Seminar with Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere: Voyage 35157 of the Christianus Quintus and Voyage 35158 of the Fredericus Quartus
Seminar Abstract
Dr. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere will present her work-in-progress on research conducted in Costa Rica and Denmark on the Voyage 35157 of the Christianus Quintus and Voyage 35158 of the Fredericus Quartus, the two Danish slave ships who left the Danish slave fort at Christiansborg (Oso Castle, Ghana) intended for St. Thomas with approximately 816 enslaved Africans in 1709. Thrown off course due to severe weather, the ships crashed along Costa Rica’s Caribbean coastline near Punta Cahuita in March 1710. Approximately 690 Africans survived along with the Danish crew. The stories are corroborated because the Danish sailors managed to get on a ship from Portobello, Panama and returned home to narrate their stories. The Africans left behind on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast eventually dispersed, some intermarrying with the Indigenous Bribri people of the Talamanca region. 315 years later, descendants of one of the Africans on that ship lives in Cahuita and works with the local NGO, Centro Comunitario de Buceo Embajadores y Embajadoras del Mar which is an Afro-BriBri lead community stewarded diving program that initiated identifying the slave ships nine years ago. With the formal confirmation of the Danish ships on April 27th in Denmark and Costa Rica, this presentation highlights the work done in Costa Rica from community narratives as well as traces the voyage of the ships from their Danish departure in 1708 to their arrival and wreck in Costa Rica in March 1710. This research supports Dr. Gordon-Chipembere’s second historical fiction novel, 1710.