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It would be a pretty good bet to claim that many people in the UK - young and old - have heard of the sinking of the Marie Rose in Southampton Waters in mid-July 1545, its recovery, and now the splendid reconstruction and display in Portsmouth. I would also bet that very few of those same people know about Black African pearl-diver from the South Seas, Jacques Francis, who was critical to the original salvage operation. Francis had been brought to Europe from Guinea as a slave to the Venetian salvage expert Piero Corsi who had experience with other sunken treasure. Although Francis may have found the waters off the southern coast inclement compared with those of the Mediterranean or his home climes, his expertise allowed the recovery of an extensive and expensive range of naval ordnance (worth some £1,700) as well as the goods of various merchants. We can reconstruct Francis's work from the payments made to his master over the course of two years...