Enslaved (2020) s01e03 Episode Script
Follow the Money
1
[SAM] More than 2 million
Africans were lost at sea
when they were trafficked
to the "New World."
[boat creaking]
Over 400 years, some 12 million
were enslaved and abused.
None of that would have happened
if it didn't generate money
Lots of it.
♪
[LEO] This place was
all slave plantations.
The people were treated
like garbage,
like a way of making a profit.
Every mistake you make,
the whip comes out.
[whip cracks]
[SIMCHA] Right here, people made
deals that effected slavery?
It's a center of business
concerned with the slave trade.
♪
This is ground zero
for sugar in the Americas
Plantations just like this one
where we're standing.
♪
600,000 people were
bought into slavery
by Bristol merchants,
on Bristol ships.
Who profited?
Who are the people
that profited the most?
[screaming]
I'm sensing the souls of 600,
and I want to find them.
Afua, if we were standing here
200 years ago,
we would have been
deemed fit for market.
[clamoring, yelling]
Much of the world
we live in today
was built on the backs
of enslaved Africans.
To find out how this happened
Follow the money.
That's what we need to do.
[metal chain clicking]
♪
[ship horn's blowing]
[ALLANAH] We've made it to
the capital of Suriname,
a small country
in South America.
350 years ago,
it was a Dutch slave colony
that existed
for the sole purpose
of enriching the Netherlands.
♪
[Kramer]
We are here to investigate
one of the most horrific crimes
of the transatlantic
slave trade.
Oh, my gosh, you guys.
It had been
practically forgotten
for nearly 300 years.
- How are you?
- You must be Leo. I'm Kinga.
[KINGA] Doctor Leo Balai
has invited us
to this old Dutch fort
to help solve the mystery
of a sunken slave ship
called "The Leusden."
I want to tell you a story.
I think nobody wanted to tell,
but a story I need to tell
because it is so important.
It's a story about
the biggest mass murder
in the history of
the transatlantic slave trade.
[grunts]
They had a smooth trip.
Only 44 days.
[thunderclap]
[thunderclap]
Then the ship got stuck.
[waves crash]
It hit the sandbank,
and that was
the beginning of the end.
[screams]
Here, right here
in front of us was where
"The Leusden" was supposed
to enter the Suriname River
to sell the "cargo."
♪
Imagine, that 200,
300 years ago,
this place was all
slave plantations.
More than 600 slave plantations
with tens of thousands
of slaves to make a profit
for people who
wanted to get rich.
It was here where
everything happened,
where people were
treated like cargo,
like a way of making a profit.
♪
[SIMCHA]
Transporting millions of slaves
across the Atlantic
required a tremendous amount
of resources and money.
How did this make
financial sense for Europeans?
♪
I've come to London, once
the center of the slave trade,
to look for some answers.
♪
[JAMES] As you can see,
we are in the heart
of the financial sector
of the city of London.
And where I am going to take
you is a very surprising place
that actually is
the very heartbeat
of the Atlantic slaving system.
♪
This is the site
of the Jamaica Coffee House.
[customers chatting]
You can't really
understand what happens
to the world of slavery
and the slave trade
unless you think of coffee.
- Thank you.
- Thank you very much indeed.
Why coffee and what does
it have to do with slavery?
Well, in the 17th century,
coffee takes off in England.
Merchants bring it here,
and they mix it with sugar.
It's a very bitter drink,
as was tea, as was chocolate.
And all three drinks
are mixed with sugar.
Sugar, coffee, chocolate,
all these things that you
mentioned highly addictive.
Yes. And all of them
grown by the Africans
who were shipped
in the millions.
Sugar is the engine behind
the emergence of coffee drinking
and the proliferation
of coffee shops
in the city of London
like this one.
This coffee shop becomes
the focus point for merchants,
for seamen from the slave
corners of the empire.
Right here in the 1600s
people sat down and made deals
that effected slavery?
Not only made deals
about slavery.
But you would come and find out
what the price of sugar was
and what the price
of slaves were.
What was the fate of the ships
that were traveling
back and forth?
It's a center of information,
and it becomes a focus
for business concerned
with the slave trade.
[AFUA] To fulfill Europe's
massive demand for sugar,
Brazil became
its biggest supplier.
So I've come to Brazil
to see firsthand
where it all started.
Professor, so nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
- You ready to go?
- Yeah.
- Let's go.
♪
This was the first place
in the Americas
that the sugar industry
started to rely on slave labor.
At first Europeans
enslaved indigenous people.
But so many died when they were
exposed to European diseases
that they came up
with a solution:
enslave Africans.
Millions and millions
of African slaves
were brought here
just to cultivate this crop.
♪
♪
So this is ground zero
for sugar in the Americas,
plantations just like this one
where we are standing.
Yes.
♪
♪
With first light,
we set out with Dr. Balai
on a journey in search
of the lost slave ship,
"The Leusden."
- Hi.
- Nice to meet you.
Kinga Phillips.
- Hi. Alannah.
- Yves. Nice to meet you.
♪
The ship was stuck
on the sandbank,
and water came into the ship.
They tried to mend it,
to prevent the water
from coming in,
but it didn't stop.
♪
[thunderclap, men yelling]
The captain decided
the ship was lost.
He also decided that
the "cargo" was lost.
The captives were
of no value anymore.
The 664 Africans who perished
could have survived,
but the captain had
a different idea.
I want to show you
what was supposed to be
the final destination
of the enslaved Africans
on board "The Leusden."
♪
[animal noises]
♪
Around this whole territory
there were all
slave plantations over here.
So, these were
the highways basically.
These were the highways
and also the slaves
digged those creeks.
They digged it out
until the Atlantic Ocean.
A hundred miles
If you look around,
you can't imagine
that there were thousands of
Black people living over here,
died over here, were
massacred sometimes over here
because they had to
make sugar and coffee.
Sugar was the curse
of Black people,
because Europeans wanted sugar.
♪
Watch your head.
♪
You have to be careful
in the creek
because everything
is overgrowing now.
Nature takes everything back.
♪
Watch it, watch it,
watch it, watch it.
So, nature is
covering up the crime.
Yes.
[speaking native language]
Snake, snake, snake.
Easy, easy.
We-We-We-We can continue.
We can continue.
[speaking native language]
No, it was in
the tree right there.
- On the branch.
- It's a boa.
♪
Heads up.
♪
This it? Are we getting off?
Yes, we're getting off.
[speaking native language]
You, you can come.
♪
This place was flatland
[thunderclap]
with sugar canes.
Thousands of slaves
working day and night.
This was all flat,
clear, no jungle?
No jungle.
♪
The slave owners
were so inventive
to stop the slaves
from running away
that they planted cactus
around the plantation
so you couldn't get in or out.
♪
In the middle of the jungle,
we suddenly discover
what Leo brought us here to see.
♪
What is it?
