The last slave ship of Africa is on the coast of Alabama

Birmingham, Ala. • Researchers working in the troubled waters of the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico have located the wreck of the last known ship to transport African slaves to the United States, officials said Wednesday.

The remains of the Gulf of Clotilda schooner have been identified and verified near Mobile after months of assessment, according to a statement from the Alabama Historical Commission.

The wooden ship had been scuttled the year before the civil war to hide evidence of her illegal trip and has not been seen since.

"The discovery of Clotilde is an extraordinary archeological discovery," said Lisa Demetropoulos Jones, executive director of the commission. She stated that the ship's voyage "represented one of the darkest epochs of modern history" and that the wreckage provided "tangible evidence of slavery".

In 1860, the wooden boat illegally transported 110 people from what is now the nation of Benin, West African, to Mobile, Alabama. Clotilda was then taken to delta waters north of the port and burned to prevent detection.

The captives were later released and set up a community still known as Africatown USA, but no one knew Clotilda's location.

A descendant of one of the Africans who was taken south aboard the ship said she had had chills when she had learned that the wreckage had been recovered.

"I think of the people who appeared before us, who worked hard, fought and fought," said Joycelyn Davis, granddaughter of the sixth generation African captive, Charlie Lewis. She added, "I'm sure people had given up on finding it – it's a staggering factor."

A reporter from the Mobile area discovered remnants of wood from what was initially suspected to be the Clotilda, but the wreckage turned out to be one of a kind. other ship. This advertisement helped to relaunch the searches last year and to find another wreck now identified as the slave ship.

Officials did not specify the amount of leftover ship or what it could become from his remains. But the dimensions and construction of the wreck correspond to those of the Clotilda, said the commission, as do the building materials, including locally-sourced wood and metal parts in pig iron. There are also signs of fire.

"We are cautious when we place names on wrecks of ships that no longer carry a name or something that looks like a bell with the name of the ship on it," said marine archaeologist James Delgado in a statement. "But the physical and medico-legal evidence strongly suggests that it's about" Clotilda. "

Officials said they were working on a plan to preserve the site where the ship was located.

The United States banned the importation of slaves in 1808, but smugglers continued to roam the Atlantic with wooden boats filled with chained people. Southern plantation owners have asked workers for their cotton fields.

Timothy Meaher, owner of an Alabama plantation, has bet on the fact that he could bring an African ship to the other side of the ocean, said L & M. Historian Natalie S. Robertson. The schooner Clotilda sailed from Mobile to West Africa, where she collected captives and brought them back to Alabama, thus avoiding the authorities during a tortuous journey.

"They were moving people underground as much by challenge as by sport," Robertson said.

Clotilda arrived in Mobile in 1860 and was soon scuttled north of Mobile Bay. That's where the researchers worked to identify the sinking.

Africans spent the next five years as slaves during the American Civil War, released only after the loss of the South. Unable to return home to Africa, some 30 of them used the money earned in the fields, houses and boats to buy land from the Meaher family and settle in a community still known today. the name of Africatown.

Officials announced plans to report on findings at a community center in Africatown next week.