Society back in the '70s were looking for a
ship called the Hitocha. The Hitocha at that time, they later
discovered, had about $400 million worth of emeralds and silver coins
on board. As Moe was under water sifting through sand looking for
glitter on the ocean floor, he discovered these encrusted shackles on
the--on the--the ocean floor, and he began to--to look at them
and--and he knew that these were shackles that were used to bind
wrists much like his own. But he didn't know the name of the wreck.
They didn't know anything. They just knew that he had discovered some
shackles, and he was compelled by it because it was just such a--an
unusual discovery for him. He's found countless treasure on treasure
ships, but this was an unusual discovery for him.

So he put it in his dive belt, they took it to a warehouse where they
sat for years. And in 1982 they went back out--a group of divers went
back out and they discovered the ship's bell, which said Henrietta
Marie on it. On the back, 1699. And it was a blueprint for us to
start our research in London to try to piece together this
trans-Atlantic puzzle. This--this bell served as--what it's like--a
black box in an aircraft when a--when a--when an airplane crashes, and
they look for that black box to--to try to give them an idea of some
of the last words or conversations from the pilot or--to the--to the
tower. And this gave us a blueprint right back to London to start
this research.

LAMB: National Black Scuba Divers Association?

Mr. COTTMAN: Yup, and there are more than five of us. Yes, National
Association of Black Scuba Divers. We're an...

LAMB: Called NABS?

Mr. COTTMAN: NABS, that's right. We're in our 10th year. It's an
offshoot of an organization called the Underwater Adventure Seekers
that's based right here in Washington, DC, which is more than
40--about 40 years old. And we come together to network, but we--we
never knew that recreational diving was gonna turn into this dive into
our past and an opportunity to learn more about the slave trade and to
learn more about a particular slave ship. So this was--I happened to
become a scuba diver about 10 years ago, but I--I got into scuba
diving just to see some fish. I never knew that it was gonna lead me
into under--underwater archaeology and, again, the discovery of
something so historically and--historically profound.

LAMB: Now you mentioned, in the beginning of the book, a television
show, "Sea Hunt"? What year did you start watching that? And what
impact did that have on you?

Mr. COTTMAN: This had to be back in the late '60s. And I was a
youngster and I used to sit in front of this grainy black and white
Zenith television watching Lloyd Bridges squeeze into this black
wetsuit and strap on these two scuba tanks and dive into the ocean and
explore this--this vast world under--under water. And I used to tell
my mother at that time that I wanted to learn to scuba dive. And she
probably thought that I had an overactive imagination because during
that time I was growing up in Detroit, and the last thing coming out
of the mouths of little black boys from Detroit was scuba diving. You
know, we played basketball and football and, you know, some played a
little soccer and--and hockey. And I told her that this was something
I really wanted to do. And she says, `Look, you can set your
mind--whatever you want to do you can set your mind to do and you can
do it.'

She could not teach me how to scuba dive, but she taught me the next
best thing and that was how to swim. So she took me to the
YMCA--YWCA, I guess, back then and threw me in the water and I learned
to swim. But I never forgot that I wanted to learn to dive, so what
she began to do is she began to take me to aquariums around the
country when we traveled. We'd jump in a car and go on a vacation,
and she'd take me to all these aquariums and we'd learn about marine
life. And--and it was then that she decided that, you know, `I would
try to find a way to teach you to scuba dive.'

So I went to a summer camp once that was a horseback riding and a
water sports camp. And part of the--part of the water sports was
scuba diving. This was some little junior certification card. You
basically just put the regulator in your mouth, breathe under water
and come out and you've got a great sense of accomplishment that
you've done something. And they give you a little junior
certification card, and I guess I was maybe 12 or 13 then and that was
my first introduction to scuba diving.

LAMB: How long did you live in Detroit?

Mr. COTTMAN: I lived in Detroit for 18 years and then left to go to
college in Atlanta.

LAMB: You write about the 1967 riots in Detroit. What impact
did--how old were you, first of all? And what impact did they have on
you?

Mr. COTTMAN: I was about nine or 10 years old, and I remember
leaving our church. Our church was called St. Mark's Community
Church on 12th Street in Atkinson, and that was the heart of where the
riots took place. And I remember just stepping outside the church.
We were on our way--actually, we were on our way in, and we saw the
smoke and there's--there were police cars and I think a helicopter or
something criss-crossing the sky. And it--my father decided that we
were gonna stay in church that day instead of leaving and--and pray
and pray for the future of the city, pray for our neighbors and pray
for ourselves. And we decided to stay and we stayed for maybe an
hour. It was an abbreviated service. Probably more like 30, 45
minutes.

And we came out and I just remember my eyes stinging from the smoke
and holding my mother's hand and my father disappearing into this wall
of smoke to go get the car. And he was probably gone maybe 10 minutes
to get the car, but it seemed like hours. And I can hear gunshots in
the distance, and I thought that, you know, `This is the last time I'm
gonna see my dad.' It was a very emotional moment for me just as a--as
a youngster to be involved in that.

But we went home and my father began to explain why these--why this
urban rebellion was taking place. And what I didn't know that during
that time, and I write, that here are these black scuba divers,
unbeknownst to me, during that year who were in Grand Cayman, you
know, forging this historical opportunity of their own, getting into a
world of scuba diving industry that did not necessarily embrace
African-Americans during that time. And to--to this day, we're still
only a couple of percent--I think maybe 1 percent of the--of the
industry.

LAMB: How long have you worked at The Washington Post?

Mr. COTTMAN: I've been there for one year.

LAMB: Prior to that?

Mr. COTTMAN: Prior to that I was New York Newsday for 10 years,
where I was a political writer, covered the first term of David
Dinkins--first and only term of David Dinkins, who was New York City's
first African-American mayor. And--and then I took three years off to
write the--the book, "The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie." It began,
actually, as a leave of absence. But because this was such a complex
book--it involved a lot of travel. It was a series, Brian, of
predestined forks in the road. I was originally supposed to go down
to Key West and kind of gather some material and try to write a
shorter book. But Key West led me to London. London led me to the
West Coast of Africa, the West Coast of Africa through the Caribbean.

And I had a wonderful publisher and a wonderful editor, Shay Earhardt,
and a wonderful literary agent in Marie Brown, who just said, `Let's
take our time and do this right. You're not gonna get another shot at
it. And we're not gonna rush you through this process because we want
it done right, and we realize that it's--it's complex and that there
are a lot of--a lot of--a lot of doors to walk through and a lot of
loops to tie. And let's try to tie up as--as many of these loops as
possible in this history--history that hasn't been told before.'

And as journalists--and you know this, too, we--we seldom get an
opportunity to tell first. And that's what--that was exciting to me,
to be able to actually research a story about a slave ship that had
not been told before like this. And it was just a wonderful
opportunity.

