go a bit slower over some of those numbers so that they stick. host: we are putting them on the screen as well. guest: yeah, perfect. 12,000 ships. it is a lot of ships. it tells you how big it was over those years. the thing that really stood with me or stuck with me was realizing 12,000 ships, when i was growing up, i couldn't tell you the name of a single one of them, yet i could tell you about the mayflower. i could tell you about other ships. why was that? that didn't feel right to me. when i think about the number of people who died just in the ocean -- we are not talking about the number of people who died on the march to the ships, or the number of people who died once they arrived and were enslaved. just in the crossing from africa to the americas.

1.8 million people. that is a huge number. and is an enormous amount of loss of life. it is a number i didn't know until i started this work. so, one of the things i have been trying to do with the storytelling i have been doing is bringing that story back into memory of this important history. and the other thing is to honor those people whose lives were lost, whose names we will never know, but they weren't just victims, they were just cargo. they were people. mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. maybe some were writers. maybe some were farmers or scientists or poets or whatever. they were people. and they deserve to be remembered. host: from your book, "written in the waters,"

" on the wintrynoon of decemb 18 27, the guerreroanish pirate ship, sailed down the coast of florida toward cuba. night fell. and the weatherd bad. none of the hundreds of captive africanse guerrero would have known what wasappening that night. they wouldn't have known where they were. terrified and cramped in the ld, they were helpless. 41 africans drowned as water runto the hold that night. maybe the water came in initia a dilution, -- day deluge, relentless waves going higher and higher as they quickly took feeble and sick. i think often of them letting go, offering prayers to their gods as they breathed out and sought yemaya's release." what story are we telling here? guest: that is a way to bring their journey, their experience into memory.

and i get this, i felt this too. sometimes it feels like it is too much to imagine the horrors of the trade. it is hard to think about it. but again, i think these people need to be remembered. and just trying to remember or imagine what those moments would have been like for them. i also later in that passage imagine resistance and resilience and survival because 41 people died that night. but -- and i forget the numbers. it is 400? how many survivors? host: i think it was 561 on the ship altogether. i think that is the right number. guest: right. i always have to refer to my numbers. but the rest lived that night.

that means they have stories. they went on, and those stories exist, that their contributions to the world still exist in some way. i know that a number of the guerrero africans got distributed to different places. host: cuba. guest: yes, the majority ended up in cuba. i like to think even though i won't know the names of the people who were on that ship, when i think about the culture in cuba, the afro descended culture that exists there, i think that their contribution, like, they do still live some sort of way there, and let's honor that and acknowledge that. st: "all of us divers are deeply connected to the 561 guerrero africans and the millions of souls who experienced the transatlantic crossing." did you dive and see the guerrero? guest: well, the guerrero is an interesting story. this is the ship that started diving with a purpose over 20 years ago. host: the one you referenced

earlier? guest: yes. and technically, it still hasn't been officially found. they think that they know where the wreck is. there is an archaeologist who is working -- who has been working on this for many, many years in florida, and he's pretty sure it is this particular wreck, but there's still some anomalies. there's a thought that it might have wrecked somewhere else. so other anomalies have to be rolled out before it can be officially named as such. host: did you dive in the general area? guest: yes. that was a long story to say that i cannot officially say it was the wreck. host: what did you see? guest: the interesting thing about slave ships is they are not intact on the ocean floor. most of them were built out of wood. they are from the 16th and 17th

centuries. so, when they wreck, they splinter. and then the ocean takes them back. so, it doesn't look anything like a wreck. what you see is coral encrusted things on the floor that could be anything. like, it really doesn't look like -- you would never go out diving and discover a slave ship with your eyes. you wouldn't know that's what it is. it really takes the archives, the historians really knowing this is where we think it went down, and it takes equipment to really -- sonar scans, magnetometers, all these types of equipment help to pinpoint where a wreck might be. and then specialized divers who know what to look for are then going down to check on those anomalies. so, when we went down, that is

what we were doing. host: it is off the keys of florida? guest: yes. host: and you were drawing it at the same time. guest: not on this wreck, because we don't know for sure it is the wreck. so we went down in pairs. and we had certain anomalies, because even though the boats were made of what, there might be metal fittings in them. if there is a metal fitting, the magnetometer would record that. so, we go down to see, is that a coke can from today, or was that a nail? was that something else? a bunch of us, and it was a bunch of young people, because diving with a purpose has a youth version called youth diving with a purpose, so we all went down checking on these anomalies over the course of a week just last year to see, can we finally claim ts is the guerrero? host: y write, "apparently,

u can't just go for a dive one sunny afternoon and happen upon a slave ship wreck. most bustles at that time peri were made of wood. when they perished, they splintered on the oc floor and it disined over the centuries. we learn that the work of findave ship wrecks actually starts on land, in the archives. archives often include items like logbooks, sales transactions, business records, advertisements, and insurance claims." guest: who knew? they keep meticulous records. like, we are not guessing here. you have to find them on the ocean floor because the ocean covers things, currents move things around, but the records tell us a lot. a lot of these insurance companies had to pay out claims. the slave trade was big business. people made a lot of money off of it and people wanted their payouts. so, they would file claims.

