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The Trouvadore project began as a result of an investigation led by the late Grethe Seim, founder of the Turks & Caicos National Museum. The purpose was to research indigenous objects from artifact collections around the world for potential accession by the newly established museum. One of the first stops was the Smithsonian Institution, where documents were found listing items that a prominent Turks & Caicos Islander, George Gibbs, hoped to sell to the Smithsonian back in 1878. Among those objects was a reference to two "African idols" as having come from "the last Spanish slaver wrecked on East Caicos in 1841".

No one in the islands could recall ever hearing of this shipwreck, beyond vague stories of some ancestor rescued from some long ago shipwreck. Intrigued by the potential significance of the incident referred to in the document, Mrs. Seim searched decaying archives in the Turks and Caicos, finding no record of the wreck. 

Hoping for better results at Britain's Public  Records  Office (PRO), investigators for the museum conducted research there, finally discovering that the mystery ship was the Trouvadore, an illegal Spanish slave trader smuggling African captives to the slave market in Cuba. It had wrecked on the reef at East Caicos while attempting to avoid American and British anti-piracy and anti-slavery patrol vessels stationed in the Caribbean.

Over the years the story of Trouvadore was lost in the fog of time. Colonial governments changed, climate, hurricanes, and neglect took their toll on records in the Islands, until little more than vague stories of the incident remained. But it all changed with that chance discovery of the Gibbs letter at the Smithsonian.

Further archival research in Cuba, Spain, Britain, the  Bahamas, and Africa has revealed many more tantalizing clues to the mystery. Apparently, while re-provisioning in Sao Tome off the coast of Africa, most of the Spanish crew had sickened and died, forcing the captain to hire a crew from among local Portuguese sailors unfamiliar with the Caribbean. Recent research also points to a connection between the Trouvadore and the Catalan Spanish enclave in Sant Jago de Cuba (Santiago), and  suggests that the ship may actually have been purpose-built in Cuba. 

Finally, DNA studies may help establish positive links between many families among the native population of the TCI and the African survivors of the wrecked slave ship. 

While exciting progress continues to be made in these and other areas of investigation, project researchers know that it may take years to uncover Trouvadore's  history and to fully understand its legacy.