A Song From Below

Peter Nicholls uses sounds of the recovered time-keeping bell from the wreck of the London-based , a 17th century slave ship that fitted out in Deal, passed through Ramsgate waters twice and trafficked almost 600 captive adults and children, unknown and unnamed by records left by the enslavers, to British plantation colonies. The muffled ringing of the time-keeping bell was heard by those in the hold of the ship, below the waterline, every half an hour during the ocean crossings that birthed today’s diasporic realities.Henrietta Marie

300 years later, off the coast of Florida, the sunken remains of the ship were identified by the inscriptions on the bell and other metalwork forged in Kent and Sussex, hidden beneath layers of coral and corrosion. The bell was brought up and struck, enabling the exact sound heard by those ancestors to be archived.

Peter approached the recording according to Creole traditions of…