[SAM] My ancestors
came from here.
They were taken
from Africa in chains.
♪
During the sl*ve trade,
more than 12 million Africans
were trafficked
across the Atlantic
to North and South America
and the Caribbean.
♪
More than 2 million
died en route.
♪
For 400 years,
the traffic in Africans
was an accepted part of life
in the Western world.
How did people justify this?
♪
[whimpering]
[KRAMER] The story of the
sl*ve trade is world history.
It's a world shame.
[KINGA] We're talking about
going down 350 feet
to the depths of the ocean.
You have to
come to terms with it.
You have to confront it.
♪
Diving and investigating
sunken sl*ve ships
will reveal much about
this overlooked history.
But to understand
the broader picture
behind the transatlantic
sl*ve trade,
I'm enlisting the help
of two award-winning
investigative journalists.
Every part of
the system encouraged abuse.
What happened to them and why?
All of these Europeans
thought that it was compatible
to conduct this horrific trade,
and at the same time
these guys were
going in to church
and saying
their prayers every day.
Until that point,
faith was everything.
- Yes.
- Suddenly faith was not enough.
Now it was all about blood.
NATHALIE:
It would've been utterly
terrifying and miserable.
There were diagrams which showed
the most effective way to pack
the largest number of captives
into a given space.
♪
This is what it is,
man's inhumanity to man,
and this is almost
like the capital of it.
♪
[creaking, clack]
♪
[seabirds calling]
We've come to the
English Channel to investigate
a 350-year-old
unidentified sl*ve ship
that scientists call "35F."
We're briefed
by Dr. Sean Kingsley,
an expert on the wreck.
SEAN: The tragedy
of site "35F" is this ship
was wrecked within
a day's sail of England
at the very front door
of the United Kingdom.
♪
Sometime between 1672 and 1685,
"35F" sailed from England.
It was bound for West Africa.
The ship almost certainly
set out from London,
perhaps for modern Ghana,
a 5 to 7-week journey.
It was owned by
the Royal African Company.
At the time,
the King of England,
Charles the II, had a monopoly
on the sl*ve trade,
and this was a company ship.
[waves and storm sounds]
On its way back to England,
the sl*ve ship hit a storm
and went down.
♪
"35F" was located by marine
researchers in the early 2000s,
photographed by robotic camera,
and largely forgotten.
This particular ship is probably
the earliest slaver
in the world ever found.
And in this period,
in the 1680s,
the Royal Africa Company
was importing around
5,000 sl*ves every year.
And we know that vessels
like this had the capacity
to carry 650 sl*ves.
If you look carefully
and zoom in,
you can see remains
of these iron cannons
and copper manilla bracelets
Primitive currency
that were used
to barter with West Africa
for elephants, gold, and sl*ves.
All these types of material
culture are typical of a ship
that's going out
to West Africa to participate
in the sl*ve trade.
So no one has put eyes
on this wreck for 10 years now.
We don't know if it
still even exists.
So your mission is to get
out there, rediscover the site,
and see what other bits of
information you can extract
to add to our story.
SACHA: Let's take
a look at the charts.
Well, this is
the western approaches.
This is England. Over here
to the south is France.
Out where I'm standing
is the Atlantic.
And the big motion of
the sea, it's coming in here.
It's getting compressed
between France and England.
The waves become higher,
and the sea becomes
more disturbed.
And that's why we've got around
5,700 shipwrecks
around the British Isles.
And when there was a storm here,
it was the perfect storm.
To dive this,
we need conditions to be good.
We need them to be calm, flat.
For all those factors
to come together,
it's just going to present
a small window of opportunity.
♪
[seabirds calling]
JOSH: So this is it.
It's not gonna be an easy one,
as the wreck is about
45 miles away from land.
We have the coordinates
of the shipwreck site.
And to find it again,
we'll be using one of the most
advanced
research vessels available.
♪
The local crew is
very experienced,
and they know how treacherous
and unpredictable
the waters can be.
