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Ocean of Bones: The Hunt for the Pirate Slave Ship Guerrero
Not yet published
Expected 3 Nov 26In the tradition of Shadow Divers and The Wager, the incredible true story of the pirate slave ship Guerrero, which wrecked in the Florida Keys, and the scuba divers who tracked it down nearly 200 years later.
In 1827, the brig Guerrero was racing across the Florida Straits with 561 kidnapped Africans in its hold. Though Britain and the United States had banned the Atlantic slave trade, outlaw captains like José Gomez still attempted to get around their Navy patrols and make for Cuba, where markets remained open. The Spanish captain was particularly ruthless—not only a trader, but a pirate, who didn’t hesitate to use his terror-inspiring fourteen-gun ship with a dragonhead on the prow to steal captives from other vessels.
In 2004, Ken Stewart, a Black diver and Vietnam veteran, learned that the Guerrero might still be in American waters. He marshalled a group he called Diving with a Purpose to go looking for the shipwreck, not only as a historic site but as a graveyard of buried stories that demanded recovery. In partnership with Corey Malcom—a marine archeologist whose affiliation with a famous Floridian treasure hunter made some initially wary of his motives—the group began to piece together what happened to the survivors of the Guerrero. The saga they uncovered involved President John Quincy Adams, an African princess turned American slaveholder, and the founders of Liberia. It was a tale of tragedy as well as survival, connecting ancestors and descendants across thousands of miles of ocean.
Ocean of Bones is a powerful and thrilling book that immerses readers in two connected one in the 19th century, and one in the 21st. It illuminates a forgotten history that reminds you why the lessons of the past must be kept alive in the present, and tells a story that will stick with you for a lifetime.
In 1827, the brig Guerrero was racing across the Florida Straits with 561 kidnapped Africans in its hold. Though Britain and the United States had banned the Atlantic slave trade, outlaw captains like José Gomez still attempted to get around their Navy patrols and make for Cuba, where markets remained open. The Spanish captain was particularly ruthless—not only a trader, but a pirate, who didn’t hesitate to use his terror-inspiring fourteen-gun ship with a dragonhead on the prow to steal captives from other vessels.
In 2004, Ken Stewart, a Black diver and Vietnam veteran, learned that the Guerrero might still be in American waters. He marshalled a group he called Diving with a Purpose to go looking for the shipwreck, not only as a historic site but as a graveyard of buried stories that demanded recovery. In partnership with Corey Malcom—a marine archeologist whose affiliation with a famous Floridian treasure hunter made some initially wary of his motives—the group began to piece together what happened to the survivors of the Guerrero. The saga they uncovered involved President John Quincy Adams, an African princess turned American slaveholder, and the founders of Liberia. It was a tale of tragedy as well as survival, connecting ancestors and descendants across thousands of miles of ocean.
Ocean of Bones is a powerful and thrilling book that immerses readers in two connected one in the 19th century, and one in the 21st. It illuminates a forgotten history that reminds you why the lessons of the past must be kept alive in the present, and tells a story that will stick with you for a lifetime.
- GenresNonfiction
Kindle Edition
Expected publication November 3, 2026
About the author
David Kushner
31 books234 followersDavid Kushner is an award-winning journalist and author. He is a contributing editor of Wired, Rolling Stone, and Spectrum and is an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Provided to me as an ARC by Gallery Books and NetGalley, this is my review of OCEAN OF BONES.
I just finished reading Ocean of Bones, by David Kushner. Reflecting on everything I learned, I am considering how to share my views and do justice to the volume of work, to the love and dedication utilized in creating this document piece.
This is not only a treasure hunting "novel", but a history of the reality of the African slave trade. Real people speak, survived...didn't survive. Even if it's just one of many untold stories, it will leave you feeling reflective as a whole.
Within is piracy, nobility in honor, horror of the worst of humankind, and dedication by the participants to presenting and preserving a terrible history.
A thread of history is also woven among all of the participants who searched for the Guerrero. Karmic actually. A foundation of ancestry from those taken from their lives and homes in Africa, which may or may not, have been directly related to all of those who were involved in this telling.
Yet even if without direct descendants, there is a thread of being a Black person in these different countries, and these different situations, which cannot be understated.
As a white woman, I was compelled to read and learn and discover things I had only seen or been told about from the surface. I have seen the movie version of Roots, the movie version of Armistad.
The last, Armistad, really stayed with me since viewing it. Viewing how Africans were taken from their families, their lives, were pushed overboard, chained and alive, to drown because there were “too many“ on board.