This is part of a sugar factory.
♪
Leo
♪
- Oh, wow, Leo.
- This is huge!
♪
These are silent witnesses
of an enormous crime.
[birds chirping]
You had hundreds of people
working over you.
Some of them at the plantation
to cut the cane.
And then you have the people
who work in the factory
to process the cane.
Imagine yourself being
a slave over here,
then you can see
how horrible it was.
♪
[whip cracks, man yells]
Get up in the morning,
work 18 hours a day,
seven days a week.
Every mistake you make,
the whip comes out.
[whip cracks, man yells]
So the life expectancy
of an African here
was about eight years?
Yeah, they reckon about
eight to 10 years,
and then it was over.
All right, I-I'm trying
to imagine this, right?
You get captured in Africa,
and then once you're here
You get branded.
You get branded, right,
bought and then tortured
for eight years
in a sugar plantation,
and then you die.
♪
What did all of this look like?
What are all these pieces?
We're looking at skeletons.
It was powered by steam,
I think.
[YVES] It was a steam machine.
Right there was the oven.
[machine whirring]
Some parts of the engine
you can see over there.
[machinery clanging]
But the most important part
was this.
This was the press.
[machinery whirring]
Come take a look.
This is like say, sugar cane,
and then they pressed it inside,
and then the juice
will come free.
[machine clicking]
But sometimes,
it could be that your hand
was stuck into the press.
When your hand gets stuck
in the machine,
the only thing they did
was to chop your hand off.
Because they couldn't,
wouldn't stop the machine
So, someone will come
running and cut it off.
There was always someone
around here with a machete.
Someone stood here
with a machete
- Yes.
- just in case that happened.
Just in case,
and it happened often
because the people worked
16, 18 hours a day
and you get tired.
And a mistake with such
a machine often happens.
That's the price of sugar.
That's the price
of sugar, of course.
And the Africans
on "The Leusden,"
they didn't even give them
this chance to come here
or try and live their eight
years of life expectancy
or to get away.
They were murdered because
the captain took a wrong turn.
They weren't even
worth the chance.
♪
[footsteps]
♪
I've come to where
the slave trade,
which became
the biggest business
in the Western Hemisphere began:
Lagos.
Here, Portugal's ruler,
Henry the Navigator,
established the first naval
trade routes to West Africa.
♪
In 1444, the very first
enslaved Africans
were brought to this square.
So, I see a statue there
of Henry the Navigator
who's celebrated here
as some kind of visionary.
But in reality, he also
started the slave trade.
[speaking Spanish]
So, take me back
to this moment in history
where Africans,
right in this square,
were sold like objects.
Africans buried in a mass grave
were recently found here.
And today, the site has been
turned into a mini golf course.
- They were Africans?
- Yeah.
How many skeletons did you find?
How many humans?
It's very strange for me
to be looking at a mini-golf
and imagining
that it's a mass grave.
Yeah.
His hands are tied
behind his back.
- She's holding a baby - Mm-hmm.
It kind of shows you that
the suffering of the Africans
is not part
of people's consciousness.
Instead of building
a memorial here,
they built a golf course.
♪
[bird caws]
♪
After navigating
the jungle creek successfully,
we're now deep
in rural Suriname,
halfway to the mouth
of the Maroni River
where we will search for
the location of "The Leusden."
Our next stop is
a small town called Albina.
Here we're meeting
Dr. Balai's colleagues
who will take us
to the river mouth
and help us
in the search process.
Hi. How are you?
This is Jerzy Gawronski.
Long time no see.
Kramer, nice to meet you.
I am the archeologist.
"The Leusden,"
it is somewhere out there
by the mouth of
the Maroni River,
so I invite you aboard,
and let's find it.
- Awesome.
- Okay, let's.
♪
Archeologist Jerzy Gawronski
and marine expert Steve Moore
have spent years
researching with Dr. Balai.
Now we're joining them
in their efforts
to pinpoint the location
of the shipwreck
and expose the story
to the world.
♪
With these historical maps
together with
the crew's testimony,
we were able to identify
several target areas
for the wreck of "The Leusden."
The ship arrives here around
the 30th of December, 1737.
They described that they
followed the coast
from the east,
and then early morning
on the 1st of January,
they saw a river mouth.
There was very heavy rain,
like a wall of water,
very heavy winds.
[gulls chirping]
And then in the fog,
they saw the corner of land.
They hit a sandbank
[screaming]
and got stuck,
they lost the rudder, and there
was a big, massive hole.
[screaming]
And at that point they knew
there was no saving the ship.
They called it
already in the account
they called it a "wreck."
They called the ship not
anymore "the ship,"
but they called it "the wreck."
In order to get
an idea what happened,
we also have a map
from that period.
This is a map from 1777
indicating more or less
the situation
during the wreckage.
And you see a number
of sandbanks.
And on one of these sandbanks,
the ship must be stuck.
Jerzy, I'm wondering
with the silt
and the currents going through,
how that's going
to affect the dive.
Well, in these circumstances
the visibility
is reduced sometimes
to zero because of the presence
of all this silt
floating in the water.
But let's hope for the best.
So we won't know until
we get out there, huh?
No, and it can change
day by day.
[seabirds calling]
This river mouth is huge.
It's over three miles wide,
so the first step
in pinpointing the shipwreck
is to scan the possible targets
on the riverbed with
a specialized metal detector.
♪
[splash]
The mission now is to find
a trail of metallic debris.
We go back and forth
over the square mile
we've targeted as the last
resting place of "The Leusden."
♪
The work takes days.
♪
There has never been
much shipping activity
in these waters.
So if we find any sign of metal,
that would strengthen our theory
that this is the site
of the underwater wreck.
[speaking native language]
"The Leusden" is so important
for the history of slave trade.
We have to find it.
After five days we still
haven't picked up any signals.
♪
But then, suddenly
Yeah, we're coming
to the end of that line,
I think we got something.
- Yes, there's something there.
- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
We are seeing some
sort of target
or something magnetic
down there.
We need to pull it in,
have a look.
There's finally a lead,
and we stop to
verify the target.
Almost 300 years
after the disaster,
fingers crossed, we may be
floating right over the wreck.
♪
From a small business
in the town of Lagos, Portugal,
the slave trade
became a worldwide industry,
creating cities
like Rio de Janeiro.
♪
4% of the enslaved were
brought to North America.
The Caribbean received 36%,
14% went to Spanish America
and 46% of the total
came to Brazil.
During construction
for the 2016 Olympic Games,
old ruins were discovered here,
unveiling one
of the darkest parts
of Rio De Janeiro's past.
[SADAKNE] This is called the
"Valongo," and this dates back
about 200 years.
And the thing that might
shock you to imagine
is that this is a wharf,
so the water actually came
all the way up to here.
So, if we had been standing here
200 years ago,
what would we have seen
happening here in this wharf?