LAMB: You have a picture in the book, the last of a number of
pictures, of this young lady. Who is it?

Mr. COTTMAN: This is my daughter, Ariane, who just turned two. We
were a little ahead of ourselves in the--in the cut line there. When
I wrote it she was about 13--13 months. She's two years old and I'm
introducing her to water, and we just came back from Bermuda where she
went under water for the first time in--in a little pool. She holds
her nose and goes down, says, `Daddy under water.' And so it's
important for--it's important for her to--to read this book in--in
later years as she gets older to--to learn about our history. And
this is an international story. It's not a story just for
African-American people. It's a story I think that everybody can
and--and should embrace. It's a story about--about an important and
probably underdiscussed and underresearched part of our history.

LAMB: You quote in the book--well, you--you talk about yourself, and
you also quote other black men, usually, and their feelings about
racial matters. Let me just read back to you what you wrote: `White
women have clutched their purses and pulled their children close when
I stepped onto elevators. I have been followed by store security
guards for no reason. I've been mistaken for a liquor store thief in
Detroit. I've been refused service at a gas station. I've been run
off the road in Louisiana by white men screaming "Nigger" from a
pickup truck. I've had a man in Manhattan hand me his parking lot
ticket assuming that I was a garage attendant as I waited for my own
car to be delivered. And I've been asked to leave a restaurant in
Georgia because the owner feared for my safety.'

Are there--are there a lot more of those or is, you know--and
how--how--how difficult is it today with race relations from what--the
way you see things?

Mr. COTTMAN: I think that--yes, I mean, there are probably more. I
only listed a few. What I decided to do--what we decided. I didn't
want to beat readers over the head with this, but I wanted people to
understand my background, the kinds of incidents and the kinds of
situations that I've been confronted with through the years.

Does racism and discrimination still permeate our society? Of course
it does. Have we come a long way? I--I think--I think we have. One
of the things about this--this book that I think is--is very important
and something that hasn't been told before, and this is why I talk
about it, this is a book that I think all people can embrace,
and--and, indeed, they have. My book signings now have become
probably a third or maybe close to half of the people in the audience
are white. I'm--I'm happy about that.

This is a partnership, by the way, that we forged with the National
Association of Black Scuba Divers and the underwater archaeologists in
Key West who happen to be white. This is an unprecedented union of
people who came together to excavate and to examine a slave ship. I
mean, this has never been done before. Whites and blacks coming
together to talk is one thing at a table. But slavery conjures these
visceral reactions in people, black and white. So it's difficult
enough, Brian, just to have a discussion about slavery, about race
relations.

It's even more complex and more challenging to be on a ship with
whites and blacks--on a boat, excuse me--whites and blacks discovering
and excavating and examining a slave ship because when we're out on a
boat at one point to do this--again, this is 37 miles off--off the
shore. And it--it's not the kind of distance where you can come back
and forth. So what we did was we stayed on the boat. So we're there
for maybe three, four, five days in a row working the site and
examining it. And we come back on the boat and you can't go anywhere.
You know, there's nowhere to go, so you have to talk. And, in fact,
what we realized was this--the ship, the Henrietta Marie, became this
experiment on race.

When--when President Clinton talked about this--created this
Commission on Race and wanted to create this national dialogue and,
you know, he talked about feelings should be rubbed raw if you're
honest, I don't know what we can ever use for a barometer to decide
whether it was successful or not. The impeachment hearings
overshadowed much of it. It think in some ways he was probably
discredited.

But what I do know is--is that we need a mechanism or some type of
vehicle to bring to the table for us just to begin the discussion.
And for us, that vehicle and that mechanism, for the white divers and
the African-American divers, happened to be this slave ship. And
America has to find more vehicles like that, and we stumbled across
this or--or we were guided to it, what--however you des--decide to
describe it. And I'm not saying that we solved all the--you know, the
world's problems, you know, aboard one boat searching for the slave
ship. But what we did do was--we have a common denominator, and--and
we found out that we had a common passion. And--and that was--that
was important, and that's why this--this is a book that I think can be
embraced by many people in America, re--regardless of your ethnic
or--or cultural backgrounds.

LAMB: What is this drawing in the book?

Mr. COTTMAN: That's--that's a--it's--it's a very powerful drawing,
and it--it--what it--what it shows is the way African men, women and
children were systematically packed into the hull of slave ships. And
the idea was, of course, to try to pack as many people in to make that
trans-Atlantic voyage, to make that--actually, that voyage from Africa
to the West Indies to unload African people. And the more people that
they packed in there, the greater the profits.

LAMB: What's the schematic above it?

Mr. COTTMAN: The schematic above it on--on the left is the way the
Henrietta Marie probably looked. So that's a--that's a drawing, a
re-creation, of what the Henrietta Marie looked and how African people
were packed into the hull of the Henrietta Marie specifically.

LAMB: When was the Henrietta Marie built?

Mr. COTTMAN: It was built in, we believe, the early 1600s or so,
mid-1600s. It was a prize--actually, we believe it was a French ship
that was a prize to the British because it actually sailed under
the--the British flag and sailed from 1699 to 17--1697 to 1700.

LAMB: Where did it--where did it steam from?
Where--ac--ac--actually, where was it physically built?

Mr. COTTMAN: It was physically built, we believe--we're not
sure--but somewhere in France. And not exactly sure. But we pick...

LAMB: But it didn't steam, did it?

Mr. COTTMAN: No, no, absolutely not.

LAMB: How long was it?

Mr. COTTMAN: It was 80 feet long and weighed about 120 tons.

LAMB: And what was its purpose?

Mr. COTTMAN: Its purpose originally was to--oh, its purpose actually
was--was--was slaving. It turned into a slave ship as far as we can
trace it back in 1697 when it sailed out of the Thames River into the
English Channel and into the Atlantic. And we discovered there was a
historian by the name of Nigel Tattersfield who worked for the Mel
Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, and he started a lot of this
research that we built on. And--but through that research we were
able to find the names of the three ship captains. We were able to
identify about 20 crew members on board the vessel. Again, the ship
sailed out of--sailed out of London. From London it sailed to a place
called Calabar, which is now southeast Nigeria.

That's where it began to--the captains traded with African kings and
chiefs for African people. And they traded with some of the trade
beads that were actually found on the--on--on the wreck site. So
among the 7,000 artifacts that were recovered, several--maybe a couple
thousand were--were trade beads. These were beads that were made in
Venice that were glass, all different colors, all different shapes and
sizes. And these beads meant different things to African chiefs and
kings. Some thought that they brought spiritual power. Some chiefs
and kings thought it--it brought great social status. And some just
liked the way they look and figured that it would adorn
their--their--their bodies or their--their wrists or their--their
necks with--with necklaces. So there were a number of beads that were
still recovered on the site that you can still find today.