♪
My dad is British,
but my mom is Bahamian,
descended from sl*ves that
were brought over from Africa,
so I'm straddling
these two lives,
these two ancestry lines.
This is probably the oldest
slaver ever discovered,
so with that information,
I-I suddenly
my shoulders droop, and I feel
this weight of responsibility.
♪
The story of the sl*ve trade
is world history.
England was involved in it.
Portugal was involved in it.
The French were involved in it.
The Dutch were involved in it.
The Africans were
involved in it, right?
It's a world shame.
The world bears
responsibility for it.
You have to come
to terms with it.
You have to confront it.
[CREW MEMBER]
One mile away from target.
♪
AFUA: "35F" would have come
to a fort like this one.
More than 30 of them dotted
the coast of West Africa.
They were used
as trading posts and dungeons,
where Africans were
collected and processed
before being
loaded onto sl*ve ships.
♪
The Portuguese came first,
but after that,
almost every European power
tried to get their hands
on Elmina at one point,
because it was
a strategic location.
Right.
By the 1700s, the sl*ve trade
was the main business going on.
♪
So one of the things that
most strikes me, Sam,
about coming in here,
is that building.
This part right here.
Yeah. This square bit
in the middle.
- Okay.
- That is a church.
As this castle became a primary
site for sl*ve traders
Is this the Protestant church
or the Catholic church?
Well, initially
it was a Catholic church.
- Of course.
- But when the British
took it over, they continued to
use it as a Protestant church.
All of these Europeans thought
that it was compatible
to conduct this absolutely
horrific trade
in the dungeons
of this building.
And at the same time, these
guys were going into church
and saying
their prayers every day.
♪
One of the things that
I think is most upsetting
is the kind of sexual abuse
that happened here.
So in the governor's bedroom,
there's a trap door
in the floor, and it leads
through some ladders
directly down
into the women's dungeon.
[echoes of women
sobbing faintly]
♪
One of them would
be selected and brought
straight up
to the officer's bedroom.
Washed, because they were kept
in a state of filth down there.
- Yeah, of course.
- And then he would r*pe her.
And he would just have free
access to these women and girls.
I'm sure there were little boys
who were subjected to the same.
Yeah.
♪
So it's a bit complicated
for me when I come here.
I have Ghanaian family,
and I don't know if anyone
who's related to me was actually
trafficked in sl*very,
but I do know that my sixth
great-grandfather lived here,
not as an enslaved person,
but as a sl*ve trader.
He was Dutch.
He worked for
the Dutch West India Company
- He came here to trade.
- Hmm.
reading not very deeply
between the lines.
Mm-hmm.
He would have been
trading sl*ves.
And he had a child,
as so many of the European men
who came here did,
with a local woman.
I don't know the circumstances
of their relationship.
Could it have been consensual?
It's hard to imagine.
Doubt it.
I don't know anything about her.
So you got skin in the game.
- I've got skin in the game.
- Ahh
This place really
means something to me.
♪
[echoes of screaming
and indistinct shouting]
As it pulled into port,
perhaps to Elmina,
"35F" was carrying
thousands of manillas,
a currency invented by Europeans
to trade in Africa
for people,
gold, and elephant tusks.
♪
Once they finished
their business,
they set sail
for Caribbean sl*ve markets.
To protect its
valuable cargo from pirates,
the ship was heavily armed
with dozens of cannons.
[rattling]
♪
After five hours,
we're finally approaching
shipwreck site "35F."
♪
For the initial survey,
we're deploying the ROV.
♪
[MAN] We're over the target.
Ready to bring down the ROV.
Yeah. Copy that. Over and 10.
[whirring]
It's like a remote-controlled
submarine,
equipped with cameras,
sonar, and various sensors
which allow the crew
to see what's at the seabed.
♪
Okay. Ready for dive in.
[sonar whirring]
The live images are fed to us
in the ROV control room.
Hopefully, there are still
remains of the shipwreck,
and we'll find
something down there.
♪
[whirring]
We'll be down in about
five minutes to the seabed.
5 minutes to go 330 feet.
Yeah, it's a bit quicker
than a dive, eh?
