--- title: Ocean of Bones Follows the Black Divers Who Spent Years Hunting the Guerrero, a Pirate Slave Ship Wrecked Off Florida in 1827 description: David Kushner's Ocean of Bones tells the story of the 1827 pirate slave ship Guerrero and the Black divers who searched for its wreck off Key Largo. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-07T19:57:30.952Z updated: 2026-11-07T19:59:16.177Z canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/ocean-of-bones-david-kushner-guerrero-slave-ship image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/bis-2023-interns.webp categories: Non-Fiction content_type: Book Review publication: Rich Books schema_type: Article about: - type: Person name: David Kushner description: American journalist and author of Masters of Doom, Levittown, Alligator Candy and Ocean of Bones. He is the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. jobTitle: Author and journalist sameAs: - https://davidkushner.substack.com --- ### Book: Ocean of Bones *The Hunt for the Pirate Slave Ship Guerrero* By David Kushner In 1827 the pirate slave ship Guerrero wrecked on a reef off the Florida Keys with 561 captive Africans on board. Nearly two centuries later, Ken Stewart and the Black divers of Diving With a Purpose set out to find it. David Kushner tells both journeys, from West Africa and Cuba to Key West and Liberia. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/9781668067062) Ocean of Bones, the new book by the journalist David Kushner, was published on 3rd November by Gallery Books. It tells two stories that sit almost 200 years apart. In the first, a Spanish pirate slave ship called the Guerrero runs onto a Florida reef in December 1827 with 561 captive Africans in its hold. In the second, a Black diver and Vietnam veteran named Ken Stewart learns in 2004 that the wreck might still lie in American waters, and sets out to find it. Kushner spent five years reporting the book. He learned to dive for it, and his research took him from Key West to Liberia. ## The Pirate Slave Ship Guerrero By 1827 Britain and the United States had both banned the Atlantic slave trade, but the slave markets of Cuba were still open. Outlaw captains such as the Guerrero's José Gomez slipped past the navy patrols to reach them. Gomez was a pirate as well as a slaver. His fourteen-gun ship carried a dragon's head on its prow, and he used it to steal captives from other vessels. On 19th December 1827 the British anti-piracy ship HMS Nimble caught the Guerrero in the Florida Straits. After a chase and running battle of about five hours, the Guerrero struck the reef off Key Largo at close to ten knots. Forty-one of the Africans held below deck drowned. What happened next is the part of the story few readers have heard. Spanish crew members seized two of the American wrecking boats that came to help and sailed about 388 of the surviving Africans to Cuba. Another boat carried 121 to Key West. After almost two years in Florida, about 100 of them set sail for Liberia in 1829, and the survivors of that voyage arrived in March 1830. The saga Kushner reconstructs takes in President John Quincy Adams, an African princess who became an American slaveholder, and the founders of Liberia, and it ends with the descendants of the survivors in Liberia today. ## Diving With a Purpose and the Search for the Wreck Ken Stewart co-founded Diving With a Purpose, a group of Black scuba divers, and led it into the search. The divers worked alongside Corey Malcom, a marine archaeologist whose links to a famous Florida treasure hunter made some people wary of his motives at first. In 2015 Diving With a Purpose, the National Park Service and the National Association of Black Scuba Divers announced that they believed the wreck lay off Key Largo. The identification has not been formally confirmed, but Malcom has said, 'I feel absolutely confident that we have found the wreck of the Guerrero.' ## Who Will Love Ocean of Bones The publisher places the book in the tradition of Shadow Divers and The Wager, and if you loved either, the mix of shipwreck, diving and history will feel familiar. The difference is the weight of what lies on the seabed. Kevin Sack, author of the Pulitzer finalist Mother Emanuel, writes that the book is a reminder of an American slave trade that 'prospered long past its abolition'. Kushner is the author of Masters of Doom and Alligator Candy, and his reporting has been adapted into the films Zola and Silk Road. He teaches journalism at Princeton University. He also reads the audiobook himself, which runs to six and a half hours. If you want more history told through the people who lived it, read how [Combee won the Pulitzer for History by telling Harriet Tubman's Civil War raid through the people she freed](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/combee-pulitzer-2025). **Ocean of Bones** by David Kushner (Gallery Books, 304 pages, published 3rd November 2026) [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/9781668067062) | [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/9781668067062) ### Books in This Piece - [Shadow Divers](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/shadow+divers+robert+kurson) by Robert Kurson - [The Wager](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/the+wager+david+grann) by David Grann - [Mother Emanuel](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/mother+emanuel+kevin+sack) by Kevin Sack - [Masters of Doom](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/masters+of+doom+david+kushner) by David Kushner - [Alligator Candy](https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/alligator+candy+david+kushner) by David Kushner - [Combee](https://www.waterstones.com/book/combee/edda-l-fields-black/9780197552797) by Edda L. Fields-Black ## FAQ **Q: What was the name of the last slave ship to America?** The Clotilda was the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. In 1860 it illegally carried 110 people from present-day Benin to Mobile, Alabama, more than 50 years after Congress banned the import of enslaved people. The ship was then burned and scuttled in the Mobile River to hide the crime, and the Alabama Historical Commission announced in May 2019 that its wreck had been identified. **Q: Why are there no remnants of slave ships?** Some remnants do survive, but very few slave ship wrecks have been found. Most were wooden vessels that rotted or broke up over time, and captains of illegal voyages often burned or sank their ships to destroy the evidence. Of an estimated 1,000 slave ship wrecks, divers have said that only about 10 sites can be dived, which leaves archaeologists very little to study.