LAMB: How many trips did the Henrietta Marie make?

Mr. COTTMAN: We can--we can say with certainty that we know that it
made two trans-Atlantic voyages. The first one, it--it ended up in
Barbados where it sold--the captain sold several hundred African
people at public auction. And the last trip that we can verify ended
in Port Royal, Jamaica, in May of 1700, where it unloaded 190
African-Ameri--African men and women and 40 children, I might add, and
to try to make a run back to London to replenish supplies, re-outfit
the ship and then go back to West Africa. But it sank in a hurricane
and was blown severely off course. It tried to drop three of its
anchors and ride out the storm. They were unsuccessful in that, of
course, and it was broken apart in pieces and splintered and crashed
in an area called New Ground Reef.

LAMB: And this picture right here on top?

Mr. COTTMAN: This picture on top is a picture of Colon Fuller, who
we believe is a descendent of the Henrietta Marie. In fact, we
discovered in London--we discovered a--we--we got in--we got into a
Jeep, Brian, and just drove across the countryside of England looking
for a place called Stream Mill. Stream Mill is where we believe that
the cannons were manufactured, and the family that manufactured these
co--cannons, we believe, for the Henrietta Marie was a family known as
the Fuller family. And we'd drive the countryside and we're looking
through--through maps trying to find Stream Mill on the map, and we
eventually find it. And it's a stone house and a very nice property
and we see the--the stream in the background, and we've got books that
have drawings of how this--this stream mill would have looked in the
1700s.

So we knock on the door and we tell this woman who answers the door,
whose name was Marilyn Ambrosniak, that, `We're scholars and writers
and we're retracing the history of a slave ship, and part of our
hist--part of our travels led us to your back yard. Can we come in?'
And she says yes. She shows us around. She knew the foundry. She
knew the history of her property, that the cannons were manufactured
there, that the Fuller family owned the property. But she didn't know
anything about the Henrietta Marie, but she knew everything about the
foundry. We later learned through our research that the Fullers owned
a plantation in Jamaica, and that not only did they--they amassed
great wealth in making cannons and making pistols and rifles for the
Army and Navy, but they also made cannons and weaponry for slave ships
and that they owned property in Jamaica which we--we found out later
was a--was a plantation.

So we--I packed up. We traveled to Jamaica and we began to look at
maps and--and go through research and captains logs and we find the
estate that we believe the Fullers owned called the Knollis Estate.
And, again, we knock on the door and--writers, scholars and--and
journalists and we're researching the Henrietta Marie. And this
lovely couple comes to the door, and their name was the Mairs,
M-A-I-R-S. And they invite me in, and they start showing me
their--their property, and they--they knew that this was the probably
largest parcel of the Knollis Estate that exists, and it was 18 1/2
acres.

And they talked about their father, who bought the property years and
years ago, and his name was Howard, and my father's name is Howard and
my middle name is Howard. Their son was named Michael--is named
Michael and I'm Michael. And their son's daughter was named Michaela,
and she was born around the time my father--my daughter was. And we
talked about these connections and how you end up at certain places
and how you're guided to certain--certain destinations, and we just
had a wonderful conversation. And they said, `You may want to talk to
some other people who know this property better than us.' And they
said you want to talk to some of the Fullers. And I'm thinking, `Boy,
the Fullers as in European Fullers?' And they said, `No, as in black
Jamaican Fullers.'

And as it turns out, years ago the--the way it worked--and you know
this--that the Europeans gave their last names to the African people
who worked their property. And as it turns out, a number of these
African people over the years never moved and they--they built
communities. So for generations and generations and generations the
Fullers have worked that property on that Knollis Estate, and even
though the Fullers didn't know the Henrietta Marie, they knew what
their forefathers have done for years, and that's to work that estate.
And so we believe through that and a lot of our research that these
were some of the descendants. So that was just a pivotal breakthrough
for us in this research.

LAMB: Go back over the number of places that you went in your
research. You mentioned London and outside of London.

Mr. COTTMAN: Mm-hmm. Started London and then outside of London.
And that led us to--to West Africa. We spent a great deal of time
back and forth between London--well, the United States and Goree
Island, which is off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. This is where we
believe the Henrietta Marie also docked to repair--to repair the ship.
And then we traveled to Jamaica and Barbados, made several trips to
Jamaica and at least one or two to Barbados, and then countless trips
back and forth to Key West to dive on site of the--of the wreckage.

LAMB: By the way, how many times have you--how many dives have you
made in your life, altogether?

Mr. COTTMAN: Altogether, 221.

LAMB: Is it an expensive hobby?

Mr. COTTMAN: It can be because, first of all, you have to--where we
live, unfortunately--I have to--here in Washington--I have to get on
aircraft to--to do this hobby. I envy my friends who live in Miami,
you know, or on the West Coast, even in Los Angeles, even though
that's cold-water diving. But, yeah, so you--you--it costs about
$1,000 to--to get all your equipment.

LAMB: To buy it all?

Mr. COTTMAN: To buy it all. It--it costs approximately $200 to $300
to--or $400 to learn how to dive. And then you have to travel.

LAMB: Who are these folks?

Mr. COTTMAN: This is the--the person with the tam who I tease and
s--said he looks a little like--well, like a militant from the '60s,
is, in fact, Jose Jones, Dr. Jose Jones, who is a PhD and founder of
the Underwater Adventure Seekers and president of the National
Association of Black Scuba Divers who created--actually established
the marine science curriculum at the University of the District of
Columbia some years ago.

LAMB: Who's the lady?

Mr. COTTMAN: And she is Shirley Lee. She is the first woman,
African-American woman, scuba diver to join the Black Scuba Divers
back in the 1950s.

LAMB: Now is it true that in order for you to allow her or the group
allow her to belong, that you asked her to have a letter from her
husband?

Mr. COTTMAN: OK. Let me clear this up. This was in the '50s, all
right?

LAMB: Yeah.

Mr. COTTMAN: OK. I was probably one then, so I didn't have anything
to do with that, all right? But, yes...

LAMB: By the way, when--where was that photo from? What year was
that taken?

Mr. COTTMAN: That was 19--the mid-1950s.

LAMB: OK.

Mr. COTTMAN: And--or late 1950s, I'm sorry. They--that, in fact,
she told me that. She said that she had to--the pres--Dr. Jones and
a few other people--men said, `Look, you know, we've never had women
in our club before. And we don't know how to handle this. This is
new to us. So we're gonna have to ask you to get a letter from your
husband in order for you to join the club.' And, hey, it's a true
story. Nothing they're probably very proud of today, but he
enthusiastically writes this letter and she subsequently joins the
club and turned out to be one of the best divers that they've had.

