Adrift | An AP Investigation
BELLE GARDEN, Tobago (AP) –Around 6:30 a.m. on May 28, 2021, a couple of miles from Belle Garden Beach on the Caribbean island of Tobago, a narrow white-and-blue boat drifted onto the horizon.
Inside were the decomposing bodies of more than a dozen Black men. No one knew where they were from, what brought them there, why they were aboard — and how or why they died. No one knew their names.
For nearly two years, The Associated Press assembled puzzle pieces from across three continents to uncover the story of this boat — and the people it carried from hope to death.
The vessel that reached Tobago was registered in Mauritania, a large and mostly deserted country in northwest Africa nearly 3,000 miles (4,800 km) away. Evidence found on the boat — and its style and color as a typical Mauritanian “pirogue”— suggested the dead were likely African migrants who were trying to reach Europe but got lost in the Atlantic.
In 2021, at least seven boats appearing to be from northwest Africa washed up in the Caribbean and in Brazil. All carried dead bodies.