Okay. So we're 106 meters now.
Should be close to the seabed.
I'm just going
to slow my descent.
[speaking all at once]
- Wow, look at that.
- The seabed
at 108 and 1/2 meters.
The seabed is over
360 feet below the surface,
and right now,
there's absolutely
no sign of any wreckage.
Could possibly all
be gone, either from, um
fishing, or it could possibly
be covered up by sediment.
Good timing. They're coming up
on the sonar here.
Okay.
What is this?
Like, I see some kind of
looks like debris
or wreck in the sonar, right?
Yeah. All these bright
sections here
- Yeah.
- is stuff elevated
off the seabed.
Let's head a bit west.
♪
We search the ocean bed
for hours and nothing.
♪
And then suddenly,
something came up.
♪
Okay. We've got something hot
coming up on the sonar
just ahead, to the right.
Wait, that
that right there. Right there!
Oh, yeah, right.
Just to the bottom
of the right screen.
Okay. I'm gonna move into that
and have a closer look.
This looks like
it could be metallic.
♪
- Mallory, what is that?
- It's a cannon.
♪
Sasha, can you please
put a waypoint down?
We've just located a cannon.
Waypoint placed.
Thank you.
It's the back end of the cannon.
- Oh, okay.
- It's the cascabel.
- You can really see that shape.
- Oh, wow.
- That's incredible.
- Wow.
Let's see what else
is around there.
This is very good.
Okay. I'm going to move on
now to the next target.
Let's pull back in.
We've got a lot of
targets to look at.
Wait, wait, wait, slow down.
What's this?
- It's bone.
- That's something.
Hang on.
Let me just move closer.
I think it's coming now.
That's a tusk.
- What?
- Oh, my gosh. [laughs]
Look at that.
Sasha, can you please take
a fix? We found a tusk.
♪
Oh, my gosh.
That's so incredible.
It's been exposed
for quite a while.
You see all the growth on it?
These items have been
on the sea floor
for, you know, 300, 400 years.
People don't realize
that these merchants
were trafficking
in Africans and ivory.
Yeah.
So so finding
something like this
So what's the plan now?
Well, I think that we now need
to discuss diving operations.
This is what
we want to bring up.
Yes, I think this would be
important to bring up.
[whirring]
Unfortunately, retrieving
the tusk is not so simple.
Maritime law forbids mechanical
devices from touching artifacts
on the ocean floor.
If we want the tusk, we've
got to go down and get it.
[whirring]
But diving this deep
can be very dangerous.
[whirring]
We're talking about 108 meters.
I mean, none of us here
even Kramer, who's a tech diver,
that that's beyond
his limits, you know?
That's risky business.
Well, the first question is,
should we do it?
Bringing this tusk up is
is going to be raising
the voices of people
who didn't have a voice.
That tusk was worth maybe even
hundreds of lives of sl*ves.
It's giving people
like you and like me
an artifact to attach to.
That tusk is a symbol
of the pillaging of Africa.
And I think that speaks
really, really strongly.
It can help a lot of
people identify with that.
Absolutely, you should do it.
But how how do we do this
in the safest way possible?
It is deep, but there
is a way we can dive it safely,
using rebreathers
and mixed gases.
Everything needs
to be aligned perfectly.
We need great conditions,
good dive planning,
and a great support team.
Well, our options are either
tell the story or walk away.
And unless we bring
something up, really,
we're only telling
a portion of the story.
So from what I'm hearing,
I guess we're going for it.
- I think we should.
- I think we can do it.
♪
We return to shore to gear up
for this complicated dive.
♪
As wreck site "35F"
slowly decays
and will eventually vanish,
the preservation of
this crucial bit of history
now relies on our success.
♪
Just off these small islands,
only a few hours' sail
from where "35F" foundered,
relics from the heart of the
sl*ve trade were discovered.
The items were salvaged
from the wreck
of a British sl*ve ship
called the "Duoro."
They're key to understanding
the transatlantic sl*ve trade.
And for the last few decades,
they've been stored
in a local diver's garage.
