On board the Isabella, a London-based slave ship that has remained sunk and unknown, somewhere off the coast of Margate since 1735, 24 people lost their lives, trapped in its dark and cramped hold, during the ocean crossing. I’ve traced the ship’s journey through the archives from the Thames to the Gambia River, across the Atlantic to Barbados, Jamaica and Charleston. Among the tens of thousands of words that describe the ship and captain’s activity, there are no details, names or stories of any enslaved individual who survived or died on the crossing. It can be understood as part of the erasure which included the deliberate stripping away of all markers of identity, individuality and humanity that captive people experienced, as well as the suppression, omission and censoring of their historical record and memory. At some point over the last decade that I’ve been conducting archival research, I began to notice holes and water and mould-damage in the deteriorating papers. At first I was annoyed with the holes, for preventing me from reading what might have finally been some shred of information about the people I’m trying to reach for. But at some point these holes and marks began to appear figurative to me, like characters or spirit shapes, sometimes scenes that triggered imaginings. I began to see the untold stories that can only be reached through imagining – spirit figures floating, flying or falling, a person lying on the boards covered up to the waist by a white blanket, a desperate mother delivers her baby into the ocean, the underwater transformation into a mermaid soul. I selected 24 of these spirit figures, photographed from original historical documents, to invite viewers to connect through imagination with the 24 souls who lost their lives on the Isabella. The 24 images were first exhibited and made freely accessible for the Margate community and visitors at Quench Gallery. Since the Isabella is a slave ship that has until now remained unknown, and unexplored by historians, this piece which centres the 24 souls who died aboard it , is the ship’s first documented history – an intentional act of reclaiming the narratives, processes and purposes of history. If historians or other writers wish to discuss the Isabella going forward, this artwork should be cited as its first documented history.