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Archaeologist Michael Pateman
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Speaker at WIU-QC to Detail Research on Historic Shipwreck

November 7, 2017

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MOLINE - Michael Pateman, an archaeologist and assistant director of the Antiquities, Monuments and Museum Corporation (AMMC) - National Museum of the Bahamas, will present "Enhancing the Written Record: The Wreck of the Slaving Schooner Peter Mowell" at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14 at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities, 3300 River Drive, Moline, in Room 111.

The event is free and open to the public.

According to the AMMC's web site, the schooner the Peter Mowell was sailing on the Congo River in Africa, en route to Havana, Cuba, in 1860, when it ran aground in the Abaco chain of islands. The crew of the wrecked ship and at least captive 390 Africans made it safely ashore to the uninhabited Lynyard Cay island, and survivors were later carried to Nassau, where the crew was jailed and the Africans dispersed as indentured laborers in and around Nassau. Pateman and the AMMC continue to document this part of Bahamian history with ongoing research on the liberated Africans who survived the wreck, including interviews from the descendants of the captive Africans and the crew.

Pateman's talk is sponsored by the Western Illinois University Department of Museum Studies, and assisted by the WIU-Quad Cities Research and Scholarship Symposium (QCRSS). For more information, contact Pamela White, Museum Studies graduate program director, at (309) 762-9481, extension: 62340 or pj-white@wiu.edu.

Posted By: Alison McGaughey (AR-McGaughey@wiu.edu)
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