In the Guerrero wreckage, there are chains found which fit the wrists and ankles of children! To view these by the drivers, lifted from the ocean floor, described to us in detail, is to feel sick on their behalf, unable to articulate the mental vision.
I remember from history, the confines of the ships the Africans were transported in, but this telling by author David Kushner, really brings it home.
There is a lot of backstory to the participants in this novel. Telling where they’ve come from to get where they were during this participation. The struggles they’ve all faced and how it mattered in the end. Conditioned or affected to the point that every discovery meant so much more than just on the surface.
It is history. Ancestry.
In today’s society, there is so much strife and negativity about who’s responsible for what and not understanding all of the challenges racially that we have. This book, in its way, brings it to light a bit more so you can see documentation what others have gone through to survive, to succeed. To excel. To live.
I think reading this book you will get a clearer understanding of what it took to overcome racial challenges, to find history and make it noteworthy to everyone. Yes, there are pirates and there is treasure hunting and diving discoveries. You feel like you’re right there when these things are brought forward.
I myself, had taken diving lessons and I know the feeling of being underwater and how that environment is so totally alien and yet so beautiful.
This novel took David Kushner five years to bring to fruition. It's noticeable in the sheer volume of resources he utilized, and the history he presents.
I feel his book, Ocean of Bones, will be impactful to anyone who reads it.
I just finished reading Ocean of Bones, by David Kushner. Reflecting on everything I learned, I am considering how to share my views and do justice to the volume of work, to the love and dedication utilized in creating this document piece.
This is not only a treasure hunting "novel", but a history of the reality of the African slave trade. Real people speak, survived...didn't survive. Even if it's just one of many untold stories, it will leave you feeling reflective as a whole.
Within is piracy, nobility in honor, horror of the worst of humankind, and dedication by the participants to presenting and preserving a terrible history.
A thread of history is also woven among all of the participants who searched for the Guerrero. Karmic actually. A foundation of ancestry from those taken from their lives and homes in Africa, which may or may not, have been directly related to all of those who were involved in this telling.
Yet even if without direct descendants, there is a thread of being a Black person in these different countries, and these different situations, which cannot be understated.
As a white woman, I was compelled to read and learn and discover things I had only seen or been told about from the surface. I have seen the movie version of Roots, the movie version of Armistad.
The last, Armistad, really stayed with me since viewing it. Viewing how Africans were taken from their families, their lives, were pushed overboard, chained and alive, to drown because there were “too many“ on board.
In the Guerrero wreckage, there are chains found which fit the wrists and ankles of children! To view these by the drivers, lifted from the ocean floor, described to us in detail, is to feel sick on their behalf, unable to articulate the mental vision.
I remember from history, the confines of the ships the Africans were transported in, but this telling by author David Kushner, really brings it home.
There is a lot of backstory to the participants in this novel. Telling where they’ve come from to get where they were during this participation. The struggles they’ve all faced and how it mattered in the end. Conditioned or affected to the point that every discovery meant so much more than just on the surface.
It is history. Ancestry.
In today’s society, there is so much strife and negativity about who’s responsible for what and not understanding all of the challenges racially that we have. This book, in its way, brings it to light a bit more so you can see documentation what others have gone through to survive, to succeed. To excel. To live.
I think reading this book you will get a clearer understanding of what it took to overcome racial challenges, to find history and make it noteworthy to everyone. Yes, there are pirates and there is treasure hunting and diving discoveries. You feel like you’re right there when these things are brought forward.
I myself, had taken diving lessons and I know the feeling of being underwater and how that environment is so totally alien and yet so beautiful.
This novel took David Kushner five years to bring to fruition. It's noticeable in the sheer volume of resources he utilized, and the history he presents.
I feel his book, Ocean of Bones, will be impactful to anyone who reads it.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Ocean of Bones: The Hunt for the Pirate Slave Ship Guerrero by David Kushner — 3.5 stars
Ocean of Bones tells a dual-timeline story: the 1827 wreck of the pirate slave ship Guerrero off the Florida Keys, and the 21st-century effort by a team of Black divers to locate its remains. The ship, captained by the ruthless José Gómez, was carrying 561 kidnapped Africans and wrecked while trying to evade the British naval schooner Nimble. Forty-one of the captives died in the wreck. Most of the survivors were taken to Cuba and sold into slavery, but more than 100 were rescued and spent three years in Florida enduring sickness and brutal working conditions before being sent to Liberia by the American Colonization Society.
