Diver's Daughter

black people had been part of British life for the last two thousand years. Many years after reading that book from cover to cover, I was researching the history of black people around the City of London and Hackney. The Institute of Historical Research has a list of church entries starting in 1573 – baptisms, marriages, burials – of people with roots in Africa and Asia. I cannot help but wonder about all those lives, many of them servants, some skilled workers, some of them living and dying in poverty. My heart bleeds for the nameless man who was buried on 29 June 1588 in the churchyard of St Olave’s on Hart Street, City of London, after being found dead in the street.

I had bought Miranda Kaufmann’s Black Tudors: The Untold Story a few weeks before I was asked to write this story. A happy coincidence! I was attracted to the story of the diver, Jacques Francis, because the raising of the Mary Rose was a significant moment in my generation’s history – and also, it wasn’t too far from where I grew up. There is also the enduring myth that black people can’t swim. What the story of Jacques Francis showed was that sometimes, black people were the only people who could swim! Jacques is also one of the first recorded Africans to give evidence in an English court. It’s a really significant moment, but lost – or trivialised – in the history books.

However, I wanted to tell the story through a child’s point of view. I did not want to focus on slavery, but I also knew that people from the African continent were being kidnapped and exploited by European countries such as Portugal and Italy for hundreds of years. In 1570, when my story is set, slavery was still considered illegal on English soil. Though it did not mean that people of African descent were safe.

While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Eve Cartwright is a fictional character, created by the author, and her story is a work of fiction.

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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2019

This electronic edition published 2019

Text © Patrice Lawrence, 2019

Cover illustrations © Alette Straathof, 2019

eISBN 978 1407 19389 2

The right of Patrice Lawrence to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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