The last slave ship to reach America was burned to hide the crime
In short: In 1860, the schooner Clotilda completed a voyage that defied federal law. To erase the evidence of their illegal trafficking, the ship's owners burned the vessel to the waterline. For over a century, the ship's existence was dismissed as a myth, until recent underwater discoveries changed everything.
The Clotilda was a two-masted schooner, 86 feet long, built near Mobile, Alabama, in 1855. Its owner, Timothy Meaher, was a prominent figure in Mobile who sought to expand the institution of slavery. In 1860, despite a congressional ban on the international slave trade that had been in effect for over 50 years, Meaher commissioned a voyage to West Africa to bypass federal law.
On March 4, 1860, Captain William Foster departed for West Africa, arriving in Ouidah, in present-day Benin, approximately 10 weeks later. In that location, he bought 110 men, women, and children from Dahomey kingdom officials. Scholars suggest the captives likely originated from what is now Benin or Nigeria. One survivor, Kossola—later known as Cudjo Lewis—recalled his family being killed during a Dahomean raid at dawn.
The ship returned to the American coast in July 1860, docking under the cover of night to avoid law enforcement. After unloading the captives, the crew stacked the ship with seven cords of firewood and burned it to the waterline to destroy the evidence. The survivors were eventually sold and many settled in a community called Africatown, north of Mobile, after the Civil War ended in 1865.
For much of the 20th century, the voyage was dismissed as a myth. However, the 2007 publication of Sylviane Diouf’s research proved the voyage was a historical fact. In 2019, maritime archaeologists and the Alabama Historical Commission confirmed the ship's remains in the Mobile River, providing a tangible link to the history of the African diaspora.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: www.britannica.com — Clotilda | Slave Ship, Captain, & Wreckage | Britannica
- Also: The 'Clotilda,' the Last Known Slave Ship to Arrive in the U.S., Is Found
- Also: The Clotilda Has Been Found
- Also: Clotilda (slave ship)
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