The Valongo was a port
logistics infrastructure
for human traffic.
If we were standing here
200 years ago,
we would have been
deemed fit for market.
At that time,
half of Rio De Janeiro's
population was enslaved.
And you could come
to the Valongo
and you could buy
enslaved Africans by weight.
Give me a sense of the scale.
How many people
were brought here?
We're talking
three to four million
stolen Africans
over hundreds of years.
We are actually
looking at the site
of one of the greatest
crimes of humanity.
In all of history.
In all of human history.
And just like in Portugal,
the enslaved who
were not of use anymore
were simply discarded.
In 1996, a young couple
bought this house,
and they started to dig up
in the back to do some, uh,
improvements on the property.
And up came bones.
Bones?
And then more bones,
and then more bones.
This is the cemetery
of "The New Blacks."
♪
Why does it have that name?
The New Blacks was a category
of enslaved Africans.
This described the Africans who
were what we might think of
as "fresh off the boat."
These are the newly arrived.
These are the people
who barely survived the passage.
We're looking at something
incredibly harrowing to see.
This is someone
who was enslaved,
who was a young woman
around 20 years of age.
Initially,
there was an intention
to have a proper cemetery
with individual graves,
and very quickly,
this got out of hand.
And this place turned
into a mass grave
where bodies were just
thrown into this area.
And then the residents
of Rio De Janeiro,
they began to throw their trash.
And then when the smell
would get so bad,
they'd light it on fire
and burn it all down,
and then start
the process again.
Do we know how many Africans
were disposed of
in this incredibly inhumane way,
in this cemetery here?
At least 30,000.
♪
♪
In the target area,
Steve and Jerzy
have managed to identify
a set of coordinates
as the potential location
for the wreck of "The Leusden."
We can see here
the target we just got.
There's two passes
here, identical.
So that is a definite hit
- Oh, wow, okay.
- and we've done it twice.
- Is that still there?
- Yeah.
That's incredible.
I don't want
to get ahead of myself,
but we do know
that "The Leusden"
dropped more than one anchor,
and it was carrying
a number of cannons.
That's definitely
something iron,
either an anchor, a few cannons,
a cluster of shackles.
It could be something
really big and really deep
or it could be something not so
big just under the surface.
Ah okay, got it.
So we're in the right place.
We have the right substance.
Yes, the right target, the right
signal, the right everything.
- Awesome.
- Everything is right.
♪
Finally,
we have a definite target,
and it's time to dive
and see if we can find it.
♪
As the senior diver
on the expedition,
Kramer will go down first.
It's incredibly dangerous.
He has to try and overcome
strong currents,
low visibility
and venomous stingrays
that feed on the bottom
of the riverbed.
Do you still want to put your
jacket on in the water or?
During the dive, there will be
no direct communication
between Kramer and us.
So, a rope is attached to him
and in case of an emergency,
we can pull him up.
[indistinct conversations]
- Have you got a hand?
- Yeah. What?
- Pieces are coming off.
- You good?
- You're gonna lock it down.
- I've got it.
It's just me, but it's not.
♪
I'm sensing the souls
of 600-plus,
and I want to find them.
Kramer,
just go over the signals.
One long pull,
return the signal,
"I'm okay. Are you okay?"
Two: "I am coming up."
Or, four:
"There's a problem come up"
or "we have a problem come up."
I want to be able to come up
and say yes, they're here.
We've found them. We've done
what Dr. Balai called us for
♪
to try and give them peace
and hopefully, on some level,
a proper burial.
The currents are really strong,
and the water is super murky.
This makes it much more
difficult for Kramer
and dangerous.
It'll be really hard to spot
those venomous stingrays
down there.
Kramer this is for sweeping
on the bottom
for any stingrays, yeah?
Good luck!
♪
[breathing through tank]
♪
[thunderclap]
"The Leusden" had hit a sandbank
and was sinking
in the river mouth.
[screaming]
At that moment, the captain
made a fateful decision.
[screaming]
[hammering]
[screaming]
What he did was
to tell the sailors
to nail down the hatches.
[screaming]
[screaming]
He decided at that moment
to murder 664 human beings.
The sailors sat on
the hatches all night.
[all screaming]
By morning, all the Africans
below deck were dead,
drowned in shallow waters.
Then the captain and crew
took the lifeboats
and made it to shore.
There he is.
He's on the surface.
Coming around.
♪
- You all right, Kramer?
- Yeah.
How was it?
- All blacked out.
- Completely black?
- Yeah.
- Can't see a thing?
Can't Can't see
a thing down there.
♪
I was feeling around
to see if I could
feel something down there.
Really didn't feel
anything, right?
But Yeah, just sandy and black.
♪
This is a murder scene,
and the souls of over
600 Africans are down there.
So, on some level,
you want to feel like
you can hear them
calling to you, right?
Um
But it was just silence.
Dead silence.
Diving conditions
are unlikely to get any better.
Dredging is now
the only remaining option.
And if we're in the right spot
that would involve bringing up
the bones of the dead
from the river bottom.
[indistinct conversation]
We know that most likely,
directly below us
is the final resting place
of 664 people
who were murdered.
♪
We collectively decided
that at this moment,
the best thing to do
is to let the dead rest.
There is one thing that
I can't get out of my head.
Had the Africans been set free
to flee into
the surrounding jungle,
would they have survived?
Dr. Balai has one more secret
to share with us.
♪
Lost ships like "The Leusden"
and millions
of Africans who died
didn't prevent the slave trade
from gaining momentum.
There was simply too much money
to be made.
Bristol was literally built on
the backs of enslaved Africans.
[MARK] So, this is the key site
and all the warehouses
down the side here.
In fact, that one
still survives today.
There's the church
on the horizon.
It gives you an idea
of what life is like.
The cranes,
the forest of ships' masts.
Can you give me a sense
of the numbers of slaves
that were actually
carried on ships
built right here in Bristol?
Well, we're talking
up to 2,000 ships
would have left this very spot.
And around 600,000
people were bought
into slavery by Bristol
merchants on Bristol ships.
♪
I can't help but notice one name
seems to be absolutely prevalent
in this part of the city.
The name Edward Colston
is literally everywhere.
He is kind of one of the revered
father figures of Bristol
and is remembered as one
of the great benefactors
of charities,
hospitals, and schools.
But his early career
was involved
with the Royal African Company
that was set up
to trade with Africa
in ivory and in gold
and in slaves.
♪
What do you see when you
look up at this statue?
Well, I see one of Bristol's,
I suppose favorite,
honored sons, Edward Colston,
who represents a period
in Bristol's history.
I think we should have
a much wider narrative
around who he is and what he did
and a better understanding
of who Edward Colston is.
[SAM] In many cases,
when slave ships went down
no money was lost.
The ship's owner would
make an insurance claim
for the murdered Africans.
