“ plangent harps of the Babylonian bondage,
as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women, “

In the poem, “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott the excerpt above caught my attention because it shines a light on lost history of slaves while on ships, especially the enslaved women who were often thrown overboard while being pregnant.

Dissecting the first line, “plangent harps of the Babylonian bondage,” with finding the meaning of each word. Plangent definition, according to Cambridge English Dictionary, is a deep/low sound expressing sadness. A Harp is a large wooden stringed instrument. The phrase, Babylonian bondage, is closely referencing The Holy Bible and when the enslavement of Jews occurred in Babylon. So, the author is comparing the sorrowful music of Jewish people being enslaved to black people being enslaved as well. Suffering the same, if not worse, fate like them. It’s a bitter way of showing how history tends to repeat itself and colonization and superiority never dies.

The second line, “as the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women,” is more focused on the enslaved females being drowned and forgotten that upon discovering their corpses their shackles seemed to be lined with white cowries. White cowries are a shell for a sea snail. During the TransAtlantic slave trade, cowries were used as currency to purchase slaves. So there is a heavy negative connection to this sea made item and it’s still in control of deceased slaves by having something concrete and constricting on their body.

In the ocean, the manacles of white cowries will remain as evidence and a makeshift tomb embedded with history in the sea, because even if human bodies disintegrate over time, the history of our truth is there where no white man is willing to explore and manipulate.