LAMB: Again, how many black scuba divers are there in the United
States?

Mr. COTTMAN: Probably about, we think--on our mailing list, maybe
3,000. But we believe there are more because now that people found
out about the organization, there are people from all over the country
now writing Dr. Jones and sending letters in and asking how they can
be a part of the group.

LAMB: How many of those are women?

Mr. COTTMAN: Fifty percent now.

LAMB: Fifty percent scuba divers.

Mr. COTTMAN: Fifty percent. Half--half the organization is now
women.

LAMB: And where is the organization headquartered?

Mr. COTTMAN: It's based here in Washington, DC.

LAMB: What does the organization do?

Mr. COTTMAN: We get together, we network with other divers. We try
to promote underwater safety. We try to--we talk a lot about the
environment and preserving the coral. We do a lot of shark dives
to--to teach young divers that all sharks aren't man-eating creatures;
that every dive's a shark dive, you're bound to see one; that they're
not gonna just come up to you and start chewing on you. And we try to
go to schools. We go to schools and we talk to young people about
marine science, about marine biology, about oceanography as a career
and try to get them in the water and teach them about a sport that you
will probably not encounter in--in the inner city.

LAMB: When you dive, how long can you stay underwater?

Mr. COTTMAN: It--it depends on the depth. The deeper you dive,
the--the less time you can stay underwater. Usually, a 40- to 50-foot
dive, for instance, at 50 feet you could probably stay about 35,
40--40 minutes.

LAMB: Have you ever come close to having an accident when you dive?

Mr. COTTMAN: I have not yet. I have not. Fortunately and thank
God, no.

LAMB: What was your reaction the first time you came upon anything in
the water that had to do with the slave ship?

Mr. COTTMAN: And incredibly gut-wrenching em--em--emotional
experience for me. In--in fact, I--yeah, I'll answer that question by
telling you a couple of things. We--the National Association of Black
Scuba Divers and David Moore and a number of archaeologists who--who
helped us with this project, white and black, decided that we wanted
to honor and commemorate the African men, women and children who lost
their lives during the Middle Passage and who lost their lives on this
ship, the Henrietta Marie.

So we decided to--to lay a monument on the ocean floor, a one-ton
concrete monument with a bronze inscription to, again, commemorate the
loss of life aboard the slave ship and abo--and during the Middle
Passage. And it was during that time when some of the people who you
see in this picture, who I've been diving with, they still consider me
a neophyte. I'm a--I'm a rookie here. These--these men and
some--some women, especially some of the older men, older than myself,
have had a lot of challenges with the ocean, a lot of challenges with
the sea. Some of them are military divers. I'm--I've only been
diving about 10 years so they still consider me a rookie.

But these are guys who are prepared for anty--any encounter and any
experience in the ocean. But what they could not prepare for, I don't
think, emotionally or spiritually was what they were gonna feel laying
this monument on this wreckage of this slave ship. And when you run
your hands underwater as I have on this wreck and uncovered trade
beads--when you run your hands underwater on this site and--and--and
raise planks of wood that once made up the hull of this vessel that
carried these African people into slavery, there were--you look
through tempered mask--look through tempered glass of the mask
underwater and you're looking at other divers. And I'm--I'm looking
at tears in--in the eyes of some of these divers and some of these men
who are the most stoic individuals that--that I've seen in my life,
who succumb to this emotion and rush of emotion, being on the--on the
wreck of this--of this site.

So it was indeed a--just a--a phenomenal opportunity to be a part of
this examination of--of this ship, but it was also, and I--I write in
here, a spiritual aspect to it as well just being bathed and baptized
in the waters where so--so many atrocities took place and to be around
so many other men who I respect in the dive industry and watch how
they handled this rush--again, rush of emotion that they experienced.

LAMB: What's the story about the man you met from--white man you met
from Houston?

Mr. COTTMAN: Oh, the--that was in Dakar-Senegal when I was
researching in Africa. And he was--he worked for an oil company, and
he was drilling for oil in--in Africa. And I was at the--at the bar
and just having a beer, relaxing at the end of the day, and he wanted
to know what I did. And I told him what I was working on, and he told
me what he did for a living. And he begins to, in--in fact, just
lecture me on how I should write this book. And he tells me--he says,
`Well, you know, your people sold your people into slavery.' And I
said, `I'm aware of that.' And he says, `Well, you need to write
that.' And my only response to him was, you know, `I won't tell you
how to drill for oil, you don't tell me how to write my book.'

And, in fact, he was right, and--and there's no question about it.
And there's nothing that I tried to--to hide in the book. I wrote
that. But at the time--I had just returned--just to give you
some--some context, I had just returned from Goree Island and this was
the infamous slave port where so many African men, women and children
were detained in these stone pits with little food and little water,
waiting to be hauled in slave ships into the New World. Now I had
just came back from this, you know, pretty gut-wrenching experience,
and then I encounter this gentleman from--from--from Houston. So even
though he was correct, I just didn't feel at the time that--I didn't
want to be--be lectured.

LAMB: What's this picture right here?

Mr. COTTMAN: That's a picture of--of a--a stone pit in Goree Island
where some of the men who would not conform to--to slavery and being
incarcerated were taken for--for weeks at a time to--without food and
water and...

LAMB: Where are you standing there in the...

Mr. COTTMAN: ...until they broke.

LAMB: ...other picture?

Mr. COTTMAN: That's upstairs in the slave house. The...

LAMB: No, I'm talking about right here.

Mr. COTTMAN: Right, exactly. That's upstairs in the Slav...

LAMB: What are you looking out...

Mr. COTTMAN: I'm looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. I'm looking
down over a place called the Door of No Return where the slave ships
would pull up to the back of the--the slave house.

LAMB: And above that? Those two pictures?

Mr. COTTMAN: Above is the--the Door of No Return, and they call it
the No--the Door of No Return because that was the door where African
people were led through to be taken onto dinghies and then--loaded
onto dinghies and then taking lo--they call them long boats--and then
taken to the slave ships. And it was the last time that African
people would see their families again, so generations of families were
separated through that door called the Door of No Return, and it was
the last time that our--that African people would see their homeland.

LAMB: And who are you talking to, the gentleman there in the doorway?

Mr. COTTMAN: I'm talking to Joseph N'Diaye, who's the curator for
the Slave House, and he says that the mandatory retirement age in
Senagal as a government worker, as he is--a curator--is 55, and he's
73. He's been around.

LAMB: Now how many slaves were sold that you know of during the
period in which they were moving from Africa to the--over in this part
of the world?

Mr. COTTMAN: Right. I'm telling you, it really depends on who you
talk to. You can talk to historians that say anywhere from six to 10,
and you can talk to people that say 10 to 30. And all I can say and
I've written a few in the book and I try to attribute it, and I'll
just say millions, just mil--millions, just generations of--of African
people were sold into slavery.

