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The schooner Clotilda (often misspelled Clotilde) was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted schooner, 86 feet (26 m) long with a beam of 23 ft (7.0 m). U.S. involvement in the Atlantic slave trade had been banned by Congress through the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves enacted on March 2, 1807 (effective January 1, 1808), but the practice continued illegally. In the case of the Clotilda, the voyage's sponsors were based in the South and planned to buy Africans in Whydah, Dahomey. After the voyage, the ship was burned and scuttled in Mobile Bay in an attempt to destroy the evidence. After the Civil War, Oluale Kossola and thirty-one other formerly enslaved people founded Africatown on the north side of Mobile, Alabama. They were joined by other continental Africans and formed a community that continued to practice many of their West African traditions and Yoruba language for decades. A spokesman for the community, Cudjo Lewis, lived until 1935 and was one of the last survivors from the Clotilda. Redoshi, another captive on the Clotilda, was sold to a planter in Dallas County, Alabama, where she became known also as Sally Smith. She married, had a daughter, and lived until 1937 in Bogue Chitto. She was long thought to have been the last survivor of the Clotilda. Research published in 2020 indicated that another survivor, Matilda McCrear, lived until 1940. Some 100 descendants of the enslaved people carried by the Clotilda still live in Africatown, and others are around the country. After World War II, the neighborhood was absorbed by the city of Mobile. A memorial bust of Lewis was placed in front of the historic Union Missionary Baptist Church. The Africatown historic district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. In May 2019, the Alabama Historical Commission announced that remnants of a ship found along the Mobile River, near 12 Mile Island and just north of the Mobile Bay delta, were confirmed as the Clotilda. The wreck site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. History Captain William Foster was captain of the schooner Clotilda, working for Timothy Meaher, a wealthy Mobile shipyard owner and steamboat captain. In 1855 or 1856, Meaher had built Clotilda, a two-masted schooner 86 feet (26 m) long with a beam of 23 feet (7.0 m) and a copper-sheathed hull, designed for the lumber trade. The schooner had been refitted as a slave ship with a false deck. Foster obtained papers with the false claim he was delivering lumber. Disrupting the compass was 9,000 dollars in gold (containing magnetic metal impurities), which led the vessel off course. A hurricane off the Bermuda coast damaged the ship. While repairing, the crew of 11 who did not know the real mission purpose, discovered the hidden deck. To persuade them not to alert authorities, Foster agreed to pay them double, which ultimately he did not. Meaher had learned that West African tribes were at war and that the King of Dahomey (now Benin) was willing to sell enemy prisoners as slaves. Dahomey's forces had been raiding communities in the interior, bringing captives to the large slave market at the port of Ouidah. Meaher was said to have wagered another wealthy gentleman from New Orleans, that he could successfully smuggle Africans into the US despite the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Departing on March 4, 1860, Foster sailed from Mobile with a crew of 12, including himself, arriving in Whydah on May 15, 1860, where he had the ship outfitted to carry Africans, using materials he had transported. He offered to buy 125 Africans in Whydah for $100 each. said to be mostly of the "Tarkbar" tribe, taken in a raid near Tamale in present-day Ghana. Research in the 21st century suggests that they were actually Takpa or Tapa people, the northern Yoruba name for the neighboring Nupe people from the interior of present-day Nigeria. He described meeting an African prince and being taken to the king's court, where he observed some religious practices. Foster wrote in his journal in 1860, "Having agreeably transacted affairs with the Prince we went to the warehouse where they had in confinement four thousand captives in a state of nudity from which they gave me liberty to select one hundred and twenty-five as mine offering to brand them for me, from which I preemptorily [sic] forbid; commenced taking on cargo of negroes, successfully securing on board one hundred and ten." As the captives were being loaded, Foster saw two steamers off the port and, fearing capture, ordered the crew to leave immediately, although only 110 Africans had been secured on board, leaving behind the last 15. They saw a man o' war during the ocean passage, but escaped notice when a squall came up and they outran the ship, reaching Abaco lighthouse at the Bahama banks by June 30. As they neared the United States, they disguised the schooner by taking down the "squaresail yards and the fore topmast", hoping to pass as a "coaster" carrying African captives within the US in the domestic coastal trade. Foster's journal recorded that he anchored Clotilda on July 9 off Point of Pines in Grand Bay, Mississippi (likely referring to Point Aux Pins on Grand Bay in Alabama, near the Mississippi state line). He traveled overland by horse and buggy to Mobile to meet with Meaher. Fearful of criminal charges, Captain Foster brought the schooner into the Port of Mobile at night and had it towed up the Spanish River to the Alabama River at Twelve Mile Island. He transferred the African captives to a river steamboat, then burned Clotilda "to the water's edge" before sinking it. He paid off the crew and told them to return North. The African captives were mostly distributed to the financial backers of the Clotilda venture, with Timothy Meaher retaining 30 captives on his property north of Mobile, including Cudjo (aka Cudjoe) Lewis, known as Kossoula or Kazoola. Despite the racial hierarchy of the Deep South, the Africans from Clotilda could not be legally registered as slaves because they were smuggled in; however, they were treated as chattel. Some of the captives were sold farther away, including Redoshi (later known also as Sally Smith) and a man later known as William or Billy, whom she was forced to marry on board the ship. They were sold to Washington Smith, a planter in Dallas County, Alabama. In 1861, the federal government prosecuted Meaher and Foster in Mobile for illegal slave importation, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence from the ship or its manifest, and perhaps because of the outbreak of the Civil War. Because Captain Foster reported he burned and sank Clotilda in the delta north of Mobile Bay, archaeological searches have continued into the 21st century for the wreck. Several visible wrecks have been re.... Discover the Ben Raines popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ben Raines books.