Dear Sir
I work at the Western Australian Maritime Museum. I was the Director there from 1992-2005, and now I am writing books for the Museum. Currently I am writing a book on the French built slave brig Voltigeur. The Voltigeur was Built at Bordeaux in 1835 by Gabriel Giron, captured by the British in 1837 with a cargo of 433 slaves from Ouidah, off the Caribbean island of Dominica, and wrecked in 1841 at Fremantle in Western Australia, with emigrants on board.
I conducted an intensive survey of the underwater wreck, and it is my understanding that the hull timbers are the most comprehensive remains known of a slave vessel of the illegal period. The survey has enabled the development of accurate lines for the Voltigeur, the only lines developed by underwater archaeologists of a slave vessel. My research has revealed that some of the Africans liberated from the Voltigeur were enlisted in the British army, mutinied, and were executed.
I have noticed with great interest your web site and the reference to your project on the slave trade ‘The Sunken Memory of the Slave Trade’, integrated into the UNESCO program ‘The Slave Trade’, launched in 1994 at Ouidah. I would like to make contact with your project. You may also have some interest in the results of my work, given that it deals with a French vessel. I am also interested in knowing whether there are port records for the Port of Bordeaux, or newspapers, that might give me a closer background of the building of the Voltigeur in 1835, or its builder and initial owner, Gabriel Giron, sometimes known as Gabriel Giraud.
I look forward very much to hearing from you, and I do apologise for my lack of French language.
Yours sincerely
Graeme Henderson