LAMB: How many died on their way over to this country?

Mr. COTTMAN: Millions. We--we think that in Senagal alone along
Goree Island, they think that up to six million died at Goree Island.

LAMB: And Goree Island was in the news not too long ago when
President Clinton went there.

Mr. COTTMAN: That's absolutely right.

LAMB: And what was his reason for going there?

Mr. COTTMAN: His reason was he wanted to call attention to the--the
plight of Africa. He wanted to call the attention to the fact that
Africa has great resources, that Africa has been overlooked and
ignored by the United States financially for years. America's given
a--a great deal of money to--to other countries and other nations, but
Africa has been treated like a--like a stepchild. He is the
first--was the first president, in fact, to visit Goree Island and was
the first president--American president to stand at a--a former slave
port and talk about the--the atrocities of slavery. And he stopped
short of an apology for slavery, but discussed it in--in a way that's
never been talked about before by an America president. And so I
think he--for--for that week or two, he put Africa in a different
context, I think, for America.

LAMB: On page 209 you write some things about the way you personally
feel about being a journalist and covering these issues. You say,
`For the four African-American White House correspondents covering
Clinton's visit to Africa, their self-initiated 10-minute service
signaled a retreat from traditional journalism's coverage of an
international political event.' What were you talking about?

Mr. COTTMAN: Mm-hmm. These were four--I was not a part of that.
This was a--a group of four African-American journalists who are White
House correspondents who cover President Clinton on a regular basis.
And they decided that they were going to walk to the edge of the shore
in front of the slave house. I think they had a--a container of water
that they poured over--over rocks--of--of--I'm sorry, a container of
ocean water. And they had a--they had a brief ceremony. And I talk
about at--at times that maybe we need to step back and just reflect on
some of the issues that we're covering. And we are often detached,
and that's the way we have to be and we're objective. But this was
a--a group of people who decided that this was such a rare opportunity
to remember where they came from and remember their roots and call
attention to it that they felt they wanted to have a private ceremony.

And I commended them for that because a--a lot of times--in most
cases, we don't take--take--take a pause--we don't pause to reflect on
exactly how we ended up in the position that--that we are today
and--and who our forefathers were and--and how it was so remarkable
that--that we're succeeding and--in this world today because our--our
ancestors, you know, were--were separated--families separated and--and
killed and murdered for years.

LAMB: Where are your ancestors from?

Mr. COTTMAN: That's--I write that in the book, I'm not sure. I can
trace as far back as maybe Indianapolis, but, you know, because Africa
is such an enormous continent--there was a--a little girl who once
asked a--a minister who I was traveling with in Namibia, `Where
your--where--who are your people and what is your tribe?' And the--the
minister--unfortunately he could only say Baltimore, and--and--and she
wanted an answer and she--she was only 11 years old--11 or 12
years--she wanted an answer. `Who are your people and what is your
tribe?' And he couldn't answer that. And I--I write the story about
how--how frustrating it is--I write in the book how frustrating it is
not to be able to say where your ancestors are from. I can't even pin
down a--a country in this enormous continent called Africa, let alone
a village. And so I--I--Brian, I don't know.

LAMB: Do you have any sense from the way you look as to what possible
part of the--Africa you might be from?

Mr. COTTMAN: May--maybe the west coast. I mean, I--I'm sure the
west coast of Africa, possibly I--I'm thinking, you know, maybe
Senagal, you know, may--maybe Ghana. And I only say that because in
Senagal, people come up to me and ask me am I Senagalese. And people
will talk to me and they come over to me and say, `You look like my
cousin or you look like my brother or you resemble so-and-so.' It
happens every time I go, and--and people embrace me. And they find
out I'm American and they say, `You've got--you've got roots here.
You know, there's something here and obviously you--you've come back
for something.'

And--in fact, in the Door of No Return, the--Mr. N'Diaye stopped a
group of French tourists and began to talk to them in French--and my
French is very rusty. And they came over to me--the French
tourists--and they began to shake my hand and nod and pat me on
the--on the shoulder. What he later told them was that he's thinking
about no longer calling this the Door of No Return because as
African-American people return to Africa to reclaim our history and
reclaim our roots, that we, in fact, have returned. And he told them
that as these French tourists were walking through, and the French
tourists were embracing this, too, because remember slavery was a
combination of the British and the Dutch and the Portuguese and--and
the French all conspiring slavery on African people. So there
are--are--you--you walk into this slave house and you'll see
everybody. You'll see British and you'll see Portuguese and you'll
see French and you'll see Dutch. And it's an interesting union of
people who are coming together to learn about this--this subject
called--called slavery.

But--but again, I think the phenomenal thing of--of putting this--this
book together is the fact that it was done with--in large part, with
research from African-Americans and whites who came together to--to
help analyze and better understand the slave trade, to better
understand slavery and to better understand ourselves.

LAMB: Who's the gentleman with the glass in his hand?

Mr. COTTMAN: The gentleman with the glass in his hand is a good
friend of mine, Oswald Sykes, who's one of the--one of the--one of the
divers, who was my dive buddy when we laid the--the monument into the
ocean. And, in fact, Oswald became so emotional, I write about that
he was rubbing the--the inscription on the monument like he was
stroking the face of an old friend. He became literally paralyzed and
he--he couldn't move. And we--we helped him up and I thought
something was wrong with his gear, and I thought something had
happened to him underwater that was related to scuba diving. And, in
fact, something had happened to him underwater. It wasn't related to
scuba diving, but it was related to being on the site of this--of this
slave ship.

I later found out that his father had drowned in the Potomac in--in
the '50s, and he had never come to grips with the fact that his father
had drowned and he was not there to save him. And he always thought
that if he was there and--he was a water safety instructor also--and
that he was there, he would've saved his dad. And he said he never
came to grips with that. He talked to me about how this slave ship
and this ocean unlocked a--a key, unlocked something inside him. It
was like a key that unlocked this--these emotions that he had never
dealt with before. And during that time when he was diving on this
ship and we were laying this monument, that--that's what he was
experiencing on that site, thinking about his--his father drowning.
And he just became so overcome with emotion, we had to actually lift
him--help him out of the water. And I didn't know this until we
went--on the way back.

LAMB: Are your parents still alive?

Mr. COTTMAN: My parents are still alive.

LAMB: Their names?

Mr. COTTMAN: Howard and Roberta Cottman and...

LAMB: Where do they live?

Mr. COTTMAN: They live in Detroit, Michigan, and they're back and
forth a lot probably to visit their granddaughter more than--more than
me. But in any case, these are two people who--I mentioned before, my
fa--my mother taught me to swim. My father would drop me off at
libraries and just say, `There's a whole world out here and I want...'

