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Overheard at National Geographic

The Search for History’s Lost Slave Ships

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.510.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On the bottom of the world’s oceans lie historic treasures—the lost wrecks of ships that carried enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. Only a handful have been identified so far, but National Geographic explorer and Storytelling Fellow Tara Roberts is documenting the efforts of Black scuba divers and archaeologists to find more, hoping to finally bring their stories to light. For more information on this episode, visit nationalgeographic.com/overheard Want more? Follow Tara’s journey around the world on Instagram. And here’s the photo that Tara Roberts saw at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that inspired her to learn to scuba dive. Read about the last slave ship survivor, Matilda McCrear, and what her descendants make of her legacy. Tag along on a scuba mission with DWP divers in this video produced by National Geographic. And for paid subscribers: Read a History magazine article about the Clotilda, the ship that illegally smuggled 110 West Africans into the United States on the eve of the Civil War. We have another History magazine article about 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived in colonial North America If you like what you hear and want to support more content like this, please consider a National Geographic subscription. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

When you dive, it's a completely different world.

0:10.4

The first time I ever saw a National Geographic Explorer and storytelling fellow Tara Roberts

0:15.3

wasn't at headquarters.

0:17.1

It was on YouTube.

0:19.1

Last year, Tara was in a Natuio video about a group of black scuba divers called Diving

0:26.5

with a Purpose, also called DWP.

0:29.9

In this scene off the coast of the Florida Keys, Tara was getting underwater archaeology

0:34.7

training.

0:36.8

Little yellow fish swim past Tara as she floats down toward the sea floor.

0:41.1

So what is it she and the other divers are looking for?

0:44.4

They're on a mission to help find and document shipwrecks that carried enslaved people across

0:48.6

the Atlantic.

0:50.8

There were, I'd say approximately, 35,000 ships that brought 12.5 million Africans to the

1:01.7

Americas.

1:04.6

Of those 35,000 ships, approximately 500 to 1000 wrecked.

1:13.7

So far, a handful have been found and of the handful that have been found, even fewer

1:23.0

have been properly documented.

1:26.0

It might have been one of these sunken ships that Tara's own ancestors sailed on years

1:30.3

ago.

1:31.3

I was talking to my mom and she's the one in the family who's doing the family tree and

1:37.3

I actually remember seeing my great-grandfather's name and my great-grandmother's name listed

1:48.5

on a ledger for a plantation in North Carolina.

...

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