For nearly two years, The Associated Press assembled puzzle pieces from across three continents to uncover the story of a mysterious Mauritanian boat — and the people it carried to death as they drifted across the Atlantic Ocean and appeared in the Caribbean island of Tobago on May 28, 2021.
Mauritania, a large country in northwest Africa, is nearly 3,000 miles (4,800 km) away from Tobago. Evidence found on the boat — and its style and color as a typical Mauritanian “pirogue”— suggested the dead were likely African migrants who were trying to reach Europe but got lost in the Atlantic.
