The 'watery resurrection' of neglected history

By Debra Adams Simmons, Executive Editor, HISTORY and CULTURE

Tara Roberts is on a quest to resurrect the ancestors lost in the Atlantic Ocean’s turbulent waters during the Middle Passage. 

After being captivated by a picture of Black divers in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, Tara (pictured above) joined Diving With a Purpose, a group composed mostly of Black scuba divers, to search for the more than 1,000 ships that wrecked during the transatlantic slave trade. Now a National Geographic Explorer, Tara’s search for shipwrecks parallels a personal journey to know more about her own family history. 

“Maybe by starting at the start—at the beginning of the voyages from those shores to these shores, and inside the ships—we can find clues to a history little discussed, to stories that have been lost in the depths,” Tara writes in a National Geographic cover story.

“We can begin to assemble long-lost threads that help us better understand our obligation to the past and to each other and change the way we think about who we are as a society and how we arrived at where we are today.” 

Since its founding in 2003, the divers’ group has trained some 500 people to help archaeologists and historians search for and document such ships. Their goal is to help Black people find their own history and tell their own stories. The divers’ efforts have extended from South Africa to Costa Rica to Mobile, Alabama where Clotilda, the last known ship to have illegally transported enslaved Africans to the United States, was discovered in 2019.

Just weeks ago, Clotilda was labeled the most intact slave wreck ever discovered. (Pictured above, nails, spikes and bolts recovered from the ship.) Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship airs at 10 eastern (9 central) tonight on National Geographic TV and begins streaming on Hulu tomorrow. Tara’s journey of discovery and healing also is fabulously detailed in a six-part Nat Geo podcast, Into the Depths. 

The Atlantic Ocean is “churning with the spirits of folks whose names we may never know. Souls who have never been acknowledged or mourned. Dreamers, poets, artists, thinkers, scientists, farmers. More than just cargo or bodies packed in a hold. More than faceless statistics. More than people bound for enslavement,” Tara writes. 

“And their day of reckoning is at hand. It is time for their stories to rise from the depths, to be told in their fullness, in their wonder—and with love, with honor, with respect. Finally helping heal a wound that has festered for far too long. That is the dream. That is the promise. That is the possibility of this work, of this watery resurrection.” 

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STORIES WE'RE TRACKING 

IN THE SPOTLIGHT 

A Winter Olympics oddity: Do you know what “snurfing” is? In 1965, a Michigan dad taped together two skis so his stir-crazy kids could “surf” the snow. His name for the outing, which he trademarked, evolved when others got into the field, writes Nat Geo’s Emily Martin in her history of snowboarding and other Winter Olympics sports. (Pictured above, snowboarding in Utah.) Now that we know about snurfing, we kind of wish the name had stuck.

SNURF ON 

PHOTO OF THE DAY 

Street choreography: At first glance, it looks like a group stroll. Or perhaps a protest or a parade? But these are dancers in a performance called “125th and Freedom,” proceeding down Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (125th Street) in Harlem. Photographer Elias Williams captured this image of the production, which explores migration, gentrification, and emancipation, as part of a 2019 Nat Geo feature written by Wendi C. Thomas on streets named after the slain civil rights leader. The image recently was posted as part of our Photo of the Day archival image collection.

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IN A FEW WORDS 

LAST GLIMPSE 

1,000 miles to freedom: The person illustrated before you went to great lengths for freedom. Ellen Craft cut her hair short. Dressed in men’s clothing, donned a top hat, and wore green spectacles. Disguised as her husband’s enslaver, she escaped Georgia and made her way to Philadelphia, Boston and, later, England. Unable to read and write, she bandaged her hand so she wouldn’t have to sign documents, and occasionally feigned deafness, Nat Geo’s History magazine reports.

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