LAMB: What did they do...

Mr. COTTMAN: `..want you to read.'

LAMB: ...for a living?

Mr. COTTMAN: My father was a--a marketing and advertising executive,
and my mother was a professor at Wayne State University--a college
professor.

LAMB: Now sprinkled through this book are references to the fact that
there is--I don't know if it's a myth or--how you describe it, that
black people don't swim.

Mr. COTTMAN: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

LAMB: What's that all about?

Mr. COTTMAN: Yeah. The--this goes back to the '50s and '60s when
people told me that on the more affluent sides of town there were
swimming pools and on black sides of towns, in some cases, there were
not. So that there were a--a number of--of African-American people in
the country who never learned to swim, and there are some people who
just don't want to have anything to do with water.

Now there are people who tell me that this has a lot to do with--this
is just a--a theory--it has a lot to do with slavery. And I've got
one friend who told me that she's still seasick from slavery and she
doesn't like the ocean because of what it represents.

I think we have an incredible connection with the water, and that's
something I write about--about, too. The--the--we were a
people--African people--who were actually born on the water. We were
born on the ocean. We--we had to--we were forced to cross
this--this--this great divide. And--and--and to this day I think that
because the National Association of Black Scuba Divers and--and--you
know, what we're doing now is not only are we dispelling myths
that--that we don't swim, but we're, in fact, diving again into the
past but also coming to grips with how we, as a people, started in the
first place. We're exploring this vast ocean, an ocean where we were
forced to cross 300 years ago to come to this new world in the first
place.

LAMB: You also describe what's it's like to dive with--in the buddy
system, and you once went with a white man as your buddy and it didn't
work out so well. Explain that feeling you have.

Mr. COTTMAN: Yeah. That was--somebody once asked Dr. Jones, who's
the president of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers,
what--you know, `Why do you have to have a black group?' And his
response always is, `Well, why not? We look out for each other.'
That's not to say--and I also want to say that we have white and we
have Latino members of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers,
and we have divers who are white who come to dive with us very, very
often. So it's not--it's not--it's a--an organization that started as
African-Americans, but we embrace everyone. And, in fact, we have
diversity in our--in our--our membership.

But to answer your question, I was in St. Petersburg and I was on a
dive boat and I was on my way out and this--I just started diving.
This was--you know, this was probably 1990, 1991. And I'm on the boat
and the buddy system, of course, is the first rule--one of the most
important rules of diving. You don't dive alone. You--you buddy up
to make sure that somebody's watching your back and you're watching
somebody else's back and try to dive--try to, you know, stay within
arm's length of each other.

And the captain looked around the boat and just po--posed the
question, `Does everybody has a buddy?' And everybody had a buddy
except me, and there are times where you go in threes. And he wanted
to know did somebody want to take me out with--with them because I
was--I was the loner. And I write that eyes looked everywhere. They
looked up, they looked down, they looked out at sea, everywhere but
me. And I felt like the kid on the sandlot, you know, who didn't get
picked for the basketball game. And I didn't know whether people
thought that I was gonna put their lives in jeopardy because they
didn't think I was a good scuba diver or--or what. I didn't know what
to make of it, but I was trying not to make it race because I was
thinking maybe this is just personalities. But it just became clear
to me that I just wasn't embraced with the same type of enthusiasm
that other people on--on the boat had been embraced.

And one gentleman, also I believe who's from Texas, said, `Let's go
dive together,' and--and we did and he partnered with me, but it was a
different kind of experience. And usually, you know, you--I'm diving
with a buddy and we stop and we explore marine life and we kind of
acknowledge it and--through hand signals or write on an underwater
slate. And I write about that we were un--underwater together, but we
were still worlds apart; that I didn't feel that we were actually dive
buddies but just two people who happened to be in the same ocean.

LAMB: And you also tell a story about being at a dinner party where
you're one of two blacks in a--a mixed group and their reaction when
the whole idea came up of being a black scuba diver.

Mr. COTTMAN: Yeah, a black scuba diver and--and the--and the slave
ship was--I could clear--I could really clear a room. Nobody really
wanted to--to talk about slavery. It was a--a discussion that's--I
talk about it's a conversation killer, that a lot of people just don't
want to be introduced to this horrific atrocities. And there--there
are whites at some point--down in Richmond, Virginia, for instance,
was a--a very, very great group of people. The Junior League of
Richmond, which is predominantly white, ve--conservative, a group of
individuals--the largest group of whites I've talked to since I wrote
this book, 1,100. And the book sold out. They had several hundred
copies of the book or whatev--or--but the book sold out that night.
But one gentleman came up to me and--and--half joking saying, you
know, `How dare you come into the heart of the Confederacy and talk to
us about--about slavery? Sign these two books, sir.'

And--and that goes to the heart of it. There are a number of people
who just don't--don't want to--want to deal with it, but I think when
they learn more about what this is all about and learn more about the
fact that African people came to this country to help build this
republic that we now embrace and--and--and that we--that we love, I
think more people are more interested in learning about this
particular piece of history.

LAMB: Go back to your Richmond crowd. The Junior League.

Mr. COTTMAN: The Junior League of Richmond.

LAMB: Eleven hundred people.

Mr. COTTMAN: Eleven hundred people.

LAMB: How many black faces in the group?

Mr. COTTMAN: Ten. I counted them.

LAMB: What's it feel...

Mr. COTTMAN: And they each bought a book.

LAMB: What's it like to stand in front of a group like that in the
old Confederacy?

Mr. COTTMAN: The--the Junior League will--will tell you, I think,
that--they told me that they grappled with inviting me. This is the
oldest author dinner in the country--event in the country. It's 54
years old continuously and it brings out just so many people. They
didn't know if this was a--a book that people would embrace. And they
thought about it very hard, but they invited me anyway because they
said this is a message for all of us, and this is a story that needs
to be told and it's international, it's a global story. It's a story
about whites and blacks. It's all--it's our story.

And it was. I--I have to admit I was a little nervous. I wasn't sure
how they were gonna relate to it, but I talked about some things that
I'm talking to you about. I'm talking about I'm--I'm a human being, a
person growing up in Detroit, watching "Sea Hunt," having parents who
taught me to swim and--and a father who taught me about history and to
embrace all history and all cultures.

This doesn't make me a--a stranger in--in this world. It doesn't make
me a stranger to them. It's--I talked about my daughter and teaching
my--my daughter to swim who's two years old. I talked about trying to
learn more about my history the way all people in this country try to
find out about their history.

A gentleman called me out of the blue a couple of weeks ago and says,
`I feel a lot--I feel connected to you.' His name was Michael. He was
from Detroit. We had a couple of friends in com--common and he was
Jewish. And he talked about how he was tracing his roots--like he
traced his--his roots to find out more about his family and about the
Holocaust. And he related to the African Holocaust the way he relates
to the Jewish Holocaust. And he said that there's a connection here
and, `I read your book and I just wanted to tell you that I felt this
connection.' And so I--so it's--it's--it's not--it's not foreign.
This isn't, I don't think, a foreign experience.

