in portugal, in mozambique and capetown itself and over to brazil. and so what had been a story about a single ship has defined you know, something much more. something global. and that clearly depended on the expertise, knowledge and skills and capacity of the team that lony referenced, this international team, no one person, no one small group of people could have done this work all on their own. that's the power. >> what do we have from the ship? what will we be seeing at the museum? >> i think we're still obviously diving on the ship. one of the things we know we have are these iron ballasts one of the tell-tale signs because the cargo, human cargo is light. so you need ballasts to give that balance to the ship. we're going to bring up a piece -- couple of ballast pieces and pulley that talks about how the sails were used, et cetera. i'm also still looking for a tiny piece of wood from the hull of the ship. in essence, we're still diving because i think that gives us a kind of -- piece of the true cross. and i want something not a whole ship but

his ship was lost in the dry official records of capetown, south africa which reached back to the 1600s. been diving into these binders for months when they discovered the "st. joseph," known in portuguese as the "sao jose." the "sao jose" arrived at mozambique island in 1794. the cargo manifest records 1,500 iron bars for ballast and more than 400 slaves bound for brazil. this is a cargo sketch from a paul gardulo is a historian of slavery and curator of the smithsonian museum. >> bodies and souls laid side by side with no room to move, no sanitation. many people on these voyages died. >> reporter: how long was that journey? >> a journey like the one the "sao jose" took could take up to four or more months. >> reporter: this is slavery on a global industrial scale. >> from about 1500 through the 19th century, through the late 1800s, we're talking about at least 12 million people who were taken from their homelands across the sea. many, many hundreds of thousands more, untold people, were lost during that trade. >> reporter: off capetown, south africa the captain of the "sao jose" was c

came close to capetown, south africa. capetown was often a landing point for ships before they made their way across the long atlantic voyage, and this shape came too close to shore and got caught in swells in a storm and struck rocks about 100 yards, 350 feet or so from shore. the captain whose last name was -- tried to salvage what he could from the crew. they attempted a rescue from ship to shore. he rescued himself. he rescued along with the crew. he rescued about half of the 400 enslaved mozambiquans aboard. the other half have been captured from the interior of africa and brought on board the -- >> the slave trade. >> in many ways history museums tend to tell the grand story, and often forget to humanize them. our goal was to say how do we humanize the sleigh trade when you are focussing on a single ship, letting people understand what happened on that ship, letting people understand who some of the people were on the ship, and most importantly, letting people realize that it's not about the millions. it's about in

his ship was lost in the dry official records of capetown, south africa which reached back to the 1600s. been diving into these binders for months when they discovered the "st. joseph," known in portuguese as the "sao jose." the "sao jose" arrived at mozambique island in 1794. the cargo manifest records 1,500 iron bars for ballast and more than 400 slaves bound for brazil. this is a cargo sketch from a paul gardulo is a historian of slavery and curator of the smithsonian museum. >> bodies and souls laid side by side with no room to move, no sanitation. many people on these voyages died. >> reporter: how long was that journey? >> a journey like the one the "sao jose" took could take up to four or more months. >> reporter: this is slavery on a global industrial scale. >> from about 1500 through the 19th century, through the late 1800s, we're talking about at least 12 million people who were taken from their homelands across the sea. many, many hundreds of thousands more, untold people, were lost during that trade. >> reporter: off capetown, south africa the captain of the "sao chart spike

they went into the archives capetown, south africa. archives that go back to the 17th century. because this slave ship was wrecked and about half of the slaves on board were killed, property was lost, so there had to be an investigation. the investigation determined precisely where thep down. they had the coordinates for exactly where the ship sank according to these ancient record. i had the book in my hand. it was 400 years old. they towed magnetometers behind the boats and the magnetometers lit up because all of these cannons and iron bars beneath the sand and how they found it portuguese slaveship. >> they are here as artifacts of slavery. >> amazing thing about this story, lonnie bunch, the director of the museum, searched the world over. no one, no one had artifacts from a ship that was carrying slaves in the world! all of these ships were at the end of their lives. they had all sunk and been lost. and so these are the first known that was actually carrying slaves. >> that is what to me is so remarkable about this museum. there are so many first's inside this museum and y

working for years to find a slave ship and we found pieces of a slave ship that sank off the coast of capetown and bring those pieces back. most of this exhibition is artifacts, graphics, words, but we also create spaces like this. this is a space where you can go in and in this more darkened space, you will simply have a few artifacts from the ship, you'll have slave shackles, and, in essence, this is where you can go and almost emotionally feel the slave trade. you'll hear the words of people describing it, you'll understand what it was like, and in a way, what this space is, is a way to think about those who were lost and those who survived the middle passage. so we wanted to make sure there were moments throughout the building that would be surprises that would give you a respite, that would allow you to reflect on what you've seen. then what we try to do is this exhibit will then take you to look at the creation of america and argue that you can't understand american notions of freedom without understanding american notions of enslavement. and in essence, we'll talk about how slavery affe