But the economics of
the system began to unravel
with the British
slaver "The Zong."
The crew of that ship claimed
that in November of 1781,
supplies onboard were
running dangerously low.
♪
[shouting]
[whip cracks]
[shouting]
[blow lands]
[shouting]
♪
So they threw more than
130 Africans overboard
to lighten the load.
♪
These massacres were not
unusual on slave ships.
What was unusual this time
was that the insurance
company refused to pay.
♪
And the case went to court.
♪
We're here to look at
the original trial documents.
♪
[JAMES] What I've dug out here
is an extraordinary document.
It is the report
of the court case,
1783 of the infamous Zong case.
♪
These slaves,
valued at 30 pounds a man.
They threw over
this part of "the cargo."
"The case of
the slaves was the same
as if horses had been
thrown overboard."
This is just one case that
illustrates a huge industry.
Usually, I guess prior to that,
you make a claim they paid it.
- Yeah.
- It was that simple.
And the court
had to make a decision:
do the insurers pay or not?
♪
The matter left to the jury is
whether it was from "necessity."
They said the reason we are
throwing them overboard:
there isn't enough water.
There was a navigational error.
They'd overshot Jamaica.
They ran out of water.
Said they were running
out of water
Said they were
running out of water.
but the evidence proved
there was still enough water
to sustain the crew
and the cargo.
There clearly was water.
So that argument falls flat.
And what happened in the hearing
is the bad guys lost,
so to speak.
They wanted money
for murdering people,
and they didn't get the money,
but they didn't lose
on morality.
They lost on a technicality.
It was a technicality.
That was what the case
was about, isn't it?
It is about legal
technicalities.
Are the murders covered
by the insurance policy?
Morality in this is
actually out the window.
There's no sense that
this is a moral debate.
The judge is Lord Mansfield.
The judge is Lord Mansfield,
the Lord Chief Justice.
Held up as the great
architect of maritime law
in 18th century.
He rules against
the owners of the ship,
but these guys don't
get tried for murder.
He knows that if he makes
a moral judgment about slavery
and the slave trade,
and if he said there's
something dubious about this,
he knows that begins to unravel
the whole economics
of the Atlantic slave system.
So this Lord Mansfield just
did it all on a technicality.
He didn't really care.
No, maybe not.
Let me show you something
that might shed a new light
on Lord Mansfield
in terms of what this is
and what happened at the time.
Oh, hey, guys!
Introducing
- Ahh.
- Dido Elizabeth Bell.
♪
She's the daughter of
Lord Mansfield's nephew,
and he brought her to live
in Lord Mansfield's house.
She was raised
with his daughter,
supposedly, as equals.
Either way, the question
is whether having her
in that household colored
Lord Mansfield's
- Judgment.
- judicial action.
Well, I did not expect this.
A picture like this,
a painting like this
in those days,
putting them
on an equal footing.
We do know that when he died,
he left her an equal share
of his estate.
But at the same time,
was she really equal?
She's got the tropical fruit
that was very common
as an accessory for African
servants in paintings
belonging to the aristocracy.
- Oh, really?
She's got the turban.
It says, "I'm exotic."
She's got
the big South Sea pearls though.
She has the pearls and
she's dressed in fine clothes.
Yeah.
So I feel like this painting
conveys the ambivalence
of her status at the time.
I was angry at
Lord Mansfield for ruling
for the good guys
but on a technicality.
Now you think he's a good guy
because he had a Black girl
living in his house?
- It's not just a Black girl.
It's family. - Okay.
He's leaving money,
and that puts me into his mind,
and I'm thinking whoa,
maybe at that time,
the only thing he could do
is find on a technicality.
This reveals his soul,
and at the end of the day,
the fact is
that he just made a ruling
that was the beginning of
the end of the slave trade.
Most of the time
we don't hear the voices
of the African people,
of Black people,
of people who had
a history of enslavement
because they haven't left
written records.
All we have to go by
is paintings
that were commissioned
by their white benefactors
or diaries left by
white people who met them.
- Right.
- I would love to know
what Dido's life
was really like.
♪
There's something more
I want to show you.
We are going out to
a place called Akalikondre.
It's a "Maroon" village,
as they call it.
And the Maroons
are escaped slaves.
I call them
"freedom fighters"
Freedom Fighters.
because they fought
the plantation owners
Okay.
killed them - Wow.
went away,
took people with them,
went into the woods
and started new communities.
♪
Do we wait for someone
to meet us?
Yeah.
We're actually going
to meet the descendants
of the escaped slaves
from the plantations
here in Suriname.
♪
[speaking native language]
Kinga.
Kramer.
Hi. Alannah.
♪
The air was just thick
with anticipation.
It was two cultures meeting.
♪
We can walk with them?
Everyone wants to be
on their best behavior,
us especially, for the captain
of that village.
Is that it? Okay, is that it?
- We'll follow them.
- We'll follow them.
[indistinct conversations]
[laughing]
♪
We all sat down kind of stiff.
It was a little awkward
at first.
But then the first thing
the captain did
was say a blessing
and perform a libation.
[speaking native language]
[speaks native language]
♪
The overwhelming thing
that I got from them
was a sense of pride.
They live
a very meager existence,
but they're happy.
They're happy and they're proud.
A very proud people
because they fought
and won their freedom.
Oh, that looks delicious.
This is
[speaking native language]
- Oh, okay.
- This is Tomtom.
We call it Tomtom.
- Oh, wow.
- It's peanuts with rice.
- Peanuts and rice?
- [laughing]
It smells delicious.
That was a couple
of hundred years ago, right?
But they are aware
of what took place.
Their children are aware
of what took place.
They teach their history.
♪
Yeah, an overwhelming
sense of pride.
♪
It made me feel good
that even in the midst
of all that brutality,
the pride
and the fighting spirit
of African people remained.
♪
Thank you.
Good? Thank you.
♪
Thank you.
I couldn't help
but imagine or wonder,
the African captives
that were on "The Leusden,"
they could have had this life.
♪
What if?
What if they hadn't
been murdered?
And what if they hadn't
nailed down the hatches?
If they hadn't sat on
the hatches to make sure
that they drowned and killed
every last one of them?
They could have
saved themselves.
It could have been just
another Maroon village.
Baisha, do you know
what country in Africa
you're from or where
everybody is from?
[speaking native language]
- They said Ghana.
- Okay.
Ghana is the main place
where they come from.
How do they know?
[speaking native language]
Their ancestors.
From their grandparents.
The other told the other
and so on.
As slaves they come from there.
Baisha, have you
ever been to Africa?
No.
- Do you want to go?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- [laughing]
If you did get the chance to go,
would you call that home?
Or is this home?
When we go there,
I come back to here.
- This is home.
- This is home.
This is my home.
- Aw, you guys, this is it!
- Yeah.
Captain, thank you.