So when these people in Richmond heard--heard from me, I got an--an
enthusiastic round of applause and, more importantly, there was a very
long line of people who--who purchased the book. And everybody who
bought the book, Brian, wanted to tell me a story. They wanted to
tell me a story about--about something that happened in their life
that they can relate to that I wrote. And, I mean, you know, I was a
young black boy. I grew up in Detroit, you know. I should not
even--there should be nothing about me, in some ways, theat--that some
of these people who grew up in the South and didn't grow up around a
lot of black people, could relate to.

One woman told me that she came to the--the book event and had no
intention of buying my book. But after listening to it and reading
the prologue, she said, `I decided to buy it 'cause I thought it was
important.'

LAMB: What's this about heart problems in 1990?

Mr. COTTMAN: Yeah. It was--it wasn't even--as it turns out, it
wasn't even heart problems. We--they--they thought it was originally
because I had shortness of breath. And went to the hospital, and
I'm--I go in and they're taking blood and they're asking me am I an
intravenous drug user. And what happened was I had given blood at my
job several days prior to, so they're poking me and they're pricking
me and nurse is saying, `Well, we'll find out whether you are or not
in a few minutes once the tests come back.' Of course, the tests come
back and they find out that, you know, nothing's wrong with me, except
for the fact that I've got this stress in my life.

I was getting ready to get married. I'd changed jobs. There were--I
think there's a list of 10 things--some--some list somewhere that--the
most stressful...

LAMB: You had more than 30 points in one year, in other words, on
this list.

Mr. COTTMAN: I--I did. I was just going nuts. And I go into the
hospital. They--they give me a stress test. The doctor says, `Look,
you're completely healthy. There's nothing wrong with you.' He says,
`Your problem is all above your shoulders. You need to handle your
stress better. Go relax, first of all, start exercising and try to
find ways to rechannel all this neg--this energy because,' he says,
`you're stewing in your own juices, you know, and you really need to
get out and just kind of relax.' And...

LAMB: Go--again, though, you mention the race thing at the--the time
that you--you had these tests, that there was suspicion that you're on
drugs.

Mr. COTTMAN: That's right. That's absolutely right. Right.

LAMB: And the needles and the, you know...

Mr. COTTMAN: Right. Because I had given blood and I guess she saw
the needles in my--in my arm and she asked me--she says, `Are you an
intravenous drug user?' And I said no. And her response was something
to the effect of, `Well, we'll see.' But she didn't believe me. I
mean, she thought I was a drug user. And I was already stressed out
enough that I go to my doctor--I have a--you know, and I'm sitting
there and he's giving me a--an examination and he's telling me, `You
know, your--you know, your--your breathing's a little--sounds a little
strange and, you know, your--you look a little weird, and I think
we're just gonna check you right into the hospital.'

So went to the clinic straight to a hospital in--in New York. And--so
I'm already--I'm already, you know, feeling--I--I'm even more stressed
now, you know. I'm thinking, `Jesus Christ, you know, what's going on
with me?' So I--I call my wife and leave her a message. I call one of
my best friends, and he comes running down to the hospital with
everything, you know, short of flowers and a shovel, you know. And...

LAMB: How old were you then?

Mr. COTTMAN: I was--oh, this was just 10 years ago, so maybe 32, 33.

LAMB: Your wife, Meray?

Mr. COTTMAN: Meray.

LAMB: Meray.

Mr. COTTMAN: Meray.

LAMB: Where'd you meet her?

Mr. COTTMAN: I met Meray here in Washington actually through a good
friend of mine, Donna Britt, who's a columnist at The Washington Post,
who has introduced something like nine couples together or 10 couples
and out of those 10, eight or nine have gotten married over the years.
So I met her through Donna and we went out. And we were supposed to
spend one two-hour date. I think it was July Fourth. And I have
family in Washington. I ended up taking her by my family's house and
we had an 11 1/2 hour date, and the rest is history.

LAMB: If I counted right, I found you in Atlanta in 1976 with the
Daily World?

Mr. COTTMAN: That's right.

LAMB: Was that your first job?

Mr. COTTMAN: That was my first job. I was in college then.

LAMB: Graduated from?

Mr. COTTMAN: Graduated from Clark Atlanta University.

LAMB: Newsday for 10 years.

Mr. COTTMAN: That's right.

LAMB: What'd you do in Philadelphia?

Mr. COTTMAN: Philadelphia I was--I--I just actually lived in
Philadelphia, right. My wife--I commuted from Philadelphia to New
York because my wife worked for the Philadelphia Daily News and
Inquirer.

LAMB: And Miami Herald, 1980 to 1986.

Mr. COTTMAN: That's right.

LAMB: What did--what kind of writing did you do for them?

Mr. COTTMAN: I did urban affairs, covered local governments and, for
a short stint, covered parts of the English-speaking Caribbean.

LAMB: Go back to the diving.

Mr. COTTMAN: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: What was--what was your first dive?

Mr. COTTMAN: My very first dive, outside of training, was in
Florida.

LAMB: By yourself?

Mr. COTTMAN: Key Largo, Florida, by myself. That's right.

LAMB: When--when did you do that?

Mr. COTTMAN: I did that after I finished my advanced open-water
scuba certificate.

LAMB: And what is it that you feel when you dive?

Mr. COTTMAN: It's tranquil. It's a sense of escape, some ways
isolation to get away from fax machines and ringing telephones, to--to
float. It's the closest thing to zero gravity. You know, I've always
wanted to be an astronaut, and I can't do that. But you can float in
midair underwater, and it's--it's--you do this--it's like a gentle
free fall into this beautiful, pristine, enormous abyss.

LAMB: And what is this photograph right here?

Mr. COTTMAN: That--that--that's a photo of going back or returning
to the site of the Henrietta Marie. And during that time, Howard Moss
on the left and Ric Powell, who's playing the drums, thought that they
would call our ancestors--or let our ancestors know that we were
coming to visit. So Ric's blowing through the conch shell. They had
drums and almost making the--re-creating the--the sounds that you--you
may hear in Africa.

LAMB: And what year did you drop the monument there?

Mr. COTTMAN: 1993.

LAMB: How many people went on that?

Mr. COTTMAN: Ten.

LAMB: And how many people wanted to go on it?

Mr. COTTMAN: Maybe several hundred.

LAMB: How did they decide?

