After years of investigation, a task force of archaeologists, engineers and historians has announced that the last remaining American slave ship is too “broken” and decayed to be salvaged from the murky waters of the Alabama Gulf Coast without being broken into pieces.
A special investigative team led by the Alabama Historical Commission announced Thursday that the Clotilda, the last known ship to transport enslaved Africans to the United States, had been snapped in half by a larger ship and was severely eaten away by bacteria.
The 500-page report said the “responsible” way to commemorate the ship was to protect it in the ocean, where it was discovered in 2019.
“There’s no other place in the world with as much physical evidence as the Clotilda,” said James Delgado, the expedition’s lead maritime archaeologist, adding that preserving that evidence was a top priority. “The Clotilda is a crime scene, so everything we’ve done has been done in a crime scene investigation way.”
The wooden schooner at the center of the study was built by Timothy Meagher in 1860, one year before the Confederacy was founded and decades after importing slaves became punishable by death in 1808.
The ship, Captain William Foster, sailed to West Africa and illegally smuggled 110 Africans into Alabama, after which Foster attempted to burn and sink the ship to cover up the crime.
After the Clotilda survivors were freed during the Civil War, historical records show, 32 of them purchased land from Meagher and built present-day Africatown, formally known as the Plateau, about three miles north of Mobile.
The ship’s wreckage remained unidentified in the brackish Mobile River until 2019.
On Thursday, the special investigation team presented photographs of the charred remains of the ship’s hull taken during the survey, evidence that supports a story that historians and local residents have documented for decades.
Until a $1 million state study, it was unclear how the ship had held up during more than 160 years underwater.
Some hoped it would be fully excavated and remain intact enough to be turned into a land-based museum.
“Museums have power, and that ship loses that power once it’s submerged,” said Ben Raines, a former local reporter who wrote a book about the Clotilda.
Rains said he remains optimistic the ship can be excavated and turned into a museum because the task force says the option is still scientifically and technically possible.
Rains said the museum could be an important resource for all descendants of slaves in the United States and bring much-needed revenue to the Africatown community.
Many of the residents who attended Thursday’s meeting expressed similar sentiments.
Delgado didn’t rule out the option, but said the process would require dismantling the ship “nail by nail, nail by nail,” which could destroy some of the remaining physical clues about the experiences of the slaves aboard.
The important historical evidence includes the lower hull of the ship, where enslaved Africans were held, where a deep-sea dive revealed a sealed room where 110 people were held, remaining largely intact.
Jeremy Ellis, president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, was visibly emotional as Delgado recounted the details of the compound where his ancestors were interred.
“It’s so chilling that we’re learning more about what they actually went through and how cramped that cargo hold was, how they were all piled on top of each other,” said Ellis, who is in her early 40s and a sixth-generation descendant of Clotilda survivors Polly and Rose Allen. “And it makes me want to continue the reconciliation and healing efforts for their descendants.”
Instead of excavation, the report recommended a plan to preserve the underwater structure by erecting large pillars around the ship to protect it from other vessels.
Because the ship is sunk within a designated wildlife management area and the town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the process requires the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to obtain federal permission to install protective devices.
Representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers, which has played a key role in the study, said the process could be resolved in a few months unless there are serious conflicts between environmental protections and the needs of the vessel.
The ship’s discovery in 2019 reignited a long-running debate about how to address the Clotilda’s tragic legacy, particularly for the direct descendants of survivors.
The Meagher family still owns millions of dollars’ worth of property in the area, as well as parks and roads named after the family.
Zora Neale Hurston’s bestselling book, “Barracoon,” chronicles the life of Cujo Lewis, the last surviving African slave from the Clotilda.
“Barracoon,” released in 2018, depicts Lewis’s upbringing in Africa, his experiences aboard a slave ship, his experiences as a slave, and his efforts to discover Africatown. Lewis died in 1935 at the age of 94.
As a result, Africatown and the Clotilda have become frequently cited in national debates about reparations.
Ultimately, the task force stated that the underwater preservation plan would only be able to protect the structure for an estimated 100 years before erosion causes it to collapse completely.
This timeline could also be shortened by climate change, which could affect water levels, temperature and salinity around the ship, it added.
But many descendants said they have no problem with leaving the ship submerged.
Veda Robbins, 55, is also a sixth-generation descendant of Pollie and Rose Allen.
Robbins grew up near Mobile, but clearly remembers visiting her great-aunt’s house in Africatown as a child, was married in the local Africatown church, and later baptized her children there.
Robbins said the ship was less important than the need to revitalize the Africatown community, which has been ravaged by pollution and disinvestment since its founding.
“We don’t want to see ships taking up space that could be used for housing and the community itself,” said Robbins. The unincorporated city’s population has dwindled significantly to just under 2,000 people.
Robbins repeated the official position of the Clotilda Descendants Association: “In the end, the ship is less important than the story of the people who survived it, and the stories of their descendants who are already working to keep the community of Africatown intact.”
