The Search for History’s Lost Slave Ships
Overheard at National Geographic
National Geographic
4.5 • 10.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2020
⏱️ 23 minutes
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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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