Mr. COTTMAN: You--do you know to this day that's still a
controversy. Dr. Jones handpicked all of us, and he decided that he
wanted everybody to have a particular role. And I can't remember
everybody's role, but I remember mine, in particular, was to chronicle
the event for the National Association of Black Scuba Divers
newsletter. And he wanted me to come and he wanted me to write about
it and just chronicle this for history. And it was then that I
thought this is a much larger story than--not to knock the newsletter,
but a much larger story than the newsletter. But he wanted me to come
along, in a sense, to write--as a writer.

LAMB: Who did the--who actually made the monument?

Mr. COTTMAN: The monument was made by a company--I forgot the name
of it, and Key--in Key West.

LAMB: How big is it?

Mr. COTTMAN: In Key Lar--in Key West. It's...

LAMB: How big is it? How big..

Mr. COTTMAN: It's 5' by 5' and it's--weighs one ton. And actually
people came together and just, actually, pooled money, black and
white, to build the monument. And the reason we went out there in the
first place and got out there because they--a white doctor in Key West
loaned us his boat.

LAMB: His name?

Mr. COTTMAN: His name is Robin--Dr. Robin Lockwood.

LAMB: Why did he loan you his boat?

Mr. COTTMAN: I went back and asked him. We asked him that question.
He just said that he s--thought that it was such a worthy event, and
it...

LAMB: Forty-two-foot yacht.

Mr. COTTMAN: Yacht, that's right. And it was so unusual to--to
discover the slave ship. And he was very impressed with the people
who came together of all--of ethnic backgrounds, again, to come
together to--to partner, to learn more about this, that he felt that
he wanted to do something for us. And he knew that we were struggling
trying to pull resources together and money together to--to get this
project done. So he just said, `Take--take my boat.'

LAMB: And you found him cleaning the boat himself before...

Mr. COTTMAN: He--he was. That--that's a true story. He was
swabbing the decks and--and cleaning the boat and I didn't know it was
him. I thought--I actually thought that he was one of the crew
members. So I went up to this gentleman and said, `I'd like to talk
to Dr. Lockwood.' And he said, `I'm Dr. Lockwood.' And I said, `I
wanted to come by and I just wanted to thank you for loaning us your
boat. Why are you here working?' He said `Because I take pride in
my--in my boat. A--and you guys are going out on it and this is a--a
wonderful event. And, you know, I don't want you to go out here on
a--on a dirty boat. So I came out here and cleaned it myself.'

LAMB: And how long did it take to put the monument down?

Mr. COTTMAN: It took three--it took about four hours. It takes
about three and a half or four hours to get to the site of New Ground
Reef. On that particular boat it did because we were so weighed down,
we had so many people. And it took about four hours to actually get
the job done, to get the--the--the monument on the s--on the wreck
site. And then it took several hours to get back. So it was a--it
was a daylong event.

LAMB: Do you have any idea where the name Henrietta Marie came from?

Mr. COTTMAN: We--we--we think that it may--may have been--Henrietta
Marie may have been the daughter of one of the French kings, maybe.
But we're not--we're not...

LAMB: And when you look back...

Mr. COTTMAN: We're not sure.

LAMB: ...over the experience, where was the most valuable information
for you?

Mr. COTTMAN: I would probably say in London--in London with a--a
slave ship captain's journals. During that time, slave ships traveled
in clusters. So other ship captains also wrote about traveling with
ships, and one of those ships was the Henrietta Marie. I would say in
London, no question about it for sure, and--and then Jamaica because
there was some very, very, very good records about the Fuller family,
who manufactured the, again, weapons for the--for the slave ship.

LAMB: In the back...

Mr. COTTMAN: ...(Unintelligible) it was London.

LAMB: I'm sorry. In the back, you talked to a bunch of folks:
Michael Eric Dyson, Dr. Madeleine...

Mr. COTTMAN: Burnside.

LAMB: ...Burnside, Sheryl Laroache, sh--Cornell West. You get their
views on race. But the one I want to ask you about is John Hope
Franklin. Where'd you find him?

Mr. COTTMAN: John Hope Franklin, as it turns out, is a very, very
good friend of my family and taught my mother at Bennett College in
Greensboro, North Carolina, 50 years ago. So he's been a good friend
of the family for years. But he's--also wrote the definitive book
on--on--on slavery, one of the most definitive books, "From Slavery to
Freedom."

LAMB: And also headed up the president's...

Mr. COTTMAN: P--precisely. The g--he was the...

LAMB: ...commission.

Mr. COTTMAN: ...chairman of the Commission on Race.

LAMB: But here's another example of those little incidences in--in a
black man's life that he writes about--or tells you about, that you
wrote about yourself. `There are people who are living discrimination
every day, living humiliation every day. White women ask me to hang
up their coats. They think I'm a servant. Or a man sees me in a
hotel lobby and says, "Here, boy, go and get my car." In New York, a
woman said, "Here, take this trash and throw it away." I told her to
throw it away herself.' Everything is not all right, he's saying. Sum
it up at--at this point in your life. Wh--how much farther do you
think we have to go in order to make it right?

Mr. COTTMAN: I--Brian, I still think we've got a--we've got a long
way to go. I mean, there's--there's no question about it. I think
that if we can have--and--and I'm glad you brought this up because I
had this conversation with so many people also in Richmond, and the
discussion was: How do we cross this enormous divide that--that
clearly exists between whites and blacks? And one of the reasons--one
of the ways that we talked about doing that is
through--through--through--through books and through--through
real-life stories, you know, telling stories, being able to--to share
things that--that--that happened in your life without beating people
over the head with it, but--but understanding that when I came out of
this process, that th--it wasn't bitter. Right?

But I'm telling a story, I'm talking about things that have happened
to me. But I still think we have a long way to go, but I think the
bottom line and the first thing we need to do is be able to come to
the table to talk. And as long as you can at least have a dialogue
and begin a dialogue on race, I think there's a--there's a chance.

LAMB: Is this you up at the top right here?

Mr. COTTMAN: Y--yes, it--yes, it is. And it wasn't my idea to put
that on the cover. The publishing cover decided to. And I want to
say that we're changing the title for the paperback. Th--the title of
the paperback will be called "Spirit Dive." And it was a--original
title that we thought maybe for the hard cover, and Random House is a
great publisher and we sat down, had a discussion about what this book
is all about. And there's also a spiritual component to it, so we're
changing the title to "Spirit Dive" for the paperback.

LAMB: Our guest has been Michael H. Cottman. This is the book, "The
Wreck of the Henrietta Marie." And we thank you very much.

Mr. COTTMAN: Thank you, Brian.

return to the top of the document

Copyright © National Cable Satellite Corporation 1999.
Personal, non-commercial use of this transcript is permitted. No commercial, political or other use may be made of this transcript without the express written permission of National Cable Satellite Corporation.

The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie: An African-American's Spiritual Journey to Uncover a Sunken Slave Ship's Past