Did you discover the "Duoro"?
Yes. We discovered
the "Duoro" back in 1972.
And, uh, everything
is kept in here.
We've got 30 years
of diving work.
♪
All this stuff
is from the "Duoro"?
All this stuff
is from the "Duoro," yes.
We've found piles
and piles of these,
which we just didn't
know what they were.
And what are they?
Well, later on we discovered
they were manillas,
which are sl*ve tokens,
and each one of those
was worth one sl*ve each.
Let me get this straight.
This is currency.
Currency.
And this fake currency,
really
Yes.
was created to be used
in Africa
to buy a human being.
One human being.
Yes, it's quite humbling,
isn't it,
thinking about it, really?
Well, I just got
goosebumps, really.
- A shudder went through me.
- I'm sure.
That's how things
were in those days, of course,
and they made them
in Birmingham,
shipped them out
to the west coast of Africa,
filled the ship full of sl*ves,
and took them
over to the West Indies.
We probably lifted
2 or 3 ton of them.
Thousands. Piles of these?
Piles. I mean,
they were 4-foot-high,
probably as big as this shed.
Apart from these,
that are worth one sl*ve,
these were worth seven.
- That's called an aggry.
- Blue glass beads.
We never did find out
what these were worth.
Obviously worth more.
Maybe 15 people.
- 15 human beings.
- Possibly, possibly.
I've seen a manilla
as big as that.
And they were called
king manillas,
and they were worth
a hundred sl*ves each.
I guess in a sense it
shouldn't surprise us because
literally millions
of people were trafficked.
Yes.
But we but I never knew
what they were trafficked for.
I notice something here
This spoon.
[clatter]
And this spoon
It brings to life
the people who the crew.
Mm-hmm.
The people who weren't below.
Life of the traders,
not the life of the traded.
That's right. That's right.
What's that?
- That's an old pocket watch
- No.
or what's left
of a pocket watch.
♪
I didn't show you this.
There's a razor in there.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. Who would last use that?
This looks like a fork.
It's a silver fork.
Yes, so it would've belonged
to a high-ranking officer
or the captain
because no one else
would have silver.
♪
It just suddenly
occurred to me just looking
at these artifacts,
that by themselves,
you know, it's a spoon,
it's a razor,
but really what we have here
is a set of two lives.
One is worth nothing.
It's worth this.
And the others they have,
you know,
he's got a pocket watch,
he's got a silver fork,
he's got a pipe.
Yeah.
While the people below are
- Are dying.
- are dying.
They're just squashed in
down below as cargo.
- They're car Cargo.
- cargo.
- Yeah.
♪
Sailboats had existed
for thousands of years
before the transatlantic
sl*ve trade.
But one key technological
development in the 15th century
made it possible to turn
the looting of Africa
into a business.
Sailing ships of that era
are so beautiful.
It's sort of hard to imagine.
You could go to all the way
to West Africa,
you could go to Brazil in this.
It's a whole little
wooden world.
♪
How did these sails
transform the business
of the sl*ve trade?
Well, you'll see that
the sails are kind of set
at an angle, and that's
the innovation that we see
coming about
in the 15th century.
Because before that, sails were
set flat, and you had to wait
for a wind to push the ship
from behind,
but if you didn't get that wind,
you couldn't go anywhere.
Whereas with the angle, that
meant they could catch the wind
from many directions.
They could basically
sail into the wind.
So the triangular sails
made it all possible?
Yes, this changes the duration.
It changes how far you could
go out into the ocean.
It really was
an absolute game-changer.
And you think of
pioneering technology as
a positive thing, but it's just
heartbreaking that Europeans
saw this as an opportunity
to really embark
on their most evil project.
It really was.
You know, if these sails
hadn't been developed,
Europeans would never had
been able to go southwards
and along
the western coast of Africa
to begin taking Africans
as enslaved captives.
What were conditions
actually like for the captives
who then got caught up
in that trade?
I think we should
go down where the captives
would've been held.
And it's very, very steep.
Be careful.
♪
So this is the hold.