people were taken to court around us. and there are documents of all these things. so, historians start by going through those archives to really understand what the wrecking event was and where it might be, and then it goes from there. host: tara roberts, tell us about the first time you sighted a definitive slave ship on the floor of the ocean? guest: ah, you put that were definitive in there. [laughter] since -- well, i will tell you one story. when i dove on the christianas and federicas quartes, which now i can say is definitive. this year, they have 100% confirmed that it is indeed the wreck we thought it was. the people local are like, it's the wreck. but scientifically, you have to

prove it first to be sure. so when i dove that wreck, it was really powerful because i saw the anchor, i saw bricks. bricks are one of the potential telltale signs of a slave ship wreck. if there's a huge pile of bricks in an area where a slave ship went down, it could potentially be a slave ship, and that is because they would often use ballasts, stones, or bricks to offset the weight of human beings. so, that was a really particular thing for slave ships. but i got to see all of these pieces. and it was incredible. and i have to say that i didn't feel sad under the water. some of my fellow divers have a range of experiences and

emotions that occur when they dive. i, though, when i dove, i just felt so powerful underwater. the costa rica story is also a story of survival. there are some people who were on the ship who passed away in the ocean, but a lot of them survived. this is one of the stories of mutiny where the crew mutinied and they let a number of the africans go. but when i was underwater, i just felt's proud -- i just felt proud, actually, of myself. i felt proud of the other divers. i felt proud of the historians, the archaeologists. i just felt so proud that we had decided that we are going to prioritize this history.

we are not waiting for anyone else to say it matters. and most of us -- actually, not most. all of us are volunteers. i got a bit of a grant to be able to do the work, but it was a pretty small grant. i am still funding a lot of this myself, and the rest of the divers, they are not being paid for this work. but we volunteered to bring these stories up from the depths, and that just felt so powerful to me. i felt like i could say to the ancestors, i see you. i honor you. i have not forgotten about you. none of us have. so, that felt really great. host: you are a national geographic explorer in residence. what is that? guest: [laughter] that's a great question. i am actually on staff with a national geographic right now. i didn't start off on staff. i started out with a grant,

which funded me to travel around the world with the divers. and originally, i was writing blog entries about my journey. and then i became a storytelling fellow with national geographic, and that allowed us to do the podcast we did. we did a podcast called "into the depths." it is a narrative podcast, still streaming. and it tells the audio version of the journey. you get to hear from the divers. you get to hear out in the field what it sounds like when we are actually underwater. it is a really beautiful story. so, i did the podcast. and then just last year, national geographic invited me to come in house so we could continue this work in a different way. we are planning a part two of this work. i just spoke about how important memorialization is, telling the stories of the ancestors who

perished under the waters. and those who didn't perish, who survived but still had this experience. so, we've got something coming up that's going to be pretty big and pretty exciting that will help honor and memorialize this past. host: do you still dive with diving with the purpose? guest: yeah, i do. i do. a group of young diving with the purpose members just dove in south africa this past year, where there are shipwrecks in south africa as well. last year was actually the year that we did the guerrero dive. so, that was with diving with a purpose. yeah, i dive with them many a time. host: in good national geographic fashion, and this is published by national

geographic, your book has maps on the front and back covers. a, thank you for that. why did you include those? guest: well -- excuse me. partly because the journey took me all over the world, so we wanted people to see where the journey happened. but even more importantly than that, there is a way that i think people think the transatlantic slave trade is black history, or its american history, but they don't think that it's global history. the transatlantic slave trade impacted the world. there were some 70 -- the estimate between 70 and 90 nations were involved in the trade in some way. so, europe, africa, south america, north america, the caribbean would not be what they

are if not for the trade. but we don't tell a global story , really, about it. so, part of the work of this book is to really show that this is a big story. it involves all of us. it is not just one thing. and i think seeing the maps of it help you begin to get that visually. host: we have already talked about the danish ships. and the guerrero, a spanish ship. which ship was the henrietta murray, discovered in 1972? guest: and the henrietta marie was the very first slave ship to be found in the u.s.. that was an english ship. all the major european powers participated in the slave trade, and it is part of their history as well. host: where was the henrietta marie found, and have you dove

to see it? and can you see it? can you see anything from that wreck? guest: well, maybe. that one is off the coast of florida. i think it is about a mile off the coast. maybe it is a little more than a mile. that was the first ship found, and they found a lot from it. but again, this is in the 1970's, so it has been a long time. but when doc jones found out about the henrietta marie, he worked with other members of the national association of black scuba divers to put a plaque -- they raised money to build a plaque and put it down at the site of the wreck. and it was a pretty big plaque. but over the years, again, the ocean, it is covetous. it has now covered that plaque.

so, i'm not exactly sure where it is, quite honestly. they know the general area. but people have to go down and clean it off and find it again. host: tara roberts, you traveled to mozambique to find or chart a wrecked slave ship. guest: yes. host: tell us that story. guest: so, mozambique, it is a beautiful story. it is mozambique and south africa together. and this is one of the other things that i didn't know about the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade, until i started this work. i didn't realize that east africa was part of the trade. i thought it was only west africa. but mozambique is all the way on the other side, and that was a hub for the portuguese. like, over 500,000 people were trafficked out of mozambique. and they would travel the route

around mozambique or down the coast of mozambique, around the horn of south africa, and they would go on to brazil and to the caribbean, because the french were also trafficking from that area. so, one of the ships that came from mozambique wrecked in south africa. this ship, it is such a beautiful story. it was found by an archaeologist who is with the museums in south africa. and the journey or the work to find the ship was headed off by a group called the slave reqs project. -- the slave wrecks project. diving with a purpose is part of that group. it is a group of organizations from around the world who are

part of discovering and documenting these ships. so, the national museum of african-american history and culture, which was the museum where i saw the picture, helped to spearhead this work along with george washington university. but other organizations like the national park service are part of it, the museums, dwp. there's all these organizations that are working to find and document the ship. and they find it, and they determined that it is indeed the ship that they thought it was. so, that ship they found originally came from mozambique. and they discovered that a group of people called the macua were the people who were in the cargo hold of the ship. and those are people who mainly came from northern mozambique and a tiny island -- well, they come from northern mozambique,

but they found out the ship lift from a tiny island called mozambique island. so, what makes this story so beautiful, and i think this shows the power of healing, or the possibility of healing with these ships, the team when they discovered they were the people in the cargo hold decided, why don't we go back and let the descendants know what happened to the ship? so, they contacted them and told them what happened, and the people there. -- the people there decided to hold a big celebration because they finally knew what happened to their ancestors. so, they have this celebration with music and food and people and dance and with speeches. and at the end of it, the makua

chief hands a gift to lonnie bun ch. lonnie bunch is the founding director of the african-american museum of history and culture. and now he is the secretary of all the smithsonian museums. and he is a part of this work. so, the makua chief hands to lonnie this calvary shell encrusted basket, and lonnie is light, why is he handing me this gift? but before he gives it to him, he reaches down and he puts soil from mozambique island or mozambique into the basket. and then he says to lonnie, i am charging you with going back to that wreck site, and i want you

to pour the soil that i am giving you now over that site so that my people can touch home for the first time in over 200 years. it is an incredible story. and then lonnie and the team decide to do just that. so, they go back to south africa and they choose an african-american, a south african, and eight mozambican, and the three of them walk into the water with the basket and they pour the soil over the site. and what makes this story really extraordinary, again, i was not there when this happened so i can't say if it actually happened, but from many accounts, and i talked to a lot of people around this and they all say the same thing, that when they started that day, it

was a pretty terrible day. it was rainy and the seas were rough. the three people had to hold onto each other pretty tight as they walked into the water. they also say that the clouds -- like, the sun was nowhere in sight. it was really a horrible, horrible day. but when they finished doing that and they walked out of the water and they got to shore, everybody says that the seas calmed, the sun came out. our interpretation, maybe that was just the weather pattern that day, or maybe something got calmed that day. maybe something got solved. maybe something got put to peace. so, we like to think that the ancestors heard and the ancestors are at rest from that ship. so, that is an example of this

history. it is big, heavy history. but it is history that we can move through. that is why it is important for us to actually look at it, to actually know it, and then we can move to the other side of it. host: cujo lewis. who was he? guest: you are making me do a lot of talking, but i guess that is the point of this conversation, right? cudjo lewis. that is another really, really great story. cudjo was one of the ancestors on the coltilda ship. it is the most recent ship to be found and confirmed. that one is found and confirmed. that is off the coast of mobile, alabama. it has taken some time to confirm it, but that is when