My main criticism is with structure and pacing. Kushner spends considerable time — too much, in my opinion — introducing the present-day figures behind the search, particularly diver Ken Stewart. His failed marriage, his children, his time in Vietnam: none of it bears any real relevance to the story of the Guerrero itself, and it slows the book's opening considerably.
Once past these introductions, though, the book turns into a genuine page-turner. Kushner writes vividly about the chase, the wreck, and the fate of the ship's crew and captives. The narrative eventually moves to Liberia, where the modern-day search connects with descendants of the survivors, many of whom now live in New Georgia. The book also delves into a piece of history I knew nothing about: how the Americo-Liberians — the freed and repatriated Black settlers, including Guerrero survivors — became a small ruling class over the indigenous Liberian population, a power imbalance that eventually helped drive the country into civil war. Several of the descendants Kushner speaks with were directly affected by that conflict. Kushner immersed himself in the reporting, learning to dive under Stewart's instruction and joining him on dives of other slave wrecks, as well as traveling with him to Liberia.
The writing itself is strong, and I came away with a clearer understanding of the slave trade in the years after Britain and the U.S. banned it, along with some worthwhile history on the American Colonization Society and the founding of Liberia. My recommendation: push through the slow opening chapters. The payoff is worth it.
I received a complimentary advance copy of Ocean of Bones (Gallery Books, on sale November 3, 2026) from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
Ocean of Bones tells a dual-timeline story: the 1827 wreck of the pirate slave ship Guerrero off the Florida Keys, and the 21st-century effort by a team of Black divers to locate its remains. The ship, captained by the ruthless José Gómez, was carrying 561 kidnapped Africans and wrecked while trying to evade the British naval schooner Nimble. Forty-one of the captives died in the wreck. Most of the survivors were taken to Cuba and sold into slavery, but more than 100 were rescued and spent three years in Florida enduring sickness and brutal working conditions before being sent to Liberia by the American Colonization Society.
My main criticism is with structure and pacing. Kushner spends considerable time — too much, in my opinion — introducing the present-day figures behind the search, particularly diver Ken Stewart. His failed marriage, his children, his time in Vietnam: none of it bears any real relevance to the story of the Guerrero itself, and it slows the book's opening considerably.
Once past these introductions, though, the book turns into a genuine page-turner. Kushner writes vividly about the chase, the wreck, and the fate of the ship's crew and captives. The narrative eventually moves to Liberia, where the modern-day search connects with descendants of the survivors, many of whom now live in New Georgia. The book also delves into a piece of history I knew nothing about: how the Americo-Liberians — the freed and repatriated Black settlers, including Guerrero survivors — became a small ruling class over the indigenous Liberian population, a power imbalance that eventually helped drive the country into civil war. Several of the descendants Kushner speaks with were directly affected by that conflict. Kushner immersed himself in the reporting, learning to dive under Stewart's instruction and joining him on dives of other slave wrecks, as well as traveling with him to Liberia.
The writing itself is strong, and I came away with a clearer understanding of the slave trade in the years after Britain and the U.S. banned it, along with some worthwhile history on the American Colonization Society and the founding of Liberia. My recommendation: push through the slow opening chapters. The payoff is worth it.
I received a complimentary advance copy of Ocean of Bones (Gallery Books, on sale November 3, 2026) from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
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August 12, 2026Ocean of Bones: The Hunt for the Pirate Slave Ship Guerrero is a powerful convergence of maritime history, slavery, archaeology, and human courage. David Kushner takes an extraordinary historical mystery the wreck of the Guerrero, a pirate slave ship carrying 561 kidnapped Africans and connects it to the modern-day divers who set out to locate its remains nearly two centuries later.
The book’s structure is particularly compelling because it operates across two centuries. In 1827, the Guerrero represents the brutal machinery of the transatlantic slave trade and the lengths to which outlaw captains went to evade abolitionist enforcement. In 2004, Ken Stewart, a Black diver and Vietnam veteran, approaches the wreck from an entirely different perspective: not as a treasure to be claimed, but as a historical site and a resting place for stories that had never been fully recovered.
That distinction gives the search extraordinary emotional weight. The partnership between Stewart’s Diving with a Purpose team and marine archaeologist Corey Malcom becomes more than a hunt for a shipwreck. It becomes an effort to reconstruct what happened to the people aboard the vessel and to reconnect fragments of history that stretch across generations and continents.
Kushner also reveals how far the story reaches beyond the wreck itself. President John Quincy Adams, an African princess who became an American slaveholder, the founders of Liberia, and the descendants of those caught in the Atlantic slave trade all become part of a historical network that demonstrates how one ship can illuminate an entire era.