And it's really oppressive
down here, just the atmosphere
and the lack of space.
And the smell it's so musty.
You can see there's not really
any ventilation.
It would've been utterly
terrifying and miserable.
The first thing you have
to imagine is the stench.
♪
Hundreds of people all
crammed together very tightly,
in some cases,
having to urinate and defecate
where they're lying.
You would hear them crying,
screaming, moaning,
begging for death, calling
upon their gods to save them.
[crying]
There were actually diagrams
issued which showed
the most effective way to pack
the largest number of captives
into a given space.
And there's not an inch
between one person and the next.
[echoes of coughing and moaning]
Some captains did what they
called loose packing.
This was not based
on humanitarian reasons,
but simply the idea that if they
were not so crammed together,
they would be less likely
to become ill.
Actual time and thought
was put into how to design
this kind of
inhumane arrangement.
Yes, this was the era
of the enlightenment.
This is scientific.
Were captives down here
ever allowed up there on deck?
There was a concern that
their health would suffer
if they were not allowed
to get up and move around,
so they would go up on deck,
and the captives
would be commanded to dance.
If their muscles wasted away,
if they were
emaciated and withered,
they would not sell well.
[shouting indistinctly]
It was so carefully
thought through.
Economic values were
thought through carefully,
the design of the sl*ve ships,
the most efficient way
to put people in here
I mean, this was a very
rational kind of a trade.
It's absolutely sinister.
[waves crashing]
We've gathered special
equipment for the deep diving,
and we're heading back
out to F35's wreck site.
♪
At this time of year,
the best diving conditions
are early in the morning.
♪
Our research ship
is already halfway there.
The crew will send down the ROV
to relocate the wreck site
and assist us in retrieving
the elephant tusk.
♪
We're on the speedboat
not far behind.
♪
Conditions
are definitely not, uh, optimal.
Today the sea is very choppy.
♪
ROB: I'm just tying these
down a little bit better
so they won't go flying.
Phil Short and Rich Stevenson,
our two tech divers, who are
going to be going down
in excess of 300 feet
They are two of the best
in the world at what they do,
and what they do
is very dangerous.
They have multiple
backup systems in place,
because if anything
goes wrong down there,
that's it's it.
That's That's it.
♪
To do it safely,
to decompress your body,
their bottom time is 20 minutes,
and then on the way up,
every 10 feet,
they have to stop for a minute,
and then they have to hang
for an hour at 20 feet.
Three hours of ascent
from that depth.
It feels like
the middle of nowhere.
I can barely see the land.
I'm just waiting for a big wave
to come right over me.
Looks like the weather's
getting worse as we push in.
♪
But we're gonna try
to keep going forward.
- Working on again a bit.
- Yeah.
- Okay, much better.
- Whoo-hoo!
♪
[CAPTAIN] Hold on, everybody.
Big wave.
[waves crashing]
[MAN] Speedboat,
this is Severn Sea.
We're at the shipwreck site.
Conditions are
pretty bad out here.
We're being pounded by waves
from three directions.
Please stand by
for a few minutes
while we try to stabilize. Over.
All right, man. Yeah.
We're not halfway yet.
I know, I know.
Got a call from the Severn Sea
that they're going
in circles right now,
just to stabilize,
because if they
stay in one place,
everyone's gonna be puking.
So they can't drop the ROV in.
So on that grounds,
we're going to can today's dive.
- It's canceled?
- It is. Sorry, man.
You've gotta do
what you gotta do.
Yeah, sorry.
And we're gonna turn around,
which is gonna be miserable,
because now we're gonna
get pounded because we're gonna
be going against the waves.
Gonna come back when
the weather's a bit better.
Maybe the sea stays a bit calmer
and the ROV ship can deploy.
So it's not great news,
I'm afraid,
but we will come back.
We will prevail.
♪
So we head back to port,
this time, empty-handed.
And to make matters worse,
weather reports show
this is only the beginning
of a major storm.
♪
So the clock is ticking,
and our window of opportunity
is getting smaller.
Now we can't do much,
other than hope for
a short break of good weather.
♪
Many Europeans justified
the sl*ve trade by arguing
that Africans aided them
in the enterprise.
I'm here with
Professor Wilhelmina Donkoh
to investigate.
- [laughs]
- I'll come and support you.
[laughs] That's good to know.
[drums continue beating]
[people singing
in native language]
[drums continue beating]
[singing continues]
♪
Can you tell me about
the Ashanti practice
of domestic sl*very in Ghana?
So they still had status.
- It was a low status.
- It was a low status.
But they were still
part of the community.
Yes.
How would you describe
the difference
between the culture
of sl*very, within Ashanti,
compared to the Europeans?
How could the Ashanti
reconcile selling people
to Europeans who were going
to treat them so much worse?
Has there been any
introspection more recently
about the Ashanti role in
the transatlantic sl*ve trade?
It's become common for
people to blame Africans
and say, "Well, they
sold their own people
and they had sl*very
before we arrived anyway."
[rooster crows]
[drums beating]
[seabirds calling]
So after four days of waiting,
finally the weather has calmed
on the English Channel.
We have to take advantage
of this short break.
Today is our final opportunity.
♪
Nature does what she likes,
whether we have something
to accomplish or not.
She's not playing
by our time frame.
♪
Beautiful skies, calm water
This is pretty much
our last chance
to get down there
and retrieve an artifact
from this wreck.
♪
I never even would have
imagined myself in this place,
with this opportunity to
give a voice to the silenced,
bringing breath, and breathing
new life into people of color
who are currently still living
with questions unanswered.
♪
[MAN] Skin Deep Seeker.
We just received some
information from the Severn Sea,
that conditions are good. Over.
Yeah. That's all copied.
This is it, ma'am.
Really good that Kieran's
with me on this dive.
♪
All three vessels have now
arrived at the shipwreck site,
as the Severn Sea
is preparing to lower
the remotely operated vehicle.
The ROV will help relocate
the shipwreck and help us
in our search
for the sunken elephant tusk.
♪
♪
[screaming
and indistinct shouting]
After "35F" unloaded
most of the Africans
for the auction blocks,
almost certainly the Caribbean,
it sailed home.
♪
On board may have been gold,
bound for the Royal Mint
in London,
sugar,
and a few sl*ves held back
for the British market.
The ships elephant tusks
African ivory
Were worth more than
the human cargo.
♪
It almost made it, but was hit
by one of the many storms
that lash the English Channel.
[thunderclap]
Only 45 miles from shore,
this slaver went down
with everyone on board.
[thunderclap]
[screaming]
[thunderclaps]
♪
[sonar whirring]
All right.
[exhales deeply]
Divers ready.
♪
All right. Both divers go out.
[water rippling]
Richard and Kieran are
connecting to the shot line,
which was dropped by the ROV.
It will be their only guide
to the bottom and back.
Very little sunlight reaches
these depths,
and that makes it
much harder to distinguish
between top and bottom.
So this wire
is also their lifeline.
♪
Skin Deep, Skin Deep.
Severn Sea. Over.
[MAN] Severn Sea, Skin Deep.
Just for your information,
we've launched ROV,
and we're just taking
the clump down now
to position it now.
[MAN] Okay, then, we'll
go and find the shot line
and run down effecting.
[whirring]
♪
As the ROV is being
maneuvered to the wreck site,
directly above it,
Rich and Kieran are descending.
It could take them up to
10 minutes to reach the bottom,
and until then, we will have
no contact with them.
♪
Deep diving is
much a mental state of mind
as it is a physical activity.
We visualize what
we're going to do.
We think about the job in hand.
We try to almost foresee
any potential problems
and just think through what
it is that we've got to do.
♪
The rest of us are all
geared up and standing by.
If an emergency happens,
we'll jump in
to supply Rich and Kieran
with extra air tanks
and help them
in any way necessary.
ROV, that's 50 meters
in order with the clump.
Okay. All stop on the winch.
All stop on the winch.
[whirring]
Okay. ROV is down
and in position.