they first found it. the thing that is really unique -- well, there's a couple things that are unique about the clotilda. it is the only ship that has been found intact. i know i said earlier, they are always found in splinters, and that is the truth for most of them. but what was different about the clotilda is it sank in the mobile river, which is a different sediment and the ocean. it is a muddy ocean -- a muddy river. and the water preserved the wreck. we can see the actual condition of the wreck. so, that makes it a very special case scientifically and archaeologically. it is an amazing find. but it is also just an amazing story. i will tell it very briefly. so, there was a plantation owner

in mobile, who made a bet in 1860 when the slave trade had been made illegal. it had been illegal since 1808. but he had made a bet that he could build a ship and sail it to africa and get captive africans and bring them back here to be enslaved. and he did just that. he managed to build a boat, he had a captain who sailed it over, and that captain bought 110 -- he bought more, but only 110 made it onto the boat, and he sailed it back to alabama without being caught. so, it is known the clotilda is the last known american slave ship to come from africa. what makes this story super unique is that the 110 were sold

off to financial backers of the clotilda, but 32 of them were kept by the man who made the bet. and they were kept right there in mobile, alabama. so, this happened in 1860. but in 1865, the civil war happened, and these captives were freed. when they were freed, they wanted to go home, because they remembered where they came from. you know, it had only been five years. they still spoke the language. they new home. they wanted to go, but they couldn't find a way back, couldn't afford it. there was no way back home. so, these 32 people decided that they would band together and build africa in their community. so, they worked for another nine years and managed to save up,

$300, and they were able to buy nifty seven acres of land. and so, they bought this land and created africatown. and africatown grew over the years, and africatown still exists. in its heyday, africatown had over 19,000 residents. it had schools, shops, businesses, churches, cemeteries. it was a full-blown community, started by these 32 -- this 32 group of africans. host: including cudjo lewis. guest: cudjo lewis was one of the leaders of it. what is also astonishing about cudjo, he is the last living male person from a slave ship to pass away. he passed away in the 1930's.

so, he has that distinction. and the writer of zora neale hurston wrote a book about him called "barracoon," which came out not too long ago. and all the descendants of these people, like, they lived in africatown. some still live in act africa -- they still live in africatown today. you have people today who know who their ancestors are exactly. they know where they come from. most african-americans can't trace back and we don't know. so, it is amazing that they've got this story. host: tara roberts, how many dives have you made with diving with a purpose? guest: i don't know. i stopped counting. not nearly near as many -- host: over 100? is 100 a fair number? guest: maybe somewhere around there. host: are you to the instructor

level yet? guest: no, i'm not. host: is it time under the water that counts? guest: it is time under the water, but also instruction. you have to have certain skills to be an instructor, because then you're taking people out on the water and you don't want to lose anybody, so you've got to be sure you know what you are doing so you can be -- so you can really be in charge of those folks and make sure they are ok. host: what is your mother in atlanta think of your work today? guest: she is so proud of it. she is really proud. host: she had you blessed before you went on on this, dingy? guest: she did. she had her pastor bless me. it is not something i would have done on my own but when your mother tells you to do something, ok, i will do it. she had her pastor, and incredible human being as well,

he blessed me and actually said something that really shifted the way that i thought about the journey when he blessed me. he told me i needed to ask permission of the ancestors. and he said i needed to speak their names. i needed to call them forward. i will say that before that, i wasn't thinking about the ancestors at all. i was thinking about the divers, the ships, storytelling. and i knew that there were stories about people who had passed on the ships. but i wasn't thinking about engaging the ancestors. but that is such an african way of dealing with spirituality and connecting with your elders and connecting with your past. so, bishop jack really did open up something for me. and that is a strong through line through the book, through

the podcast, through all the work that i do now. host: is that you on the cover of the book diving? guest: no. i don't think so. i don't know. the illustrator, maybe. i will say that when the illustrator did it at first, the person didn't have many curves. and i said, you can add a little curve because i've got some curves. and she added some. so, maybe it is me. host: [laughter] can people donate to diving with the purpose? guest: most definitely, yes. it is a 501(c)(3). there are, what, close to 980 more ships potentially to be found out there, and all this work takes support. so, they can absolutely support them. host: and just to go back over some of those figures we did at the beginning. the golden triangle, this is just the transatlantic slave trade, europe to africa to

america to europe. from the 1500s to the 1800s, 12,000 slave ships made 36,000 wages. gush voyages. 40 countries were involved, carrying 12.5 million africans, of which 1.8 million africans were lost at sea. of those 12,000 slave ships, 1000 of them were sunk. only 20 have been found as of today. our guest is national geographic explorer and resident and author tara roberts. her book, "written in the waters : a memoir of history, home, and belonging." [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> all "q&a" programs are

available on our website or as a podcast on our c-span now app.