At least two-thirds of the section below deck of the ship 90-foot-long schooner Clotilda, believed to be the last known to transport African captives to the American South for slavery, remains largely in one piece and in the fresh-water muds along the Gulf Coast. The ship was discovered on the Mobile-Tensaw River in Alabama, according to maritime archaeologist James Delgado of the Florida-based SEARCH Inc. The upper portion of the ship is gone. The unventilated slave pen below deck raises questions whether human DNA could remain in the hull, said Delgado. “It's a stunning revelation.” The ship, which departed Mobile on an illegal trip to purchase people in Africa, returned to Alabama in either Autumn 1859 or July 9, 1860, with 124 slaves. [Illegal trip: Congress outlawed the practice in 1808.] Alabama steamship owner Timothy Meaher, a Maine native, financed the last slave vessel and came out of the Civil War a wealthy man. The schooner was scuttled in 1860. Meaher's descendants, with land worth millions, are still part of Mobile society’s upper crust. Alabama has set aside $1M for preservation and research, and additional work planned onsite in early 2022 that could show what's inside the hull, Delgado said. But far more work is needed to determine whether the ship could ever be pulled from the mud and displayed. Freed after the Civil War, some of the enslaved Africans settled in a community they started called Africatown, a few miles north of downtown Mobile. (Source: The AP 12/22/21) Research: Wreck of last US slave ship mostly intact on coast (msn.com)
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