# Meanings of diaspora engagements  
This experience continued in the diaspora. Countless Africans became involved in maritime labour and many of those enslaved used the sea as a means of escape. Transit and coexistence marked the experience of the peoples living on the edges of the Atlantic and of the sailors who were black, African or born in the diaspora, whether as enslaved or free men, present in the world of Atlantic maritime labour and serving on various European and American merchant and military ships (Rediker 1989, p. 156). They could be found in a range of situations: in maritime cabotage in different regions of the colonial world (Scott 2018, pp. 105-106; Da Silva Jr. 2011, pp. 85-87; Bezerra 2010, pp. 124-133); in the merchant navy (Thornton, p. 181-182; Lapa 1968, pp. 112-  
115; Linebaugh and Rediker 2008); in the naval branches of the armed forces during the conflicts over political independence for countries in Portuguese and Spanish America; in the conflicts between European and American nations, having operated ships and arms in conflicts such as those in the Platine region or the Seven Years' War (Jeha, 2011, pp. 165 et seq.; Aladrén, 2009, p. 442); in apprentice schools and in republican fleets up to the present day (Nalty, 1986, p. 189; Pereira do Nascimento, 2008; Silva, 2002; De Oliveira Aguiar, 2017).