♪
[laughing]
[all laugh]
♪
[laughing]
[SAM] More than 2 million
Africans were lost at sea
when they were trafficked
to the "New World."
[boat creaking]
Over 400 years, some 12 million
were enslaved and abused.
None of that would have happened
if it didn't generate money
Lots of it.
♪
[LEO] This place was
all slave plantations.
The people were treated
like garbage,
like a way of making a profit.
Every mistake you make,
the whip comes out.
[whip cracks]
[SIMCHA] Right here, people made
deals that effected slavery?
It's a center of business
concerned with the slave trade.
♪
This is ground zero
for sugar in the Americas
Plantations just like this one
where we're standing.
♪
600,000 people were
bought into slavery
by Bristol merchants,
on Bristol ships.
Who profited?
Who are the people
that profited the most?
[screaming]
I'm sensing the souls of 600,
and I want to find them.
Afua, if we were standing here
200 years ago,
we would have been
deemed fit for market.
[clamoring, yelling]
Much of the world
we live in today
was built on the backs
of enslaved Africans.
To find out how this happened
Follow the money.
That's what we need to do.
[metal chain clicking]
♪
[ship horn's blowing]
[ALLANAH] We've made it to
the capital of Suriname,
a small country
in South America.
350 years ago,
it was a Dutch slave colony
that existed
for the sole purpose
of enriching the Netherlands.
♪
[Kramer]
We are here to investigate
one of the most horrific crimes
of the transatlantic
slave trade.
Oh, my gosh, you guys.
It had been
practically forgotten
for nearly 300 years.
- How are you?
- You must be Leo. I'm Kinga.
[KINGA] Doctor Leo Balai
has invited us
to this old Dutch fort
to help solve the mystery
of a sunken slave ship
called "The Leusden."
I want to tell you a story.
I think nobody wanted to tell,
but a story I need to tell
because it is so important.
It's a story about
the biggest mass murder
in the history of
the transatlantic slave trade.
[grunts]
They had a smooth trip.
Only 44 days.
[thunderclap]
[thunderclap]
Then the ship got stuck.
[waves crash]
It hit the sandbank,
and that was
the beginning of the end.
[screams]
Here, right here
in front of us was where
"The Leusden" was supposed
to enter the Suriname River
to sell the "cargo."
♪
Imagine, that 200,
300 years ago,
this place was all
slave plantations.
More than 600 slave plantations
with tens of thousands
of slaves to make a profit
for people who
wanted to get rich.
It was here where
everything happened,
where people were
treated like cargo,
like a way of making a profit.
♪
[SIMCHA]
Transporting millions of slaves
across the Atlantic
required a tremendous amount
of resources and money.
How did this make
financial sense for Europeans?
♪
I've come to London, once
the center of the slave trade,
to look for some answers.
♪
[JAMES] As you can see,
we are in the heart
of the financial sector
of the city of London.
And where I am going to take
you is a very surprising place
that actually is
the very heartbeat
of the Atlantic slaving system.
♪
This is the site
of the Jamaica Coffee House.
[customers chatting]
You can't really
understand what happens
to the world of slavery
and the slave trade
unless you think of coffee.
- Thank you.
- Thank you very much indeed.
Why coffee and what does
it have to do with slavery?
Well, in the 17th century,
coffee takes off in England.
Merchants bring it here,
and they mix it with sugar.
It's a very bitter drink,
as was tea, as was chocolate.
And all three drinks
are mixed with sugar.
Sugar, coffee, chocolate,
all these things that you
mentioned highly addictive.
Yes. And all of them
grown by the Africans
who were shipped
in the millions.
Sugar is the engine behind
the emergence of coffee drinking
and the proliferation
of coffee shops
in the city of London
like this one.
This coffee shop becomes
the focus point for merchants,
for seamen from the slave
corners of the empire.
Right here in the 1600s
people sat down and made deals
that effected slavery?
Not only made deals
about slavery.
But you would come and find out
what the price of sugar was
and what the price
of slaves were.
What was the fate of the ships
that were traveling
back and forth?
It's a center of information,
and it becomes a focus
for business concerned
with the slave trade.
[AFUA] To fulfill Europe's
massive demand for sugar,
Brazil became
its biggest supplier.
So I've come to Brazil
to see firsthand
where it all started.
Professor, so nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
- You ready to go?
- Yeah.
- Let's go.
♪
This was the first place
in the Americas
that the sugar industry
started to rely on slave labor.
At first Europeans
enslaved indigenous people.
But so many died when they were
exposed to European diseases
that they came up
with a solution:
enslave Africans.
Millions and millions
of African slaves
were brought here
just to cultivate this crop.
♪
♪
So this is ground zero
for sugar in the Americas,
plantations just like this one
where we are standing.
Yes.
♪
♪
With first light,
we set out with Dr. Balai
on a journey in search
of the lost slave ship,
"The Leusden."
- Hi.
- Nice to meet you.
Kinga Phillips.
- Hi. Alannah.
- Yves. Nice to meet you.
♪
The ship was stuck
on the sandbank,
and water came into the ship.
They tried to mend it,
to prevent the water
from coming in,
but it didn't stop.
♪
[thunderclap, men yelling]
The captain decided
the ship was lost.
He also decided that
the "cargo" was lost.
The captives were
of no value anymore.
The 664 Africans who perished
could have survived,
but the captain had
a different idea.
I want to show you
what was supposed to be
the final destination
of the enslaved Africans
on board "The Leusden."
♪
[animal noises]
♪
Around this whole territory
there were all
slave plantations over here.
So, these were
the highways basically.
These were the highways
and also the slaves
digged those creeks.
They digged it out
until the Atlantic Ocean.
A hundred miles
If you look around,
you can't imagine
that there were thousands of
Black people living over here,
died over here, were
massacred sometimes over here
because they had to
make sugar and coffee.
Sugar was the curse
of Black people,
because Europeans wanted sugar.
♪
Watch your head.
♪
You have to be careful
in the creek
because everything
is overgrowing now.
Nature takes everything back.
♪
Watch it, watch it,
watch it, watch it.
So, nature is
covering up the crime.
Yes.
[speaking native language]
Snake, snake, snake.
Easy, easy.
We-We-We-We can continue.
We can continue.
[speaking native language]
No, it was in
the tree right there.
- On the branch.
- It's a boa.
♪
Heads up.
♪
This it? Are we getting off?
Yes, we're getting off.
[speaking native language]
You, you can come.
♪
This place was flatland
[thunderclap]
with sugar canes.
Thousands of slaves
working day and night.
This was all flat,
clear, no jungle?
No jungle.
♪
The slave owners
were so inventive
to stop the slaves
from running away
that they planted cactus
around the plantation
so you couldn't get in or out.
♪
In the middle of the jungle,
we suddenly discover
what Leo brought us here to see.
♪
What is it?
This is part of a sugar factory.
♪
Leo
♪
- Oh, wow, Leo.
- This is huge!
♪
These are silent witnesses
of an enormous crime.
[birds chirping]
You had hundreds of people
working over you.
Some of them at the plantation
to cut the cane.
And then you have the people
who work in the factory
to process the cane.
Imagine yourself being
a slave over here,
then you can see
how horrible it was.
♪
[whip cracks, man yells]
Get up in the morning,
work 18 hours a day,
seven days a week.
Every mistake you make,
the whip comes out.
[whip cracks, man yells]
So the life expectancy
of an African here
was about eight years?
Yeah, they reckon about
eight to 10 years,
and then it was over.
All right, I-I'm trying
to imagine this, right?
You get captured in Africa,
and then once you're here
You get branded.
You get branded, right,
bought and then tortured
for eight years
in a sugar plantation,
and then you die.
♪
What did all of this look like?
What are all these pieces?
We're looking at skeletons.
It was powered by steam,
I think.
[YVES] It was a steam machine.
Right there was the oven.
[machine whirring]
Some parts of the engine
you can see over there.
[machinery clanging]
But the most important part
was this.
This was the press.
[machinery whirring]
Come take a look.
This is like say, sugar cane,
and then they pressed it inside,
and then the juice
will come free.
[machine clicking]
But sometimes,
it could be that your hand
was stuck into the press.
When your hand gets stuck
in the machine,
the only thing they did
was to chop your hand off.
Because they couldn't,
wouldn't stop the machine
So, someone will come
running and cut it off.
There was always someone
around here with a machete.
Someone stood here
with a machete
- Yes.
- just in case that happened.
Just in case,
and it happened often
because the people worked
16, 18 hours a day
and you get tired.
And a mistake with such
a machine often happens.
That's the price of sugar.
That's the price
of sugar, of course.
And the Africans
on "The Leusden,"
they didn't even give them
this chance to come here
or try and live their eight
years of life expectancy
or to get away.
They were murdered because
the captain took a wrong turn.
They weren't even
worth the chance.
♪
[footsteps]
♪
I've come to where
the slave trade,
which became
the biggest business
in the Western Hemisphere began:
Lagos.
Here, Portugal's ruler,
Henry the Navigator,
established the first naval
trade routes to West Africa.
♪
In 1444, the very first
enslaved Africans
were brought to this square.
So, I see a statue there
of Henry the Navigator
who's celebrated here
as some kind of visionary.
But in reality, he also
started the slave trade.
[speaking Spanish]
So, take me back
to this moment in history
where Africans,
right in this square,
were sold like objects.
Africans buried in a mass grave
were recently found here.
And today, the site has been
turned into a mini golf course.
- They were Africans?
- Yeah.
How many skeletons did you find?
How many humans?
It's very strange for me
to be looking at a mini-golf
and imagining
that it's a mass grave.
Yeah.
His hands are tied
behind his back.
- She's holding a baby - Mm-hmm.
It kind of shows you that
the suffering of the Africans
is not part
of people's consciousness.
Instead of building
a memorial here,
they built a golf course.
♪
[bird caws]
♪
After navigating
the jungle creek successfully,
we're now deep
in rural Suriname,
halfway to the mouth
of the Maroni River
where we will search for
the location of "The Leusden."
Our next stop is
a small town called Albina.
Here we're meeting
Dr. Balai's colleagues
who will take us
to the river mouth
and help us
in the search process.
Hi. How are you?
This is Jerzy Gawronski.
Long time no see.
Kramer, nice to meet you.
I am the archeologist.
"The Leusden,"
it is somewhere out there
by the mouth of
the Maroni River,
so I invite you aboard,
and let's find it.
- Awesome.
- Okay, let's.
♪
Archeologist Jerzy Gawronski
and marine expert Steve Moore
have spent years
researching with Dr. Balai.
Now we're joining them
in their efforts
to pinpoint the location
of the shipwreck
and expose the story
to the world.
♪
With these historical maps
together with
the crew's testimony,
we were able to identify
several target areas
for the wreck of "The Leusden."
The ship arrives here around
the 30th of December, 1737.
They described that they
followed the coast
from the east,
and then early morning
on the 1st of January,
they saw a river mouth.
There was very heavy rain,
like a wall of water,
very heavy winds.
[gulls chirping]
And then in the fog,
they saw the corner of land.
They hit a sandbank
[screaming]
and got stuck,
they lost the rudder, and there
was a big, massive hole.
[screaming]
And at that point they knew
there was no saving the ship.
They called it
already in the account
they called it a "wreck."
They called the ship not
anymore "the ship,"
but they called it "the wreck."
In order to get
an idea what happened,
we also have a map
from that period.
This is a map from 1777
indicating more or less
the situation
during the wreckage.
And you see a number
of sandbanks.
And on one of these sandbanks,
the ship must be stuck.
Jerzy, I'm wondering
with the silt
and the currents going through,
how that's going
to affect the dive.
Well, in these circumstances
the visibility
is reduced sometimes
to zero because of the presence
of all this silt
floating in the water.
But let's hope for the best.
So we won't know until
we get out there, huh?
No, and it can change
day by day.
[seabirds calling]
This river mouth is huge.
It's over three miles wide,
so the first step
in pinpointing the shipwreck
is to scan the possible targets
on the riverbed with
a specialized metal detector.
♪
[splash]
The mission now is to find
a trail of metallic debris.
We go back and forth
over the square mile
we've targeted as the last
resting place of "The Leusden."
♪
The work takes days.
♪
There has never been
much shipping activity
in these waters.
So if we find any sign of metal,
that would strengthen our theory
that this is the site
of the underwater wreck.
[speaking native language]
"The Leusden" is so important
for the history of slave trade.
We have to find it.
After five days we still
haven't picked up any signals.
♪
But then, suddenly
Yeah, we're coming
to the end of that line,
I think we got something.
- Yes, there's something there.
- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
We are seeing some
sort of target
or something magnetic
down there.
We need to pull it in,
have a look.
There's finally a lead,
and we stop to
verify the target.
Almost 300 years
after the disaster,
fingers crossed, we may be
floating right over the wreck.
♪
From a small business
in the town of Lagos, Portugal,
the slave trade
became a worldwide industry,
creating cities
like Rio de Janeiro.
♪
4% of the enslaved were
brought to North America.
The Caribbean received 36%,
14% went to Spanish America
and 46% of the total
came to Brazil.
During construction
for the 2016 Olympic Games,
old ruins were discovered here,
unveiling one
of the darkest parts
of Rio De Janeiro's past.
[SADAKNE] This is called the
"Valongo," and this dates back
about 200 years.
And the thing that might
shock you to imagine
is that this is a wharf,
so the water actually came
all the way up to here.
So, if we had been standing here
200 years ago,
what would we have seen
happening here in this wharf?
The Valongo was a port
logistics infrastructure
for human traffic.
If we were standing here
200 years ago,
we would have been
deemed fit for market.
At that time,
half of Rio De Janeiro's
population was enslaved.
And you could come
to the Valongo
and you could buy
enslaved Africans by weight.
Give me a sense of the scale.
How many people
were brought here?
We're talking
three to four million
stolen Africans
over hundreds of years.
We are actually
looking at the site
of one of the greatest
crimes of humanity.
In all of history.
In all of human history.
And just like in Portugal,
the enslaved who
were not of use anymore
were simply discarded.
In 1996, a young couple
bought this house,
and they started to dig up
in the back to do some, uh,
improvements on the property.
And up came bones.
Bones?
And then more bones,
and then more bones.
This is the cemetery
of "The New Blacks."
♪
Why does it have that name?
The New Blacks was a category
of enslaved Africans.
This described the Africans who
were what we might think of
as "fresh off the boat."
These are the newly arrived.
These are the people
who barely survived the passage.
We're looking at something
incredibly harrowing to see.
This is someone
who was enslaved,
who was a young woman
around 20 years of age.
Initially,
there was an intention
to have a proper cemetery
with individual graves,
and very quickly,
this got out of hand.
And this place turned
into a mass grave
where bodies were just
thrown into this area.
And then the residents
of Rio De Janeiro,
they began to throw their trash.
And then when the smell
would get so bad,
they'd light it on fire
and burn it all down,
and then start
the process again.
Do we know how many Africans
were disposed of
in this incredibly inhumane way,
in this cemetery here?
At least 30,000.
♪
♪
In the target area,
Steve and Jerzy
have managed to identify
a set of coordinates
as the potential location
for the wreck of "The Leusden."
We can see here
the target we just got.
There's two passes
here, identical.
So that is a definite hit
- Oh, wow, okay.
- and we've done it twice.
- Is that still there?
- Yeah.
That's incredible.
I don't want
to get ahead of myself,
but we do know
that "The Leusden"
dropped more than one anchor,
and it was carrying
a number of cannons.
That's definitely
something iron,
either an anchor, a few cannons,
a cluster of shackles.
It could be something
really big and really deep
or it could be something not so
big just under the surface.
Ah okay, got it.
So we're in the right place.
We have the right substance.
Yes, the right target, the right
signal, the right everything.
- Awesome.
- Everything is right.
♪
Finally,
we have a definite target,
and it's time to dive
and see if we can find it.
♪
As the senior diver
on the expedition,
Kramer will go down first.
It's incredibly dangerous.
He has to try and overcome
strong currents,
low visibility
and venomous stingrays
that feed on the bottom
of the riverbed.
Do you still want to put your
jacket on in the water or?
During the dive, there will be
no direct communication
between Kramer and us.
So, a rope is attached to him
and in case of an emergency,
we can pull him up.
[indistinct conversations]
- Have you got a hand?
- Yeah. What?
- Pieces are coming off.
- You good?
- You're gonna lock it down.
- I've got it.
It's just me, but it's not.
♪
I'm sensing the souls
of 600-plus,
and I want to find them.
Kramer,
just go over the signals.
One long pull,
return the signal,
"I'm okay. Are you okay?"
Two: "I am coming up."
Or, four:
"There's a problem come up"
or "we have a problem come up."
I want to be able to come up
and say yes, they're here.
We've found them. We've done
what Dr. Balai called us for
♪
to try and give them peace
and hopefully, on some level,
a proper burial.
The currents are really strong,
and the water is super murky.
This makes it much more
difficult for Kramer
and dangerous.
It'll be really hard to spot
those venomous stingrays
down there.
Kramer this is for sweeping
on the bottom
for any stingrays, yeah?
Good luck!
♪
[breathing through tank]
♪
[thunderclap]
"The Leusden" had hit a sandbank
and was sinking
in the river mouth.
[screaming]
At that moment, the captain
made a fateful decision.
[screaming]
[hammering]
[screaming]
What he did was
to tell the sailors
to nail down the hatches.
[screaming]
[screaming]
He decided at that moment
to murder 664 human beings.
The sailors sat on
the hatches all night.
[all screaming]
By morning, all the Africans
below deck were dead,
drowned in shallow waters.
Then the captain and crew
took the lifeboats
and made it to shore.
There he is.
He's on the surface.
Coming around.
♪
- You all right, Kramer?
- Yeah.
How was it?
- All blacked out.
- Completely black?
- Yeah.
- Can't see a thing?
Can't Can't see
a thing down there.
♪
I was feeling around
to see if I could
feel something down there.
Really didn't feel
anything, right?
But Yeah, just sandy and black.
♪
This is a murder scene,
and the souls of over
600 Africans are down there.
So, on some level,
you want to feel like
you can hear them
calling to you, right?
Um
But it was just silence.
Dead silence.
Diving conditions
are unlikely to get any better.
Dredging is now
the only remaining option.
And if we're in the right spot
that would involve bringing up
the bones of the dead
from the river bottom.
[indistinct conversation]
We know that most likely,
directly below us
is the final resting place
of 664 people
who were murdered.
♪
We collectively decided
that at this moment,
the best thing to do
is to let the dead rest.
There is one thing that
I can't get out of my head.
Had the Africans been set free
to flee into
the surrounding jungle,
would they have survived?
Dr. Balai has one more secret
to share with us.
♪
Lost ships like "The Leusden"
and millions
of Africans who died
didn't prevent the slave trade
from gaining momentum.
There was simply too much money
to be made.
Bristol was literally built on
the backs of enslaved Africans.
[MARK] So, this is the key site
and all the warehouses
down the side here.
In fact, that one
still survives today.
There's the church
on the horizon.
It gives you an idea
of what life is like.
The cranes,
the forest of ships' masts.
Can you give me a sense
of the numbers of slaves
that were actually
carried on ships
built right here in Bristol?
Well, we're talking
up to 2,000 ships
would have left this very spot.
And around 600,000
people were bought
into slavery by Bristol
merchants on Bristol ships.
♪
I can't help but notice one name
seems to be absolutely prevalent
in this part of the city.
The name Edward Colston
is literally everywhere.
He is kind of one of the revered
father figures of Bristol
and is remembered as one
of the great benefactors
of charities,
hospitals, and schools.
But his early career
was involved
with the Royal African Company
that was set up
to trade with Africa
in ivory and in gold
and in slaves.
♪
What do you see when you
look up at this statue?
Well, I see one of Bristol's,
I suppose favorite,
honored sons, Edward Colston,
who represents a period
in Bristol's history.
I think we should have
a much wider narrative
around who he is and what he did
and a better understanding
of who Edward Colston is.
[SAM] In many cases,
when slave ships went down
no money was lost.
The ship's owner would
make an insurance claim
for the murdered Africans.
But the economics of
the system began to unravel
with the British
slaver "The Zong."
