Researchers to study sunken remains of last U.S. slave ship in Alabama river

Cell, Alabama — Researchers are returning to the Alabama coast close to Cell to evaluate the sunken stays of the final slave ship to convey captive Africans to the USA greater than 160 years in the past.

The Alabama Historic Fee says a staff will start a 10-day analysis of the remnants of the Clotilda on Monday. Consultants have described the wreck as probably the most full slave ship ever found.

The company has employed Resolve Marine, a salvage and providers firm, for work involving the Clotilda. The ship was scuttled within the muddy Cell River after illegally dropping off 110 West Africans on the Alabama coast in 1860, many years after Congress outlawed the worldwide slave commerce.

The corporate plans to moor a 100-foot-long barge on the web site with gear to help divers and retailer artifacts which might be faraway from the water for evaluation and documentation.

“It’s a great obligation to make sure the Clotilda is evaluated and preserved,” Aaron Jozsef, the undertaking supervisor for Resolve Marine, stated in an announcement.

Some have advocated for eradicating the wreckage from the water and inserting it on show in a brand new museum that is being mentioned, and officers have stated the work will assist decide whether or not such a undertaking is feasible.

The Clotilda’s voyage was financed by a rich Alabama businessman, Timothy Meaher, whose descendants nonetheless have intensive land holdings round Cell. Enslaved upon their arrival in Alabama, a number of the Africans began a neighborhood known as Africatown USA simply north of Cell after the Civil Struggle, and plenty of of their descendants nonetheless reside there.

Ship wreckage within the river was recognized as being that of the Clotilda in 2019, and officers have been assessing the positioning and deciding what to do with it ever since. Whereas small components of the two-masted picket schooner have been dropped at the floor, researchers have discovered that many of the ship — together with the pen that was used to imprison the captives — stays intact on the river backside.

Working with the state and SEARCH Inc., Resolve Marine stated it would carry out work together with an evaluation of the Clotilda’s hull and a restricted excavation of artifacts. It is also creating a plan to preserve the wreckage the place it is at present positioned within the river a couple of miles north of Cell.

The work, which is being funded with a $1 million state appropriation, “will add to the collective understanding of the vessel and the positioning’s potential to yield vital archaeological details about the ship and its closing voyage,” Jozsef stated.