What makes Ocean of Bones especially promising is its ability to combine the momentum of an underwater search with the gravity of recovered history. Readers receive a genuine mystery, archaeological discovery, and adventure but beneath all of it lies a deeper question about whose stories survive and who has the responsibility to recover those that were deliberately obscured.
This is historical nonfiction with the potential to engage readers far beyond maritime history, reaching audiences interested in slavery, archaeology, African American history, genealogy, exploration, and the enduring consequences of the past.
The book’s structure is particularly compelling because it operates across two centuries. In 1827, the Guerrero represents the brutal machinery of the transatlantic slave trade and the lengths to which outlaw captains went to evade abolitionist enforcement. In 2004, Ken Stewart, a Black diver and Vietnam veteran, approaches the wreck from an entirely different perspective: not as a treasure to be claimed, but as a historical site and a resting place for stories that had never been fully recovered.
That distinction gives the search extraordinary emotional weight. The partnership between Stewart’s Diving with a Purpose team and marine archaeologist Corey Malcom becomes more than a hunt for a shipwreck. It becomes an effort to reconstruct what happened to the people aboard the vessel and to reconnect fragments of history that stretch across generations and continents.
Kushner also reveals how far the story reaches beyond the wreck itself. President John Quincy Adams, an African princess who became an American slaveholder, the founders of Liberia, and the descendants of those caught in the Atlantic slave trade all become part of a historical network that demonstrates how one ship can illuminate an entire era.
What makes Ocean of Bones especially promising is its ability to combine the momentum of an underwater search with the gravity of recovered history. Readers receive a genuine mystery, archaeological discovery, and adventure but beneath all of it lies a deeper question about whose stories survive and who has the responsibility to recover those that were deliberately obscured.
This is historical nonfiction with the potential to engage readers far beyond maritime history, reaching audiences interested in slavery, archaeology, African American history, genealogy, exploration, and the enduring consequences of the past.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
I read an advanced copy of this book provided by Edelweiss.
This is such a good fucking book. It's an oversimplification of this book to just describe it as about the discovery of the wreck of the slave ship Guerrero because this book is actually about so much more: the racially divided history of scuba as a hobby, the empowering effect of having agency and responsibility, the detrimental environmental and historical effects of shipwreck hunting, the cultural impact of restoring the history of enslaved Africans and re-establishing the connections between the communities men, women, and children were kidnapped from with the communities built by the African diaspora pre- and post-slavery. This book contains multiple threads that a reader can pull on and start following down infinite Wikipedia rabbit holes. I cried so many times.
Really my only critique -- and it could very well be because the ARC I got was rough with lots of formatting errors, repeated sentences, etc. that makes me think editing isn't completed -- is that this book was kinda... short? It's a lot of summaries of a lot of things -- summaries of the lives of people involved, summaries of books they've written, summaries of historical events. It's not a very deep book -- I suspect for the depth I'm looking for I need to read Dr. Artemus Gaye's A TOSSED AMERICAN PIE: THE CONTROVERSIAL CONCEPTION AND CREATION OF LIBERIA BY WHITE AMERICANS, BLACK REPATRIATES AND LIBERATED AFRICANS or the report of the Guerrero's identification by Corey Malcolm.
This is such a good fucking book. It's an oversimplification of this book to just describe it as about the discovery of the wreck of the slave ship Guerrero because this book is actually about so much more: the racially divided history of scuba as a hobby, the empowering effect of having agency and responsibility, the detrimental environmental and historical effects of shipwreck hunting, the cultural impact of restoring the history of enslaved Africans and re-establishing the connections between the communities men, women, and children were kidnapped from with the communities built by the African diaspora pre- and post-slavery. This book contains multiple threads that a reader can pull on and start following down infinite Wikipedia rabbit holes. I cried so many times.
Really my only critique -- and it could very well be because the ARC I got was rough with lots of formatting errors, repeated sentences, etc. that makes me think editing isn't completed -- is that this book was kinda... short? It's a lot of summaries of a lot of things -- summaries of the lives of people involved, summaries of books they've written, summaries of historical events. It's not a very deep book -- I suspect for the depth I'm looking for I need to read Dr. Artemus Gaye's A TOSSED AMERICAN PIE: THE CONTROVERSIAL CONCEPTION AND CREATION OF LIBERIA BY WHITE AMERICANS, BLACK REPATRIATES AND LIBERATED AFRICANS or the report of the Guerrero's identification by Corey Malcolm.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews