I just have to explain how all this has come about, and why I'm in Ghana.
Don't worry, it's not for charity. It's a proper programme.
Somebody came to me with this idea that I should go to all the places in the world
named after Queen Victoria, because I was named after her.
Even I could see that link.
But when I started to think about it,
I thought just going round the world looking at monuments named after Queen Victoria,
that's not actually a television programme, that's just some very expensive holiday slides.
But then they thought that the fact that these places had had their original names taken away
and replaced with the name of a British monarch,
was actually very symbolic of the breadth and strength of the British Empire
in the middle of Victoria's reign.
So then the programme was going to be a look at the empire in the 19th century.
But then, we started to think, actually, the roots of the empire go back hundreds of years,
and not, actually, as I was led to understand as a child in the '50s,
some benevolent arrangement by which happy natives brought us cocoa and bananas,
and we gave them Christianity and scouting.
It is all about commerce, testosterone and addiction.
Queen Victoria never went anywhere, never went further than the Isle of Wight.
She didn't need to - her image was all over the world.
Her statue, her portrait, her name. You can't move round the world for Victorias.
I've been to India, which we seemed to have acquired by accident,
Hong Kong, which we only had till the Chinese said,
"Can we have our island back?"
and Borneo, where we grew the sago that's ruined many a child's school dinner,;
the land of the orchid, the head-hunter...
and the orang-utans who can't be bothered to walk anywhere.
And now we're off to Africa.
This is Africa. This is the west coast. That's where our journey continues.
We're in Ghana because this seems to be the start of the British Empire as we understand it.
It's difficult to get to grips with, everybody we've met has told us a different story.
But it seems that the British came over to the Gold Coast
and took over a trade that was already up and running,
and by sheer arrogance and entrepreneurial flair,
exploited it and became the best in the world at it.
That trade was the slave trade.
We've come to Ghana because this is where most of the trade with Britain was carried on.
This is Accra, the capital of Ghana.
It's not a bit of Africa I've ever been to before.
I can't really tell you what I think it's like.
It looks like very relaxed chaos to me.
I think there are roads and pavements,
but I don't think people much care which is which.
It's teeming with people. You'd never see this many people on the street at home,
unless a fire alarm had gone off in an office block.
Absolutely boiling
I wouldn't advise anyone planning a menopause to come here.
I've been in hot places like Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, but this is different.
It's soggy heat. You feel like a complimentary hand towel in an Indian restaurant.
Ghana is a Christian country,
and it's quite stable, compared to neighbouring countries like Nigeria.
What else do I know? Men do the ironing and...
oh, you can't urinate there
My taxi driver says Ghana should be wealthy because of its gold and minerals,
but the government are corrupt and keep all the money.
But then, taxi drivers always say that.
At least he won't moan about there being too many black people.
This heat. It's not just me, loads of people are just sitting about.
It saps the life out of you.
This is Assin Manso, a visitor centre run by Ajukoli.
He told me the slave trade story from the African perspective,
how, from the time and place they were captured,
they were on a march of no return.
This mural tells the slaves' story,
how people all over Africa, farmers, soldiers, women, children,
were taken, either as prisoners of war or just as kidnap victims,
and how they were sold off, often to Arab traders,
whipped, beaten, manacled, branded sometimes,
and marched in chains, mile after mile,
down to trading posts like Assin Manso.
Ajukoli took me down to the river,
walking the same route the captured Africans were forced to walk,
as they were brought down here to be washed.
And when they came as far as here,
how long would they have been walking for?
- Over 300 miles. - Walking, in chains?
Yes, many days and many miles.
- Children and women, as well?. - Children, women.
You know, men, children around ten years, and so on and so forth, were brought here.
- Right. - This was the largest market in the country.
The bathing in the river was not for the benefit of the captives.
It was a pragmatic practice, to make them more appealing to the purchaser.
Their skin would be oiled to make them more attractive, and any grey hair would be dyed.
They never knew what was going to happen to them. They had no idea.
If you dream of a white woman,
or a white man,
if in your dream you see white people, it's a sign of witchcraft.
They thought that is what was happening. The Europeans were eating them up.
When they brought them here, they chained them to the tree,
and washed them in batches.
They treated those that they captured according to their size, their strength.
So, somebody who is taller and more heavily built than myself,
wouldn't have chains around his hands and legs.
- They would put a yoke. - Around his neck?
Yes. But then some of them were able to escape.
- From here? - Yes.
And those that were caught later on were killed to serve as a deterrent
to those who were trying to escape.
And many killings took place here.
0f course, the British had a huge involvement in the slave trade.
We didn't invent it. It had been going on in Africa for hundreds of years.
But we exploited it, and with British efficiency, very much expanded it.
By the time it was abolished,
more than 11 million Africans had been delivered to European-owned plantations.
And we don't know how many more millions died along the way.
What they're trying to do at Assin Manso is not just to tell the story of slavery,
but to try and link up that part of Africa's past with the present.
For any black American, say, who knows that they are descended from slaves,
even if they don't know exactly what bit of Africa that slave came from,
they can make a symbolic return, at least.
The name of their ancestors will never be known,
but they can bring their own name back to Ghana, back to Africa.
We are following in the footsteps of the captured Africans,
as they were taken from Slave River at Assin Manso,
and marched the 40 miles to this coastal town, Cape Coast.
This would be the last time their feet would feel the soil of their own country.
It's a very pretty town, actually, about the size of Barnsley,
or Bath, for those of you who've never been to Barnsley.
It's got a university, but its main industry is fishing.
This is where the slaves were brought.
They would be bought at Slave River, and if they'd been purchased by a British company,
they would be marched down here to Cape Coast and held in a fortification
until the slave ships arrived from England to take them to the sugar plantations.
That fort is Elmina.
It's got a romantic, Foreign Legion look about it,
and there were 27 forts like Elmina up and down this coast, all built as trading posts,
all fiercely squabbled over by Europeans trying to get a toehold in Africa,
fighting amongst themselves for a piece of the gold trade,
the timber business, the slave trade.
This one, Cape Coast castle, was originally Portuguese.
The Dutch took it off them, the Scandinavians took it off the Dutch,
and it ended up in the hands of the British, who moved in,
built on and opened for business.
Cape Coast is a huge castle, built to a British design by local Africans.
No, actually by slaves who belonged to local Africans.
It's impressive in a way, the old pompous thing plonked on the shore.
In England, it would be turned into luxury flats,
but here they acknowledge what it really was, a warehouse.
There were about 300 soldiers here.
It had to be one of the worst jobs in the army,
although running a concentration camp can never be very life enhancing.
It was big business, the slave business.
You needed these guns in case anybody muscled in and took the merchandise.
So this is where the slaves spent their last days in Africa,
in a dungeon, under a Christian chapel.
So the British obviously had no difficulty in reconciling the two activities,
cramming frightened people into a filthy hole and singing to Jesus.
This is a very small space.
How many men would have been held in here?
About 300 men. They were kind of packed together. They were huddled together.
You and I can move our limbs around, but they couldn't.
They were kind of packed in the room under very horrible conditions.
That's the only source of ventilation they had,
streaks of sunlight coming through those holes over there.
- They always had soldiers watching over them. - From there?
- Yes. - How long would they have been kept in here?
As long as when the next slave ship was available.
Days, weeks, and sometimes even months.
And they were all separated from their wives and children?
Yes, there's another part of the building where the female slaves were kept.
And what happened when the ships came back?
They went into the slave ships.
- Onto different ships? - Into different ships.
You would be cut off from your family, you know, for the rest of your life.
It must be very hard for you to work here. It must be very upsetting.
It is upsetting, sometimes very depressing,
but it's part of my job as a public historian in a museum
to tell that story, however unkind it seems.
It is part of history and there's nothing we can do.
We can't hide that part of history.
Do you think it helps people like African-Americans to come back here?
Yes, it helps them to link up with their roots.
- For some of them, it's healing. - Yes.
They find some healing. For the Ghanaians, it helps us to learn about our history.
For the Europeans, also. It's world history, not only Ghanaian history.
And we as British people, we have to deal with this.
A lot of our heritage is based on the profits.
They couldn't know why they were being put into boats.
They couldn't have known it was all in aid of providing the British with cheap sugar.
They wouldn't have known the life expectancy of a plantation slave was eight years.
But they must have known on some level they would never come back home.
It isn't kept as a shrine here at all.
You come out of the Door 0f No Return and bang, you're back in the present.
The castle's there, the story's been told.
0utside, it's business as usual, and that's fishing.
These Ghanaians aren't descendants of anyone who was put on the slave ships.
Their ancestors were the ones that weren't snatched, that weren't sold, who stayed put,
just living their normal lives as free people.
Which is not much to ask.
The conditions were so disgusting, you could smell the slave ships ten miles away.
The slaves were stacked, like the commodities they were, on shelves,
chained in twos at their hands and feet.
Some died of dysentery, some jumped overboard.
Some in despair starved themselves to death.
They often did try and resist.
0n one voyage, 20 of them managed to break their chains.
But the sailors had guns and they could usually quash any rebellion.
We've certainly had our money's worth out of Ghana,
buying their stolen people and working them to death for profit.
Then generations later, expecting Ghanaians to die on our battlefields in two world wars.
Which they did.
The Royal West African Frontier Force was disbanded at independence,
but they were there, in Abyssinia and Burma, fighting our corner.
People say events cast a shadow on a place. I don't think that's true.
Well, I don't sense it.
If you didn't know what went on here, you wouldn't pick it up.
It's just a beautiful bit of coast.
This is the kitchen of the restaurant where I'm going to dinner.
It's lovely and calm, nobody swearing, nobody throwing knives.
Nobody standing outside in checked trousers, having a fag.
All sitting down, I like that in a kitchen.
(Victoria) OK? (Cab driver) Yeah.
I suppose it's too late to say I'm actually not hungry, it's too late and too hot.
0oh, some microphone cable trapped in the car door
I'm having dinner with Fritz, a well-known stand-up comedian in Ghana,
but unusually for a comedian, quite pleasant and cheerful.
And it's not that it's Ghanaian, I like porridge.
I don't mind food that looks like you could wallpaper with it.
It's just the humidity. I can't be bothered to chew.
Ah! Thank you.
Don't want it. Not hungry.
- Is that yours? - No, no, we're sharing it.
0h, I might have one of those.
Am I fighting you for this?
- Oh, no, there's more coming. - There's more.
- Beautiful. OK. - OK.
- Tell me what these are. - Now, this is banku.
- Yeah? - Now, banku is steamed corn dough.
- Milled corn. Cornflour. - Yes.
And then it's stirred till it comes to this.
- It's really nice stuff. - Let's have it.
- Yeah, OK. - Right.
- All right, then. And what's this? - This is okra stew.
Right, it draws a bit, but it's nice stuff.
With vegetables, you know, tomatoes...
- Oh, it's nice! - It's nice, yes.
- When I say nice, it's got quite a bite to it. - It's got a bite to it, yeah.
- (Coughs) It's really hot! - Yeah.
I always said I wasn't going to come here and apologise for the slave trade,
cos I didn't really think it was my fault.
But when I was at Slave River, and looking at those paintings,
that tell the story of the slave trade,
and there's these very evil looking white people who are whipping the Africans.
And I did feel, suddenly, you know,
that I was part of this terrible, shameful white thing that had happened.
And it made me feel uncomfortable, to be a white person in the place where that happened.
Well, it's good that you're feeling a little guilty about it.
- I'm not going to do anything about it. - Well, the thing is...
what Europe served was external stimuli.
And that's where you're to blame.
Because it led to the feeding frenzy.
- What, of Africa? - Yeah.
Africans got involved, and it led to a breakdown in our society,
because greed took over.
The blame on Europe is that it stimulated it, because they made the demands for slaves.
- So when did Britain leave... - 1957.
1957? That's not long ago, is it, really?
It's almost 50 years.
Have you thrown off those shackles, do you think?
Well, by 1960, they'd all gone.
Switching the light off and leaving?
No, they'd left people who could run the show.
The idea was that these people could run the show for Britain,
and be inclined to Britain.
We have this relationship, the relationship that can never be broken.
We're part of the Commonwealth.
Informally, most Ghanaians now look to the States.
Do they? How dare they? When we've given them so much!
They don't want to come to a small, filthy, grey country?
- No, no, all right, I won't say that. - That's all right, I'll say it for you.
But erm... It's a light attitude.
When Britain was a little more stodgy, it's not...
Don't give me this and then say the word "stodgy"!
Yeah, well, it's like visiting your old school headmaster.
So you want to go and visit a favourite uncle. That's why Ghanaians now favour the States.
I'm on my way to meet two people, African-Americans, New Yorkers,
who felt so strongly that Ghana was their ancestral home
that they sold their house, left their jobs, gave up their life in New York,
left everything behind, including their family,
and they've built this.
It's a sort of upmarket B&B-cum-education centre.
The only thing that happened is that I was removed and transplanted to another place.
Does that mean that my connection is totally broken?
No, it doesn't.
Some don't want to come. Some may never leave the Western world,
and return to Africa, and that's totally their choice.
But there are some of us that deep down inside,
there's a yearning and a burning to go see this place called Africa,
to go see this place that you were told that you come from,
and to make that connection.
There's a lot of what they call "roots tourism" here,
and African-Americans want to come and stand where their ancestors stood,
to come back through the Door 0f No Return and to stand in the dungeons.
But that can be a painful experience.
When I went into the women's dungeon, I hurt.
I had pain like you would not believe.
But then I got this comforting feeling
of all these people that were around me,
that were assuring me that, "It's OK, it's all right, you're home now."
And I knew, as I walked out of that dungeon,
that I was going to live the rest of my life in Africa,
doing something as an African person coming home.
You must have had to make a huge emotional adjustment,
to live so far from your original home.
The adjustment was...
making the announcement to my immediate family, my children,
that unless God Almighty tells me to return to America, my work is in Ghana.
They were mad, they were mad.
Believe me, they were mad.
No letters, no phone calls, no communication.
So my biggest emotional adjustment was the settlement in my spirit of things,
that unless the children came, I'd probably never see them again.
I understand intellectually that need to connect with the people you're descended from.
I don't have it myself.
I've never wanted to trace my roots any more than I've wanted to collect thimbles,
but I get it, I can see why if your ancestors were snatched from their home,
you would want to make a pilgrimage and make a symbolic return on their behalf.
But to risk never seeing your own living family,
for the sake of reuniting with some unknown, unknowable dead family,
that is some powerful drive that I respect, but I don't get it.
You can come back to Ghana, but...
you can't come back to the Ghana that the slaves were taken away from.
God's everywhere in Ghana.
He's overseeing the haircuts, the fish shop,
all-seeing, all-tailoring.
They're more comfortable, I would say, with their Christianity than we are in Britain.
And you might think their Africanness might inform their hymn singing,
but no, it's the same rather earnest, plodding choir practice we're used to in our own land.
There's a lot of ladies trying to pretend they're not late,
but with a big dress and a spiral staircase, there's no chance.
Come on, hutch up. There you are, it's a Ghanaian wave.
0oh, nearly
This could be any church in Britain.
There's no nod to African architecture at all.
It's only the ladies' clothes that give it away.
It's a very solid vestige of empire in Ghana.
There's not may others, actually, here.
Belgrave Memorial Hall.
You can see that on many a windswept English corner.
Why is it empty? Did we only bring Christianity? Not bingo?
This house seemed to sum up the old days of colonialism,
but really what it summed up were my own stupid assumptions.
As the house looked like it must be empty,
I thought it was OK just to go and peer in.
It was actually the home of a Ghanaian family.
Instead of telling me to get lost, which they had every right to do,
the children came out and said, very politely, "Can we help you?"
I think that was the arrogance of being with a film crew, rather than being British,
but I couldn't swear to it.
For every church and memorial hall, there's a fortification.
We didn't come to convert, we came to make money.
And once we made it, we had to protect it.
Victoria Park.
Victoria Park, Ghana.
Now, unlike our own dear queen,
who did used to turn up at the odd cup final and shake the lads' hands,
I don't think Queen Victoria had much to do with the beautiful game.
This is Victoria Park in Cape Coast,
and this park was the birthplace of football in Ghana.
The students at the government boys' school had read about football in British newspapers,
and in 1903, 22 pupils started to train secretly in this park,
which was usually used for official ceremonies, at night.
They formed a team and started to play matches with sailors and white civil servants.
And last year, Ghana qualified for the World Cup.
They beat the Czech Republic before losing to Brazil in the second round.
Can you tell I'm reading that bit?
This is the first football I've seen since 1966.
Africa's most expensive player is Michael Essien from Ghana, who plays for Chelsea.
Don't ask me what position. I have no idea.
These teams we're watching now
are trained by Kofi, a local teacher who works with these boys in his spare time,
helping children from difficult backgrounds to find an alternative to life on the streets.
Guess how old Kofi is? No, wrong He's 50. I know
She must be somebody's girlfriend. Bored.
Kofi, how long have you been a coach?
I've been a coach since 1996, when I realised I had the potential to teach kids.
I realised the only thing that I can very much get into them is through sports.
- So your big boys are what? 17? - Yes, 17.
- And that's when they stop? - After 17 years, they stop.
They look for things for their future.
If their future is in football, they go after it.
And has any of them ever gone into professional football?.
- They are not ripe, yet. - But they're coming up?
- Yes, there are talents there. - You must be very proud.
Even though I am not getting money for all these things,
I am only happy that these boys are not street children any more.
They are not thugs, they are not fighting on the street, but they are here.
- Where did you get the money for uniforms? - The uniforms? I am a teacher by profession.
The little that I have, I save.
- Then... - Kofi!
- You are such a lovely person. - Yes, you can say that one again.
They're very polite.
My football career has never really taken off, but they let me hold the ball.
(All) Cheese!
Cheese!
I can't imagine a similar bunch of British boys
just happily singing to a middle-aged woman they've only met five minutes before.
They do have fantastic manners.
Cheer up, Queenie, we haven't ruined the place.
We haven't quite left it as you'd wish to find it, but they don't seem to bear us any grudge.
They haven't toppled your statue or changed the name of the park.
Go on, crack a smile
So, the ships left England with their cargo of guns, cloth and brandy.
0n the west coast of Africa they unloaded,
loaded up with slaves, or people, as I prefer to call them,
and sailed on to Jamaica, unloaded the slaves,
took on rum and sugar, and back to Blighty.
That's the slave triangle, and that's why our journey takes us from Ghana to Jamaica.
This is Montego Bay.
And this is a sugar plantation.
Before we colonised these Caribbean islands, sugar was an expensive luxury item.
Sugar cane will only grow in particular conditions,
and harvesting it is very labour intensive.
But Jamaica had the ideal climate,
and once we had the slave manpower to cut and process it,
it became an affordable habit.
0nce the British workers tasted it, they couldn't get enough.
They wanted it in their tea, in biscuits, in chocolate.
It's an addictive substance, and they were hooked.
Soon, the sugar business was bringing in huge profits.
So you had the demand, and to supply that demand you had your slaves,
the idea being that once you'd bought your first lot,
they would breed, you would have a limitless workforce,
you'd sit back in your lovely plantation house and count your money.
But, as Alrick Joseph, the Jamaican historian, explained to me,
the problem with slaves was, if they weren't dying or rebelling,
they were finding ways not to reproduce themselves.
The idea was that they would reproduce and you'd have a constant labour force.
Yes, you wouldn't have to keep buying.
- They didn't reproduce to a massive extent. - No, no.
One of the reasons why the slave trade was prolonged
was because of the constant import.
There are several positions on it -
that they deliberately sought not to reproduce
because by law, their children would become slaves.
They would take the status of the mother.
And they had the skills, it is believed, to practise abortion.
Midwives were women very skilled in the healing art of Africa,
and they helped in infanticide when the children were born.
And it is also believed that the harshness of conditions on the plantations
naturally prevented them getting pregnant.
There are records of slaves rebelling.
When there was a slave rebellion, the whole plantation could go up in flames.
They'd burn the cane fields, sometimes the great house and so on.
This was not only open rebellion, it was a constant sabotage that the slaves practised.
They deliberately worked slow.
They pretended that they couldn't understand instructions.
They would kill the animals on the plantation,
sabotage the mill house, damage equipment which would need replacing from England.
And if that happened, then the master would lose.
- There it is. - We're coming around the corner to it.
We're driving up into the Jamaican rain forest to Accompong.
I know we're going somewhere that's got something to do with escaped slaves
but I don't really know.
Nobody's saying.
This is the curse of making a documentary and being a bit shy.
In any other situation, if you were being led up to the hills
by a lot of silent, dope-smoking men,
you'd perhaps ask a few questions, but, what the heck, we're in Jamaica.
Let's go with the flow.
See the ladies in the checked skirts? They've all got mobile phones attached to their belts.
In fact, they were much quicker at videoing us than we were at filming them.
By the time we had our camera on its tripod,
we were already on You Tube.
Well, of course, the words "Dad's Army" did pop into my head, but all will become clear.
On behalf of the Colonel and the people of Accompong,
we say welcome to our family tree.
This is known as the Kindah Tree,
and the meaning of the word, this kindah, we are a family.
The Kindah Tree, up in the Blue Mountains, is of huge significance to this community,
who are called the Maroons.
The Maroons were originally runaway slaves,
who escaped from the estates and lived up here amongst the trees,
waging guerrilla warfare against the British soldiers.
They were so clever at camouflage, using skills they'd learnt in the bush in Africa,
they could stand still amongst the trees while a regiment passed by and never be seen.
Fighting them was so costly to the army
that eventually they signed a treaty with the Maroons, under the tree,
granting them their freedom, giving them land and self rule,
in return for help protecting the government against any invaders.
We are direct descendants from Africa, chiefly from West Africa.
And we owe our allegiance to Ghana.
That's where the Ashanti tribes came from.
- Do you feel like a Ghanaian or a Jamaican? - Well, both.
You feel like both? How do you feel about the British now?
Well, I have no grievance against them, nothing against them.
No hate, nothing like that.
Because they did what they thought they were doing and did,
certain that it was right, in the beginning, anyway.
After a time, they realised that they were doing wrong and they changed their habits,
so I am not carrying any grievance or grudge or hate against them.
I travelled to England and I lived there for 33 years.
I lived in London. The plan was to spend just five years.
Yeah.
But when you get there, things isn't that way,
because going, you're planning that you're going to save money.
So you think you're going to save enough in five years to come back.
But when you get there, no, you don't get that money at all,
so you find that you go to ten,
then fifteen, then twenty, then forty years,
and some of my friends that went there are still there.
- You weren't welcomed, were you? - In England?
No, not really. No, I wasn't welcomed.
We had problems in getting a place to live.
Until other Jamaicans started to buy their houses.
Then you could live there.
So you find that you have to live rough, you know, until you get your own houses.
The slaves were freed on the 1st of August 1834.
Well, all the slaves under six were freed.
The others had to work an apprenticeship for between four and six years.
They had to work for their master for 40 hours a week.
For the other 13 hours a week, they could work for wages,
to try and save enough to buy themselves out early.
Things weren't perfect, but at least they were emancipated.
It was here in Victoria Town that they finally had a chance of real independence.
This is where missionaries bought land to give to the slaves,
so they could build houses for themselves, grow food
and start a new, proper, free life.
They had a hard road ahead, but they did celebrate their freedom.
This is the Bruckins Dance, a dance of gratitude to Queen Victoria,
who they saw as freeing them from slavery.
Though really, she didn't have much to do with it.
They're always dressed in red and blue,
and the dancers are representing figures of the royal court,
kings and queens and princes and soldiers.
It's a sort of dance-off between the two sides,
and it's a mixture of formal court dance and African rhythm and movement.
It isn't sugar in Jamaica that earns money now. It's tourism.
They have around one and a half million visitors staying here every year,
and about a million more visiting from the cruise ships.
There are more than 250,000 Jamaicans working in the tourist industry.
But the features that attract people here, the beaches, the coral reefs and the wildlife,
are under threat from over-use and pollution.
The more people come, the more the ecology's damaged.
It's a small island, already struggling to cope with water shortages
and pollution from sewage and plastic litter.
0h, do we have to feel guilty about everything? Probably.
This is Lovers Leap, supposedly named after two slaves
who leapt to their death rather than be separated.
But somebody said to me there's no way they'd ever have named anything after slaves,
and also, looking over here, it's only about eight foot before you'd fall into a cactus.
Which is painful, not tragic.
- Hi. Are you Freddie? - Hello, you must be Victoria.
- Pleased to meet you. Hello. - Welcome to Jamaica.
- Thank you. - Enjoying yourself?
The whole world knows Jamaica for its music.
And this is reggae icon, Freddie McGregor.
He's Grammy nominated, he does concerts all over the world,
he's a singer, songwriter, producer.
Those are his big mangoes.
He had a huge reggae hit in 1981 with his own song, Big Ship,
so if anyone's going to be able to explain reggae, it's him.
# Hear me now again
# Right now I'm ready, you must hold on steady
# I'm moving off at lightning speed, yes
# Take a seat, just wait till I'm ready
# Just for the day, so hold on steady
# And then the big ship sailin' on the ocean from Ghana
# We don't need no commotion
# And then the big ship sailing on the ocean #
Reggae is a music from Jamaica.
Like Trinidad, the one we call Soca.
It's fast and different, but it's exciting.
Reggae just happens to be this one-drop groove that we inherited.
It's a beat, you know.
And people seem to respond to it in a way that sometimes surprises me, too.
So that's really unique, and Africa is where it all started, I'm quite sure.
Which leads me to believe now that different people from different islands
were from different parts of Africa.
I would think Jamaican people are from West Africa.
- I feel West African. - Do you? You feel that link?
When they came over from Ghana or wherever they came over from to here,
they weren't allowed to play music, were they?
No, I think what happened was when we started working on the plantations,
we had to find a way to release our stress, and while we worked, we sang.
Just like I grew up seeing my parents do.
If she's washing clothes, she's singing. If she's cleaning the house, she's singing.
These people love to sing.
And so it's something very traditional.
All the people who live here, or most of the people,
are descended from people taken from their own lands and brought here.
And yet there doesn't seem to be that oppressive or depressive stain on the place,
which you do feel in Ghana.
We work hard to have changed that, you see.
We're one of the countries throughout the world who really fought hard,
even during the time of slavery.
You know, we had some of the most rebellious people here.
And we fought for the freedom that we wanted.
And luckily, today, coming back from 400 years ago,
I could say my foreparents have done a great job in fighting for our freedom today.
# I'm a-longing to see you
# I want to know how you've been today
# Over yonder
# Mm-hm, mmm
# I'm gonna catch this flight
# And when I reach my destination
# I hope you'll be smilin'
# Longing to see me
# I thought you'd drop me a line
# Just to say "Hello, my dear
# "I'm doing fine"
# Mmm, yeah
# Oh, well
# It doesn't matter anyway now
# Cos my love for you will never change #
I felt quite low when I was in Ghana.
I mean, quite rightly they are keeping the story of slavery alive,
but there's not really a light-hearted angle to it.
I don't know whether it was that or the weather, but it did feel quite oppressive.
But in Jamaica, it feels different. It's quite optimistic, it's quite cheerful.
That could be the weather, cos it's not so humid here, or it could be the marijuana.
But I like to think, really, that the gene pool here in Jamaica
comes from all those people who managed to survive a march across the desert in shackles,
being kept in a dungeon in the dark for months,
being taken across the sea in a small ship,
when some of them had never even seen the sea.
Those people had the strength of spirit and body to survive that.
I mean, it's not exactly a happy ending to the story,
but it's quite an ancestry.
This is St John's in Newfoundland.
Such an annoying pronunciation. I keep wanting to say New-found-land.
It's a big rock, really.
It comes with fog as a side order.
I'll tell you why we're here.
0n the 16th of August 1858, President Buchanan received a message from Queen Victoria.
No big deal in itself. She was always firing off notes.
But this was a telegraph message,
and it had travelled by the underwater cable
that had just been laid from Ireland across the seabed to St John's.
That was very modern of Queen Victoria.
That would be like our queen taking photos of her bottom with her mobile
and texting them to the White House.
Actually, Newfoundland is a bit of a one-stop-shop for the empire story.
People have been baggsying it for Britain since 1497,
and in 1610, a Bristol merchant, John Guy, started a settlement here.
He sailed over and planted some crops. Then he went "0ops, forgot something,"
nipped back and came back with something crucial if you were starting a colony. Ladies.
I don't mind the fog. I'm happy to be somewhere cool.
I've been carrying this jacket around since Ghana.
I love the houses and the colours,
and actually, it's quite nice to be somewhere and not have to feel guilty.
I know we came and killed a lot of cod, but you can't worry about everything.
Look, you know we're supposed to go to all these places named after Victoria?
This is Victoria Park, but honestly, I think it's not very interesting.
If you want to know what it's like, find a really dull park near where you live, and go there.
But I think we should all go somewhere more entertaining. OK?
Talking to people on this journey,
it seems like when you leave a country or you're forced to go to another country,
your culture becomes really important to you.
because it's a precious part of your identity and you can't afford to be casual about it.
Whereas if you just live somewhere, like I live in England, I don't think about my Englishness,
but when I find myself in a strange land I suddenly become very Marmite and teabags.
Newfoundland has been described as the most Irish place in the world outside of Ireland.
They reckon 80 per cent of the population can claim Irish ancestry on one or both sides.
Hundreds of thousands of destitute Irish people came to Canada
after the potato famine in the middle of the 19th century,
because it was a lower fare than those to America or Australia.
And Australians now sound Australian,
and Americans sound American,
but people from Newfoundland sound Irish.
- Hi. - (Irish accent) We're going right up there.
Oh, OK.
- Hi. I'm Victoria. - Well, how are you, Victoria?
- I'm OK. - My God, you're lovely people.
- I guarantee you that. There's no doubt. - OK.
- Well, now, we'll go in this direction here. - Uh-huh.
And some of them believe in fairies.
Oh, yes, this was scary, up on top of that hill.
Whoo!
I'm not sure I should be coming with you.
- I've changed my mind. - Now, don't get your feet wet.
So, Mike, do fairies exist?
Well, there's some strange stories told here on the southern shore, all over the shore, actually,
regarding fairies.
If you went in the woods without a bit of bread in your pocket,
there's ten chances to one the fairy would get you.
My mother wouldn't let me go in the woods without bread.
But if you had bread in your pocket, you didn't have to worry.
There was one particular man, he went in the woods one day.
Somebody sang out to him, "Boy, don't go in there without a bit of bread in your pocket."
And he laughed. He said, "There's no fairies."
Went in and looked for him.
He was about a mile and a half in, he had fallen asleep,
he had no boots and he had no coat.
- He'd been mugged? - Yes, it sounds like the fairies mugged him.
But they're only small, you know.
But anyway, he swore he never walked in.
He said something just lifted him and brought him away.
What do they look like?
- Well, they're... - They sound massive.
Well, there's a little bit of hair down over the back.
And they're that high. Now that's what I was told.
Yeah? That's really scary.
- Did you ever hear tell of the fairies? - Well, I've heard of fairies, yeah.
- But you were never involved with them? - Well, no, not intimately.
In England, they're like this high. They're this high and they don't exist.
So have you actually got bread in your pocket now?
Well, I certainly have.
Look. Wrapped up in a bit of paper.
- Nobody has thought of it, I bet you. - We've got one scone.
That's lovely.
Doesn't anybody go in the woods, then, now?
No, it's not like it was before.
Now, even the children... My gosh, parents used to worry to death about fairies.
I mean, you'd hear a little whisper, right?
They usually whisper, you know.
I'm on my way to meet a monarchist.
I don't know what I think of the Royal Family. I think the Queen does a good job.
Princess Margaret had some jaunty swimwear.
But, a bit like a soap on the telly,
you lose track when there's too many young people.
I've been told Carla collects Royal Family dolls,
so I'm rather dreading being surrounded by a load of woolly Queen Mothers...or bears
0h, crikey, please let them not be bears in tiaras.
I take it all back. Not a crocheted Princess Anne in sight.
It's like a tiny, perfect little museum, beautifully laid out,
really interesting things dating back from at least the young Queen Victoria, if not before.
0h, and these must be the dolls.
That's George V, I think.
Isn't he the one who said,
"I was scared of my father, I'm going to make damn sure my children are scared of me"?
Queen Mother. Not too sure who that is. Batchelor gentleman, possibly.
What makes people collect royal memorabilia,
as opposed to old tram tickets or paperweights?
Carla, your house is like a shrine. What is it that drives you to collect all these things?
Is it the love of royalty, or is it the love of these individual people?
It's the history that's there, rather than a particular love of.
I mean, a great respect for.
And in no way do I consider myself a zealot or anything like that.
She's a bit too sane, isn't she, for a documentary?
If I talk to her any longer, she'll say she didn't collect it and can't stand the Royal Family.
..and just seeing how things have evolved over time.
Who is your favourite monarch, and why?
I think probably George V.
When you think of the fact that Czar Nicholas, with the Russian Revolution, he was captured,
and their lives were at peril.
- I mean, this was the Royal Court, and they... - He was the cousin of George V?
He was the cousin, yes, and they were very alike.
In pictures, they look almost like twins, they were so alike.
And making that kind of decision, "Will we go in?"
- And rescue them? - And rescue them.
Or will we not go in and rescue them?
And as we know, no rescue came.
- When they were all assassinated. - They were, yes.
What you can never say to people when you're filming is,
"Can you talk a bit quicker as we have to be somewhere else now?"
We had arranged to go to a big barbecue
and film this shindig with Irish music and dancing and local food, something a bit jolly.
By the time we got there,
there was no food, it was chucking it down, nearly everyone had gone.
But amongst those who stayed, there was something of the empire spirit.
If there's one thing we have taught the world, it is to see things through to the bitter end,
no matter how wet, cold and miserable we might be.
(Thunder)
Well, it's cold, it's wet, you can't see anything.
I'm in the car. All I need is my parents arguing in the front seat,
and it'll be like every holiday I've ever been on.
I'm going for an ice cream.
After I've had my ice cream, I'm going to find out about the telegraph,
the technological marvel of the 19th century,
the wire that only reached at first from Euston Square Station to Camden Town Station,
then crossed a whole ocean and shrank the British empire,
so we could run the world from home.
Before the telegraph, what was the quickest way of getting a message from Britain to here?
- By ship. - How long did that take?
Two weeks, or maybe nine days if you had favourable winds.
It's easier going from here to there than from Britain to Newfoundland.
The cable was brought in 1858,
but unfortunately that cable only worked for 27 days.
But it was long enough for Victoria to send a message to President Buchanan in the States.
They used Morse code with a Morse code key.
- This is an early one. - Oh, yeah?
You can have a go, sure. Send your name.
Dit dit dit daa. V for Victoria.
Dit dit dit daa. That's it, you can tell you're a musician.
And it took sixteen and a half hours to send a message of only 500 words.
- You must have had repetitive strain injury. - No kidding, yeah.
So, to bring the cable over, they brought it over on the Great Eastern,
and it's sitting on a big drum on the side of the ship.
So how much cable is that?
Well, it's a long, long way, so they had about 21,000 tons of cable.
- Didn't the ship just go...? - One continuous piece.
It was the largest manmade moving object until they built the Titanic.
So it was a huge, huge ship.
In 1865, they tried the first time, and it broke 600 miles before it got to Newfoundland.
They lost the end. It fell off the back of the ship as it sank down into 14,000 feet of water.
- And could they go down and get it? - They did go back the next year.
And they actually found it. Incredible.
They fished out the end, made a splice,
and then they had two wires going all the way between Britain and Newfoundland.
- What did it look like, the cable? - I can show you.
We have a piece of the original 1858 cable right here.
- It's miniature. - Yes, it's only a small cable.
It did only last 27 days before it broke, of course.
You could plug in a hair dryer and it wouldn't last that long.
Jeez!
So, there was no more waiting for letters.
London could have almost instantaneous contact with her colonies and dominions.
By 1890, only places like Tobago and the Falkland Islands had no cable at all.
Britain had a very tight grip on its empire.
So that's Ghana, Jamaica, Newfoundland,
three completely different countries.
Ghana feels like walking around with a wet blanket on your head.
Jamaica's fresh, people have a real spirit,
and Newfoundland is just freezing.
It seems so odd to think that those three completely different countries
ever belonged to that tiny, wet little island of Great Britain.
That's bonkers.