The crew of that ship claimed
that in November of 1781,
supplies onboard were
running dangerously low.
♪
[shouting]
[whip cracks]
[shouting]
[blow lands]
[shouting]
♪
So they threw more than
130 Africans overboard
to lighten the load.
♪
These massacres were not
unusual on slave ships.
What was unusual this time
was that the insurance
company refused to pay.
♪
And the case went to court.
♪
We're here to look at
the original trial documents.
♪
[JAMES] What I've dug out here
is an extraordinary document.
It is the report
of the court case,
1783 of the infamous Zong case.
♪
These slaves,
valued at 30 pounds a man.
They threw over
this part of "the cargo."
"The case of
the slaves was the same
as if horses had been
thrown overboard."
This is just one case that
illustrates a huge industry.
Usually, I guess prior to that,
you make a claim they paid it.
- Yeah.
- It was that simple.
And the court
had to make a decision:
do the insurers pay or not?
♪
The matter left to the jury is
whether it was from "necessity."
They said the reason we are
throwing them overboard:
there isn't enough water.
There was a navigational error.
They'd overshot Jamaica.
They ran out of water.
Said they were running
out of water
Said they were
running out of water.
but the evidence proved
there was still enough water
to sustain the crew
and the cargo.
There clearly was water.
So that argument falls flat.
And what happened in the hearing
is the bad guys lost,
so to speak.
They wanted money
for murdering people,
and they didn't get the money,
but they didn't lose
on morality.
They lost on a technicality.
It was a technicality.
That was what the case
was about, isn't it?
It is about legal
technicalities.
Are the murders covered
by the insurance policy?
Morality in this is
actually out the window.
There's no sense that
this is a moral debate.
The judge is Lord Mansfield.
The judge is Lord Mansfield,
the Lord Chief Justice.
Held up as the great
architect of maritime law
in 18th century.
He rules against
the owners of the ship,
but these guys don't
get tried for murder.
He knows that if he makes
a moral judgment about slavery
and the slave trade,
and if he said there's
something dubious about this,
he knows that begins to unravel
the whole economics
of the Atlantic slave system.
So this Lord Mansfield just
did it all on a technicality.
He didn't really care.
No, maybe not.
Let me show you something
that might shed a new light
on Lord Mansfield
in terms of what this is
and what happened at the time.
Oh, hey, guys!
Introducing
- Ahh.
- Dido Elizabeth Bell.
♪
She's the daughter of
Lord Mansfield's nephew,
and he brought her to live
in Lord Mansfield's house.
She was raised
with his daughter,
supposedly, as equals.
Either way, the question
is whether having her
in that household colored
Lord Mansfield's
- Judgment.
- judicial action.
Well, I did not expect this.
A picture like this,
a painting like this
in those days,
putting them
on an equal footing.
We do know that when he died,
he left her an equal share
of his estate.
But at the same time,
was she really equal?
She's got the tropical fruit
that was very common
as an accessory for African
servants in paintings
belonging to the aristocracy.
- Oh, really?
She's got the turban.
It says, "I'm exotic."
She's got
the big South Sea pearls though.
She has the pearls and
she's dressed in fine clothes.
Yeah.
So I feel like this painting
conveys the ambivalence
of her status at the time.
I was angry at
Lord Mansfield for ruling
for the good guys
but on a technicality.
Now you think he's a good guy
because he had a Black girl
living in his house?
- It's not just a Black girl.
It's family. - Okay.
He's leaving money,
and that puts me into his mind,
and I'm thinking whoa,
maybe at that time,
the only thing he could do
is find on a technicality.
This reveals his soul,
and at the end of the day,
the fact is
that he just made a ruling
that was the beginning of
the end of the slave trade.
Most of the time
we don't hear the voices
of the African people,
of Black people,
of people who had
a history of enslavement
because they haven't left
written records.
All we have to go by
is paintings
that were commissioned
by their white benefactors
or diaries left by
white people who met them.
- Right.
- I would love to know
what Dido's life
was really like.
♪
There's something more
I want to show you.
We are going out to
a place called Akalikondre.
It's a "Maroon" village,
as they call it.
And the Maroons
are escaped slaves.
I call them
"freedom fighters"
Freedom Fighters.
because they fought
the plantation owners
Okay.
killed them - Wow.
went away,
took people with them,
went into the woods
and started new communities.
♪
Do we wait for someone
to meet us?
Yeah.
We're actually going
to meet the descendants
of the escaped slaves
from the plantations
here in Suriname.
♪
[speaking native language]
Kinga.
Kramer.
Hi. Alannah.
♪
The air was just thick
with anticipation.
It was two cultures meeting.
♪
We can walk with them?
Everyone wants to be
on their best behavior,
us especially, for the captain
of that village.
Is that it? Okay, is that it?
- We'll follow them.
- We'll follow them.
[indistinct conversations]
[laughing]
♪
We all sat down kind of stiff.
It was a little awkward
at first.
But then the first thing
the captain did
was say a blessing
and perform a libation.
[speaking native language]
[speaks native language]
♪
The overwhelming thing
that I got from them
was a sense of pride.
They live
a very meager existence,
but they're happy.
They're happy and they're proud.
A very proud people
because they fought
and won their freedom.
Oh, that looks delicious.
This is
[speaking native language]
- Oh, okay.
- This is Tomtom.
We call it Tomtom.
- Oh, wow.
- It's peanuts with rice.
- Peanuts and rice?
- [laughing]
It smells delicious.
That was a couple
of hundred years ago, right?
But they are aware
of what took place.
Their children are aware
of what took place.
They teach their history.
♪
Yeah, an overwhelming
sense of pride.
♪
It made me feel good
that even in the midst
of all that brutality,
the pride
and the fighting spirit
of African people remained.
♪
Thank you.
Good? Thank you.
♪
Thank you.
I couldn't help
but imagine or wonder,
the African captives
that were on "The Leusden,"
they could have had this life.
♪
What if?
What if they hadn't
been murdered?
And what if they hadn't
nailed down the hatches?
If they hadn't sat on
the hatches to make sure
that they drowned and killed
every last one of them?
They could have
saved themselves.
It could have been just
another Maroon village.
Baisha, do you know
what country in Africa
you're from or where
everybody is from?
[speaking native language]
- They said Ghana.
- Okay.
Ghana is the main place
where they come from.
How do they know?
[speaking native language]
Their ancestors.
From their grandparents.
The other told the other
and so on.
As slaves they come from there.
Baisha, have you
ever been to Africa?
No.
- Do you want to go?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- [laughing]
If you did get the chance to go,
would you call that home?
Or is this home?
When we go there,
I come back to here.
- This is home.
- This is home.
This is my home.
- Aw, you guys, this is it!
- Yeah.
Captain, thank you.
♪
[laughing]
[all laugh]
♪
[laughing]