Into the Depths

Black scuba divers across the world are searching for buried shipwrecks from the transatlantic slave trade, when millions of enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas during the 15th to the 19th centuries. A new six-part podcast series, Into the Depths, follows National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts as she sets off on the journey of a lifetime to meet the divers, marine archaeologists, descendants of those brought over on ships, and historians investigating the lost stories of the slave trade. She’s inspired to share their accounts both to expand the historical record and to honor the estimated 1.8 million unsung souls who perished during the Middle Passage. Along the way, Tara meets up with her family and friends, spiritual advisers, and even a poet to help tell those ancestral stories, and delves into her own roots—challenging her assumptions about home and belonging.

History
Science
1
Celebrate Juneteenth with Into the Depths
Tara meets the living descendants of the Africans aboard the Clotilda, the last known ship from the transatlantic slave trade to reach the United States. They inspire Tara to look into her own family’s past in her hometown, where she celebrates the first Juneteenth federal holiday and makes some surprising discoveries.
41 min
2
Episode 6: Rooting
Tara meets the living descendants of the Africans aboard the Clotilda, the last known ship from the transatlantic slave trade to reach the United States. They inspire Tara to look into her own family’s past in her hometown, where she makes some surprising discoveries.
41 min
3
Episode 5: Healing
A ceremony honoring the Africans whose lives were lost on the Portuguese ship São José Paquete d’Africa shows Tara the healing power of diving for shipwrecks from the slave trade.
30 min
4
Episode 4: Disassembling
Tara travels throughout Africa, learning about its legacy of maritime culture. She expects to feel welcomed home as an African American but instead feels like an outsider. Turned upside down by the experience, Tara has revelations about herself, Blackness, and Africa.
34 min
5
Episode 3: Building
Tara delights in Costa Rica, with its multigenerational community of divers looking for two Danish shipwrecks, the Fredericus Quartus and the Christianus Quintus. She witnesses how a community can drive the maritime archaeology process and shape its own history.
28 min
6
Episode 2: Training
After Tara hears the story of the pirate ship Guerrero, which carried enslaved Africans and crashed off the Florida Keys in 1827, she trains to be an underwater archaeology “advocate” and experiences the power of finding her own history.
29 min
7
Episode 1: Trusting
Tara upends her life to join a group of Black scuba divers searching for lost shipwrecks from the transatlantic slave trade. She meets a legendary Black diver and learns about his efforts to place an underwater memorial at the wreck site of the British vessel Henrietta Marie.
34 min
8
Introducing: Into the Depths
Searching for shipwrecks from slavery's hidden past--to help heal the present.
2 min