Now awaiting visual on divers.
On the command bridge,
they're waiting to confirm
the divers' safety.
♪
They have to see both of
them on the ROV's video feed.
♪
[beeping]
Visuals on the diver now.
[beeping]
I'm seeing one diver.
Still awaiting for
a visual on Richard.
♪
Kieran has made it
to the bottom,
but Richard is yet to be seen.
[beeping]
[water rippling]
♪
Okay. There he is, back there.
All right,
we can relax a bit now.
Thank you.
After seven minutes of descent,
Rich and Kieran are
reunited at the seabed.
The ROV has led them right
on a pile of rusting cannons.
♪
They find something that
looks like a slab of wood.
Likely one of the final
remains of the ship's hull.
♪
The Severn Sea is
repositioned where the ROV
had revealed the tusk.
♪
The crew lower down a basket.
Hopefully it will come close
enough for the deep divers
to secure the ivory.
♪
Rich and Kieran are
searching in a small area.
But it's pitch black all around.
They now have only five
minutes to locate the tusk
before they have to ascend.
♪
Modern racism didn't begin
with the transatlantic
sl*ve trade.
♪
In 1449, new laws
were enacted in Spain,
a big player in the trade.
These were essential
for rationalizing
treating people as property.
♪
That's very nice
to see you, how are you?
Hi, how are you?
- Very nice to see you.
- Fine.
[bell clangs]
- This is a beautiful place.
- Yes, it is.
So what did it mean,
this purity of blood?
Of Toledo.
In the early 15th century,
Jews and Muslims were forcibly
converted to Christianity.
But after the conversions,
a new method was invented so as
to exclude them from society
and growing positions of power.
Until that point,
faith was everything.
Yes.
Suddenly, faith was not enough.
No, not enough. No.
- Now it was all about blood.
- Yes.
- 1722.
- Yes.
I see the word "genealogy."
So this person
who's writing this,
he's saying, "Hey, I am pure
blood on all four grandparents.
- Nobody has, you know, - Yeah.
made my blood impure." - No.
This is pure racism.
- This idea was new.
- Yes.
It made in Europe,
for the first time,
race a criteria. - Yes.
In 1452, the purity
of blood legislation
led directly to the Pope
blessing the sl*ve trade.
When he thought of Africans,
he just thought of them
as pagans. - Yes.
- So it was like a code word.
- Yes.
[liturgical music playing]
And when Africans
converted to Christianity,
did they stop enslaving them?
No. Purity of blood.
Africans.
♪
It shows you
that bad ideas can go
very, very, very far.
Very far.
♪
Severn Sea, Skin Deep
and Seeker, status report.
The divers have
been at the bottom
for more than five minutes now.
They have just under
five minutes left
until they have to ascend.
Support divers, be ready to jump
in for decompression phase.
Fingers crossed they'll find
a tusk in the next few minutes.
Over.
♪
Those two gentlemen
have been someplace
that no one else has ever been.
No other person
has been on this wreck site.
Ever.
♪
I'm literally above a ship
that was carrying my ancestors.
I'm free diving, uh
above kind of a graveyard.
♪
I didn't know the significance
of the shipwreck.
I feel more enlightened now.
That's my motivation
to spend three, four hours
in the water.
That's my personal reward.
♪
With only a few minutes left,
the deep divers have
found the basket.
The elephant tusk
is right next to it.
♪
After almost 350 years at the
bottom of the English Channel,
remarkably,
the tusk is still intact.
♪
Kieran secures
the tusk to the basket,
which will be hoisted
up to the ship.
♪
After 20 minutes on the bottom,
with just a few minutes
to spare,
Kieran and Richard
now ascend slowly.
They still have three hours
of decompression time
to spend in the water.
I'm gonna put Kinga in first,
then you jump
straight behind her.
Celebration is still premature
as the danger is not over.
In fact, the ascent is
one of the most precarious
parts of the mission.
We immediately jump in the water
to secure Kieran and Richard
to make sure they're safe.
