More than 50 years after the United States outlawed the slave trade, the Clotilda illegally transported 110 enslaved people from present-day Benin to Alabama. The ship was constructed in 1855 and was first used to ferry supplies to and from Cuba, Texas and Louisiana. Around 1860, the ship was sold to local Mobile businessman Timothy Meaher, who started using it to transport slaves. William Foster, the ship’s original owner, and an 11-man crew used $9,000 in gold to purchase 110 people. By July 8, 1860, the ship had arrived back in the Gulf. There, at night, the Clotilda was tugged up the Mobile River and the captives were transferred to a different boat and eventually sold into slavery. Foster and Meaher were worried that their plan had been found out, so they burned all the evidence in the marshes, and the wreckage is assumed to be there but had never been found.
But after a “bomb cyclone” hit the eastern seaboard, reporter Ben Raines used the low tides in the Alabama’s Mobile-Tensaw Delta to search for the wreckage. He believes that he discovered the remains of a ship that matches the description of the Clotilda a few miles north of Mobile. Raines documented with photographs and used a drone to take aerial images. An archaeologist from the University of West Florida examined the wreck and won’t say conclusively that the wreck is the Clotilda, but they are optimistic.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