♪
Getting down and staying down
is the easy part,
but managing the ascent is
critical because all that time
we're at that great depth,
we've absorbed a lot of,
you know, gas,
that has to come out of our
bodies in a controlled manner.
And the only way we can do that
is by making
these decompression stops
at a fixed depth
for a fixed time.
♪
And worst case, if we have
a complete system failure,
then we have to rely on
you guys to then come down
with the additional gases
that we will need
to continue the ascent.
♪
Kinga, Josh, Kramer, and myself
have now set up
the final decompression station
for Rich and Kieran.
If need be, we're ready
to grab the gas cylinders
and quickly descend
to the rescue
of the deep divers.
This bar will be
hanging for 'em,
so when they get to 6 meters,
which is their longest
decompression stop,
they've got a bar to hold on to,
and there's gonna be
an emergency gas cylinder
with 100% oxygen in,
in case
they've got any problems.
♪
Did you find a run time
for the divers yet?
Not yet. We're still waiting
for them to come up.
♪
Two and a half hours
into the dive,
we notice air bubbles
rising from the deep.
[MAN] Okay. We're starting to
see something down there.
Do you have visual
of the divers? Over.
♪
Looks like yeah, yeah.
There they are.
They're coming to
the last station now.
Looks like they're fine.
Yeah. Roger that.
Divers are fine.
♪
Now that they've made it
to the final station,
we keep an eye
on Rich and Kieran
during the last hour
of decompression.
If it's not handled properly,
exhaustion combined
with strong currents
of the English Channel
can be dangerous
for the deep divers,
so they must be monitored.
[dolphins whistling]
♪
They've spent almost
three and a half hours
in the cold Atlantic waters.
A half-hour less than
originally planned,
And now we're all back
safely on the boat.
♪
[woman speaks indistinctly]
[whirring]
Well, it took us
a little less time
than what we anticipated,
didn't it?
♪
The moment
we've been waiting for
We're pulling up
the elephant tusk,
which was pillaged from Africa
along with millions
of enslaved Africans.
♪
[exhaling deeply]
♪
I-I don't know
how to describe it.
This is unbelievable.
If it's the final resting place
of some of my ancestors,
then it's a burial ground.
But it's also a crime scene,
because they were taken.
There was an injustice
that took place,
and no one has ever been
brought to account for that.
♪
I want justice for those people.
♪
It always bothers me to use the
language "sl*ves on the ship."
People speak in terms
of the Africans on the ships
as if they started out
as sl*ves,
and they weren't sl*ves.
They were Africans
who were enslaved.
♪
Just thinking about
the people, they were people.
I can't imagine being
torn away from my family.
I can't.
I cannot fathom being
taken across oceans
I didn't even know existed.
I and then to be
beaten and thrown about
and be yelled at in a language
I don't even understand
and told to do things
I do not want to do.
♪
There are generations
who think that African history
started with sl*very.
They think, "Okay. That's when
my history started."
And African history didn't
start with African sl*very.
African history was interrupted
by African sl*very.
♪
♪
♪
This is where people
who were enslaved were held
until it was time
for them to be shipped out
onto vessels waiting here.
This is the door of no return.
And once they've
passed this point,
it was the end of life
as they knew it.
It was it.
It was the end of their culture.
Their names would be changed.
They would have
a life of forced labor.
Their children
and their children's children
would be born into sl*very.
And so this was really
the end of their freedom.
[creaks]
[clank]
♪
Some people say,
"Well, don't you feel sorrow
when you see this?"
It's still a feeling
of anger for me.
- Yeah.
- Oh, okay.
This is what it is.
This is, uh
Yeah.
man's inhumanity to man,
and this is almost like
the almost the capital of it.
- It is. It's like ground zero.
- Yeah.
♪
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01x02 - Rationalization
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Series explores various aspects of the history of sl*very in the United States, including the efforts of American actor Samuel L. Jackson to reconnect with his African heritage through DNA testing.
Series explores various aspects of the history of sl*very in the United States, including the efforts of American actor Samuel L. Jackson to reconnect with his African heritage through DNA testing.